The Greek Polis as the First Precursor of the State in the West

The city-state did not just appear in Greece overnight. Rather, it was the result of a long road, the first steps being taken towards it in the third millennium BC. Tracing the process which led to the formation of the polis is absolutely fascinating.

2.4.1 An Initial Stage of Monarchy: The Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations

The history of ancient Greece begins circa 2300 bc in the archipelago of the Cyclades. We do not know, however, about these peoples’ social and political organization because of the absence of written records.

It was not until the year 2000 BC, in Crete, when the first urban centers such as Knossos, Phaestos and Malia arose around royal palaces. Among these, beginning in 1600 bc that of King Minos is of special note, as it was able to impose itself upon others, leading ancient Cretan civilization to be termed “Minoan”. Although the size and opulence of these palaces constitute proof of the existence of a powerful royalty backed by a bureaucracy following the Near Eastern model (i.e. Egypt and Mesopotamia), the absence of precise written sources prevents us from knowing more.

Minoan civilization suddenly disappeared around 1500 bc, perhaps because of the massive volcanic eruption that destroyed the island of Thera (Santorini now) in the cyclades. The Greeks, nevertheless, would retain a vague memory of the era of the Minoan palaces in their legend of how Daedalus, the architect of Minos, designed a labyrinth in which the king imprisoned a Minotaur, a monster born of Queen Pasife’s relations with a bull. Theseus, the son of Athens’ king, slayed the Minotaur and emerged from the maze, able to enter and emerge from it thanks to the thread given him by Ariadne. Theseus would eventually inherit the throne of Athens and marry Phaedra, a sister of Ariadne’s.

After the disappearance of Minoan civilization, the second stage of political organization we find in Greece arose on the Peloponnesian Peninsula: Mycenaean civilization (1500-1100 bc), which left impressive ruins of fortified palaces located at Mycenae, Tiryns and even the Acropolis of Athens, in addition to lavish royal tombs.

The Mycenaean palaces were destroyed around the year 1200 BC by a new invading force of Indo-European origin: the Dorians. The settlement of the Indo-Europeans in Hellas constitutes a milestone in Greek political and legal history because their high degree of social organization made the emergence of the polis possible.

From the twelfth to the tenth centuries bc Greece went through a kind of dark age from a political point of view, one which saw the Greeks living in small commu­nities which turned to autarchy as a result of the severe depopulation following the collapse of the great monarchies of the archaic period.^[29] This trend was aggravated by the start of a major migration to Asia Minor, where the Greeks founded their first colonies during this period.

2.4.2 From the Homeric Kingdoms to the Appearance of the Polis (800-500 bc)

This state of things shifted beginning during the era of Homer (circa eighth century bc) when more structured political communities appeared, which in the historiog­raphy are called the “Homeric kingdoms” because they were contemporaneous with the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey.^[30] Said communities were organized under the authority of nobles possessing large amounts of land and livestock.

2.4.3 Synoecism as the Basis of the Polis

The formation of the polis was initially a result of the economic transformation which Greek society underwent as agriculture took precedence over livestock and metallurgy with iron expanded, triggering an increase in trade with the East that allowed the Greeks to move beyond autarchy.

Economic growth led to a phenomenon of concentrated settlement whereby small communities were gradually integrated into larger cities. This was synoecism.^[32] Thanks to it, the Homeric kingdoms’ lack of structure would gradually give way to a model of judicial/public organization in which power resided in three specific social bodies: the popular assembly, bringing together all the citizens; a restricted council, dominated by the landowning aristocracy; and, finally, a group of magistrates^[33] who, after gradually shedding their traditional religious role, came to exercise increasingly “political” power.

The Greeks were so aware that synoecism was the basis of their prosperity that Athens’ most important festival was its Panathenaea, which celebrated the union of all the villages of Attica into the great polis protected by the goddess Pallas Athena—so crucial that it was depicted on the frieze of nothing less than the Parthenon itself, the most emblematic building of Athens’ Acropolis, holding the city’s treasure.^[34]

2.4.4 The Consolidation of the Polis and Its Aristocratic Model: The Case of Sparta

The story of the Lacedaemonian or Spartan polis began in the ninth century BC, shortly after the Dorian conquest. It was then when the incorporation (synoecism) of four peoples came about, the legendary lawmaker Lykourgos furnishing them with a peculiar form of social organization, one of an oligarchic and military nature in which all citizens stood at the service of the state.^[35] Spartan society was strictly divided into three classes.

The Helots (the Greek classical authors considered the term an indication of servitude, and its mean “to be captured, to be made prisoner”), were the descendants of the Achaeans, subjugated after the Dorian occupation. They were dependent peasants without civil rights, although they were able, at times, to serve in the army. Their main task, though, was to work the land of the “equals”, to whom they paid to rent which was fixed by law. They were subject to criptias, ritual ceremonies which functioned as initiation rites for adolescent Spartans, and during which the helots were indiscriminately massacred. Between the Spartans and the helots was the middle class of perieques or perioikoi, who engaged in trade or produced crafted goods (Hall 2000), and were often made to serve with the Spartan army. They were free citizens living in cities surrounding the Spartan territory who were admitted into the army, but had no political rights in Sparta, and did not form part of the assembly. Intermediary between the helots and the perioikoi were the liberated helots or neodamodeis. There were foreigners (xenoi) in Spartan society, too, but these were not as welcome as in other city-states, and those that did live in Sparta were sometimes forcibly expelled by their hosts (Cartwright 2013).

Heading up the state were two kings for life, one from an old Achaean family (the original inhabitants, before the Dorian invasion), and another being a descen­dant of the latter ethnic group. Power, however, was exercised by a Council of Elders (gerousia) composed of 28 members belonging to the aristocracy and, beginning in the mid eighth century bc, an executive panel of five judges, or ephors (vigilants), elected every year by the Assembly (or Apella)³

Thanks to this rigid social organization Sparta managed to become the dominant military power in the Peloponnese.^{[39] [40]} This was demonstrated in the famous Persian Wars battle in which the Spartan King Leonidas squared off against the Persians with just 300 “equals” at the Pass of Thermopylae (480 bc).

2.4.5 The People Versus the Aristocrats: The Origin

of the “Democratic” System

In ancient Greek politics the aristocrats at first imposed themselves on the common people, made up of peasants and artisans, by controlling the council and the magistracies. The members of the oligarchy, nonetheless, had to govern with some degree of consensus because the people were represented in the assembly. In fact, conflict between these social groups was brewing, as by the late eighth century bc the poet Hesiod had denounced the aristocracy’s insolent pride and rapacity.

Several factors led to social crisis. Firstly, the fact that the aristocrats saw themselves forced to raise an army to defend the city (hoplite reform),^[41] which led them to appeal to the peasants who had sufficient means to pay for their own military equipment. In return, however, the new soldiers called for the right to participate in public life. Meanwhile, the small rural peasantry, whose economic condition was becoming increasingly more precarious, repeatedly rebelled. Finally, one must also take into account the emergence of money as an instrument of exchange, as it favored social mobility in a polis previously controlled by the landowners.

All of these factors led to a serious social crisis which shook the foundations of the aristocratic model (Meier 2011, 180-195). The early Greek legislators sought to resolve the crisis through the enactment of written rules replacing the old common law. However, the efforts of Solon in Athens and Lycurgus in Sparta did not solve the problem for very long, and violence broke out again, at least until the small farmers, artisans and mer­chants, oppressed by the nobles, managed to seize power and turn in it over to a tyrant,^[42] Peisistratus, who ruled Athens in the second half of the sixth century bc.

Tyranny would spark brutal reactions which decimated the ranks of the nobility or, in the best cases, ended with the aristocrats exiled and their lands confiscated. This process occurred in cities such as Corinth, Sicyon, Megara and, somewhat belatedly, in Athens itself. In all of them the tyrant sought to consolidate his power through a policy of accumulating prestige through the backing and execution of large public works (aqueducts, fountains, public buildings, ornate temples) and the patronage of artists and poets. In some cities tyrannical rule tended to become hereditary. This happened in Sicyon, where Orthagoras’ line constituted a genuine dynasty that remained in power for a century; and in Corinth, where that of Cypselus ruled for 70 years. It is also the case of Athens, where Pisistratus was succeeded by his children Hippias and Hipparcos.

Little by little, however, the tyrannies disappeared, generally because their policies were directed at solving the very social crises which had favored their establishment. In some cases aristocrats did regain power, as in Corinth, though they would exercise it with greater restraint. In Athens, meanwhile, a new political system appeared: democracy, wherein all citizens participated in public life.

2.4.6 Athens' Cleisthenes, History's First “Democrat”

In Athens the tyrannical regime initially imposed by Pisistratus was abruptly toppled in 510 by the intervention of Sparta. Hipparchus, Pisistratus’ son, was killed, which sparked another civil war lasting 2 years until the intervention of Cleisthenes, a figure who also rose to power thanks to pressure exerted by the masses. Cleisthenes did not, however, restore tyranny, but founded a new political system: democracy.

To do this, in the year 508 he managed for the assembly, made up of all the citizens of Athens (åêêÀï^³ÿ, ecclesia) to enact a series of measures promoting social harmony. Among these were: curbing the aristocrats’ power; putting an end to the influence exercised by the phratria and clans; the institutionalization of the tribes (the entire population was divided into ten territorial tribes, which became the basis of the electoral system); and the cession to the popular assembly of all the power which these family groups held. The essential development was that, after Cleisthenes, power was exercised by all the citizens of Athens, regardless of their social origins,^[43] a shift made possible by the establishment of a great number of civic organizations whose members succeeded each other in a short space of time, allowing for rapid rotation. The key body was the Council of 500 (bule), elected annually and consisting of ten 50-member commissions—one per tribe—which rotated in power over the course of the year. The citizens who were to exercise judicial functions were chosen by lot. Also appointed was a magistrate for each tribe.^[44]

Finally, Cleisthenes created a specific control mechanism to prevent tyranny: ostracism, through which the Athenian people could vote to exile a person for a period of 10 years in a ceremony during which they wrote his name on shards of pottery (ostraka). In this way public pressure could remove the power-hungry from political life at any time.

2.4.7 Pericles' Athens

Through the application of ostracism the people expelled the leaders of the different parties, bringing an end to the fighting and allowing the Athenian polis to enjoy an era of political stability between 487 and 461 bc. This paved the way for Athens’ greatest era. In 461, the Areopagus, the council in which the old aristocracy remained ensconced, was stripped of its remaining prerogatives, and in that same year Pericles would appear on the political scene, to be re-elected as general (strategos) continuously for a period of 30 years, a time during which he consoli­dated democracy by allowing all, even the poorest, access to public office by paying their compensation from public coffers, thereby ending the wealthy’s domination of political offices.^[45] The three decades of Pericles mark the pinnacle of Athenian classicism, whose quintessential expressions include the most famous monuments on the Acropolis (the Parthenon, Erechtheion, Propylaea) and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, timeless symbols of Ancient Greece.

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