polis

 

A 'polis' (πόλις, pronunciation pol'-is) plural: poleis (πόλεις) is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens. When used to describe classical Athens and its contemporaries, polis is often translated as "city-state."

The word originates from the ancient Greek city-states, which developed during the Archaic period, the ancestor of city, state and citizenship, and persisted (though with decreasing influence) well into Roman times, when the equivalent Latin word was civitas, also meaning 'citizenhood', while municipium applied to a non-sovereign local entity. The term city-state which originated in English (alongside the German Stadtstaat) does not fully translate the Greek term. The poleis were not like other primordial ancient city-states like Tyre or Sidon, which were ruled by a king or a small oligarchy, but rather a political entity ruled by its body of citizens. The traditional view of archaeologists, that the appearance of urbanization at excavation sites could be read as a sufficient index for the development of a polis was criticised by François Polignac in 1984^[1] and has not been taken for granted in recent decades: the polis of Sparta for example was established in a network of villages.The term polis which in archaic Greece meant city, changed with the development of the governance center in the city to indicate state (which included its surrounding villages), and finally with the emergence of a citizenship notion between the land owners it came to describe the entire body of citizens. The ancient Greeks didn't refer to Athens, Sparta, Thebes and other poleis as such; they rather spoke of the Athenians, Lacedaemonians, Thebans and so on. The body of citizens came to be the most important meaning of the term polis in ancient Greece.

The Ancient Greek term which specifically meant the totality of urban buildings and spaces was άστυ, asty.

History

The bounds of the ancient polis often centered around a citadel, called the acropolis, and would of necessity also have an agora (market) and typically one or more temples and a gymnasium. Note that many of a polis' citizens would have lived in the suburbs or countryside. The Greeks did not regard the polis as a territorial grouping so much as a religious and political association: while the polis would control territory and colonies beyond the city itself, the polis would not simply consist of a geographical area.

Each city was composed of several tribes or demes, which were in turn composed of phratries and finally gentes. Metics (resident foreigners) and slaves lay outside this organization. Birth typically determined citizenship. Each polis would also worship a number of patron deities for protection and kept its own particular festivals and customs.

In the East beyond Asia Minor a major instrument of hellenization by Alexander the Great was the polis. He is said to have founded no fewer than seventy cities, destined to become centers of Greek influence; and the great majority of these were in lands in which city-life was almost unknown. In this respect his example was emulated by his successors, the diadochi.

Polis was frequently divided into three types of inhabitants. The first, and highest, “group” of inhabitants are citizens with political rights. Then are the citizens without political rights. Lastly are the non-citizen.

Derived words

Derivatives of polis are common in many modern European languages. This is indicative of the influence of the polis-centred Hellenic world view. Derivative words in English include policy, polity, police and politics. In Greek, words deriving from polis include politēs and politismos, whose exact equivalents in Latin, Romance and other European languages, respectively civis (citizen), civilisatio (civilization) etc are similarly derived.

A number of words end in the word "-polis". Most refer to a special kind of city and/or state. Some examples are:

• Astropolis — star-scaled city/industry area; complex space station; a european star-related festival.
• Cosmopolis — a large urban centre with a population comprised of many different cultural backgrounds; a novel written by Don DeLillo.
• Ecumenopolis — a city that covers an entire planet, usually seen in science fiction
• Megapolis, built by merging several cities and their suburbs.
• Metropolis can refer to the mother city of a colony, the see of a metropolitan archbishop or a Metropolitan area — a major urban population centre.
• Necropolis 'city of the dead' — a graveyard.
• Technopolis — city with high-tech industry; room full of computers; the Internet.

Other refer to part of a city or a group of cities, such as:

• Acropolis, 'high city' — upper part of a polis, often citadel and/or site of major temple(s).
• Decapolis, a group of ten cities
• Dodecapolis, a group of twelve cities
• Pentapolis, a group of five cities
• Tripolis, a group of three cities, retained in the names of a Tripoli in Libya and a namesake in Lebanon

Names

In Cyprus there is a town called Polis in North Cyprus, identified with the Ancient Lampa.

Names of a number of places contain the suffix "-polis" (sometimes modernized, e.g. "-pol") since Antiquity, e.g.:

• Acropolis, Athens, Greece
• (H)Adrianopolis, various cities, the main one being Adrianople, the present Edirne
• Alexandropol, the former name for Gyumri, Armenia
• Constantinople (Constantinopolis), now known as Istanbul (from is tin Poli 'to "the" city' being Byzantium)
• Daugavpils
• Heliopolis
• Heracleopolis
• Hermopolis, a name for several cities in ancient Egypt and also a city in Siros island
• Megalopolis, Greece
• Neapoli(s) 'new city' — common name for daughter foundations of older polis in ancient Greece and Rome including the modern cities of Nablus and Naples. The adjective Neapolitan is often used to describe things that have their origin in Naples.
• Persepolis, Iran
• Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine
• Seuthopolis, a ruined Thracian city now in Bulgaria
• Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine
• Sozopol, Bulgarian Thrace
• Tiraspol, Moldova
• Pólís, a small kiosk in Reykjavík, Iceland

In other cases the term is hardly still recognizable, e.g.:

• Antipolis, now Antibes, in southern France

Furthermore it may be ued for latinization, e.g. for ecclesiastical use, such as Floropolis (for St-Flour, an episcopal see in France)

Such names were also given later, either referring to older ones or unrelated:

• Anápolis, Brazil
• Annapolis, MD
• Biopolis — a biological research center in Singapore.
• Cambysopolis, a Catholic titular see in Asia Minor, the name being a curious accidental 'creation'
• Copperopolis, CA
• Indianapolis, IN
• Kannapolis, NC
• Minneapolis, MN
• Motherwell — nicknamed Steelopolis
• Petrópolis, the Brazilian imperial capital, after Pedro I
• Sebastopol, CA
• Sophia-Antipolis, a technology park in France

And the enterprise:

• Micropolis Corporation — a defunct computer hard drive manufacturer.

Notes

Further reading

• Hansen, Mogens Herman. Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-19-920849-2; paperback, ISBN 0-19-920850-6).

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

See also

• apoikia
• synoecism

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