Hello! Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 14, Tales of the City-State: The Rise and Flourishing of the Greek Polis. I’m Scott Emmons.

When we think of ancient Greece, the things that immediately come to mind are the great temples, the Spartan warriors, Greek drama, sculpture, philosophy, of course… all of which developed in the Greek city-state. That was such a defining feature of the culture that I think it deserves a special episode to explore what it was, how it developed, what made it distinctively Greek, and what the ancients themselves thought about it. 

Now, I’m trying my best in these first-of-the-month episodes to stick to a rough timeline, so that events unfold in chronological order. With the Greek city-state, I can do that up to a point. I mentioned in the episode on the Greek Renaissance that by the end of the eighth century BCE, we’re already in an early stage of it. Today we can pick up from that timeline to look at its emergence and some early political and military developments that helped shape it. But the city-state was so central to Greek identity throughout the classical era that I can’t limit this episode to the beginnings. The deepest, most incisive Greek thinking about it comes from historians like Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century, and then the philosophers Plato and Aristotle in the fourth. So, while I can focus at first on the early developments, I’m going to devote a good part of this episode to some core values that made the city-state so important in Greek life. 

I’ve been calling it the “city-state,” but that term isn’t very precise. It just means a self-governing city, one that usually includes its surrounding territory. But there’s nothing especially Greek about that. There were city-states all over the Near East and the Mediterranean, dating way back to Mesopotamian cities like Ur and Kish in the fourth millennium BCE. So we need a term that refers specifically to this kind of city-state, and a convenient solution is to use the Greek word, polis. Not just because it’s Greek, but because of its range of meaning. Ancient Greek had another word, “asty,” which essentially meant the physical city — the town as opposed to the countryside. “Polis” could mean that too, but over time, it came more and more to mean the city as an institution. A set of laws and governing bodies. So it makes sense that the Greek word polis would become the root of our words “politics” and “political.”  

Still, a city has to have a physical presence, and that’s a good place to start. Now, nobody was writing news reports as Greek cities emerged, so we don’t have any contemporaneous accounts. But with a combination of archaeology, legend, and a little imagination, we can get a fair picture of how a polis was born. Think of Greece in the Early Iron Age, after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. The vast majority of people live in small agricultural villages. The ideal place for a village would be somewhere in or near a fertile plain with a good water source. Greece being the mountainous country that it is, there’s a good chance there would be a hill or an outcropping of rock nearby, some higher ground where you could run and defend yourself if your village got attacked. In an attractive area like that, you’d be likely to find a cluster of villages. And there’d naturally be some connections between them. They might fight over resources from time to time, but there’d also be some trade, some intermarriage, and probably a loose alliance against invaders. If a hostile force was on its way, all the villages could band together, and they might use that high ground for common defense. 

So the stage is already set for those villages to combine into a unit, and the process is what the Greeks called synoikismos, or in English “synoecism.” This is one of those Greek words you’ll hear pronounced in different ways. I looked it up in Merriam-Webster, which gives it “Sin-EE-sizm,” which follows the basic guidelines I told you about in the episode on Greek pronunciation — latinize the spelling and anglicize the pronunciation. But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say it that way. I like “synoecism” because it preserves the root word “oikos,” which as we’ve seen, means “household.” So “synoecism” means literally “bringing households together.” In practical terms, it means separate villages come to be united under the leadership of one main town. In most cases there was probably already a town that was recognized as the most important, and the others would follow its lead. In some cases, the leading town may have had to use force to bring its neighbors into the fold. In any case, what had been a loose association of villages was transformed into a politically unified whole, a polis.  

So in that way, the growth of a polis is a very natural progression as villages grow and form closer connections. But it may also have gotten a boost from outside influences. It’s always good to remember that this is a time of increased trade and contact with older civilizations of the Near East. The Greeks are picking up all kinds of cultural influences from those places. Anyone who had any connection with overseas trade would have known about the great Phoenician cities Tyre and Sidon. So it seems likely that the movers and shakers who had the leading positions in those emerging Greek poleis were to some extent inspired by the model of Near Eastern city-states. 

Now, synoecism doesn’t mean that everybody suddenly pulls up stakes and moves to the main town. But it does mean that decisions affecting the whole community will now be made there. If you’re wealthy and influential enough to be one of the people running the show, you either have to live in the capital or travel there to attend a council meeting. If you’re not one of the elite, you might be able to participate in an assembly of the people, but again, you have to do that in the capital. Over time, some urbanization would typically take place, and the city would take on some of the features we associate with a Greek polis — things like the agora, which is usually translated as “marketplace,” but it’s also the place where public business would be conducted. Eventually, a defensive wall might be built around the urban area. But that wall doesn’t define the city limits. The polis includes all the surrounding countryside, and all the people living and farming there are part of that polis. 

So urbanization was common, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary for a polis. If you look at two of the main players in classical Greece, Athens and Sparta, there’s a huge difference. Athens became very much urbanized, and it eventually had defensive walls that played a major role in its military strategy. Sparta underwent very little urbanization. It kept its identity as a collection of villages. But it was still unquestionably a polis. For a long time, it was a point of pride for the Spartans that they didn’t need city walls. Their military was so strong, nobody was going to mess with them. The historian Thucydides famously compared the two cities in his own time. In the translation by Richard Crawley, quote:

I suppose that if Sparta were to become desolate, and only the temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power… As the city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and public edifices but composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to have been twice as great as it is.  Unquote.

 If you visit Athens and ancient Sparta today, you’ll see that Thucydides absolutely nailed it. Athens has the Parthenon and other great monuments that make it a major tourist destination. Sparta, not so much. So those two extreme examples show that the polis could develop in very different ways.

 Besides Athens and Sparta, a few others are well-known… like Corinth, Thebes, Argos... But those are only a handful out of a much bigger number. At the height of the classical period, it’s estimated that there were somewhere between a thousand and 1500 Greek city-states across the Mediterranean. And typically, they would be very small. Most would have no more than a few thousand people. And there was always a sense that a polis in theory shouldn’t be too big. Plato and Aristotle both wrestled with the question of its ideal size. Aristotle, who was always looking for the mean between extremes, said a polis should be big enough to be self-sufficient but small enough that all the citizens could know each other’s characters. Not necessarily that they should know each other personally, but they’d at least know everyone by reputation. Plato was much more of a mathematician, and he put the ideal number of citizens at 5040, because it could be divided evenly by any integer from one to ten. Still, a limited number of citizens, and probably not far off from what Aristotle had in mind. 

 So both the ideal polis and a typical one were very modestly sized. A huge exception to that rule was Athens. There you had a case of synoecism gone wild. At some time in the distant past, Athens got control of its whole region, the part of Geece known as Attica — which stretched over roughly 11 to 12 hundred square miles, roughly the size of Rhode Island. The Athenians had a legend that their hero-king Theseus had brought the whole region together. 

Population estimates vary widely, but at its height in the 5th century BCE, it seems to have had anywhere from 30 to 60 thousand adult male citizens. And when you include women, children, resident foreigners and slaves, it was probably between 200 and 300 thousand. That was extraordinarily large for a polis. Attica was big enough to include some good-sized towns within it, and they had their own local administrations, but they were all part of the greater polis of Athens. For example, the town of Marathon was about 25 miles away from the urban center, but its inhabitants were every bit as much Athenians as anyone living right next to the Acropolis. 

Well, Plato and Aristotle were writing about the polis well after it had fully developed. But Greeks were thinking about what it meant to them long before that. In the early 6th century BCE, the lyric poet Alcaeus from the island of Lesbos wrote (as translated by D.A. Campbell), quote:

 Men are the city, not walls or ships

Well fitted out, nor a place with lofty towers.

If there is no sense or understanding within,

It is not a city, even if it be a great work.”

Unquote

 From very early in its development, there’s a strong sense that the polis is not so much a place as it is a community. As Alcaeus says, there has to be sense and understanding within. In these early Greek poleis, there’s a lot of tension, not only between classes, but between aristocrats competing for power and influence. So there’s a great concern that the city should be well ordered. There’s a lot of talk about “eunomia” — “good laws” or “good government.” Another sixth-century poet, Phocylides of Miletus, makes a pithy statement about that, which also shows a growing awareness of the contrast between the Greek polis and Near Eastern kingdoms. In the translation by Richmond Lattimore, quote:

 A city that’s small and is founded on a cliff’s edge,

well governed, is stronger than Nineveh crazy. Unquote.

 Now, none of this is to say that the physical city wasn’t important. People were attached to their ancestral lands, and every city had its sacred places. But when push came to shove, the people were what constituted a polis. There are instances in Greek history of entire populations leaving a city and setting up somewhere else in times of crisis. Phocaea was an Ionian city that came under siege when the Persian king Cyrus was expanding his empire in the 6th century BCE. And rather than submit to Persian rule, the inhabitants abandoned Phocaea and, after some wandering, ultimately went on to found the city of Elea in Italy. 

 It’s hard to imagine, but the same thing could have even happened to Athens during the Persian War, when King Xerxes led an enormous invasion of Greece by land and sea. The Athenians had to evacuate temporarily when the Persian army overran their city. Their plan was to save Athens by fighting a naval battle off the nearby island of Salamis. The Spartans argued that it would be better to fall back and defend the Peloponnese, which basically meant abandoning Athens. The Athenian general Themistocles told the Spartans, “Look, if you won’t join us here, don’t expect us to keep helping you. We’ve already evacuated; we can sail off to Italy and found a city there.” The Spartans took the threat seriously. They stayed to face the Persians at Salamis, and it turned out to be one of the decisive victories for the Greeks. But the fact that the Athenians could consider relocating to Italy illustrates the principle I’ve been talking about — that the polis is defined by its people, not its location or its physical attributes. That mindset is reflected even in the way the Greeks talked about their cities. Where we would say, “Athens went to war against Sparta,” they would say, “The Athenians went to war against the Spartans.” It’s subtle difference, but I think it tells us something about their perspective versus ours.

 This relationship with the polis is where the Greek system really splits off from the older city-state traditions of the Near East. From very early on, even though the aristocrats hold most of the power, there’s at least a seed of egalitarianism, a sense that those below the aristocracy have some skin in the game. The concept of citizenship starts to emerge. The Greek word for a citizen is polites, a person who belongs to the polis. You’re not just a subject of a king or a powerful ruling body; you’re a citizen who has some interest in decisions that affect the city and its people. In the earliest stages, it’s tricky to define exactly what a citizen is. But a convenient working definition is that a citizen at the very least has the right to participate in the assembly. The two universal organs of government for a polis are the council, which is a small group that prepares legislation, and the assembly of all citizens, which in theory has the final say on what the council proposes. An ordinary citizen in an early polis wouldn’t be eligible to sit on the council or hold any government offices. But at least he could have some degree of engagement through the assembly. 

 Of course, when we talk about citizenship, there’s an obvious question. Who gets to be a citizen? Under the definition I just offered, only a small part of the population. In a lot of the early cities there would probably have been a property qualification, so that you’d have to own some land. Women couldn’t hold office or participate in the assembly. That’s not to say they had no role in public life. Religion played a major role in the polis, and women had important positions in many of the city cults. But as far as citizenship is concerned, they would be considered citizens in the sense that they came from citizen families, and their sons would be citizens. You might say they carried the citizenship gene. Slaves, of course, had no claim to citizenship. Neither did resident foreigners, people from other areas of Greece or even other countries who settled in a polis, usually for economic reasons. I’ve been focusing mainly on the early polis, but really, throughout the archaic and classical periods, the governing body of a polis can be summed up in a three-word phrase: adult male citizens.

 I think we’re due for a break. But I’m happy to say, not an ad break. Epic Greek History is ad-free, and I intend to keep it that way. The downside is that there are no sponsors helping to defray the cost of equipment, hosting, and so on. So, if you’re enjoying the podcast and would like to help keep it going, you can subscribe for as little as three dollars a month by hitting that “Support” button at www.epicgreekhistory.com. Big thanks to those who’ve subscribed so far. And now, let’s break for…

 [SFX: A Moment of Greek]

 I mentioned earlier that one ancient Greek word for a city is “asty.” There’s also an adjective form, “asteios,” which at its root would mean “of the city,” or “having to do with the city.” But one of its shades of meaning is “sophisticated” or “witty.” In that way, it’s an exact parallel with the Latin word “urbanus,” which has come into English as “urbane.” Someone like Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde would be described as “asteios,” “urbane,” for their sharp sense of humor. Modern Greek still has the word “asteio,” where it’s come to mean a joke, or anything funny. I have no urbane ending for this, so that’s today’s moment of Greek.

 [SFX]

 When the Greek polis first emerges, wealthy, landowning aristocrats are the ones calling the shots. But a crucial stage in its development comes when the aristocratic monopoly on power is broken, so that citizens who can’t claim a noble lineage can start to play a more active role in government. And that shift seems to be closely connected to a new military development known as the hoplite phalanx. This is a style of fighting that not only changes Greek warfare but also disrupts the power structure within the polis. Historians have often called this the “hoplite revolution.” 

 Now, if there are any Greek history experts listening, I can already hear about half of them tearing their hair out. Because the hoplite revolution is one of the most contested topics in the whole field. Scholars have been arguing for decades over when these fighting techniques came into use, how long it took, and what their implications were for city-state politics. This is a good place for a reminder that I’m not a historian, and I’m especially not a military historian. I haven’t spent years poring over all the evidence from all different angles. Those who have put in the time and effort have come to very different conclusions. My approach with a topic like this is to stick with the quote-unquote “official version,” the one you’d find in a standard introductory textbook. In this case, scholars refer to the standard view as the “hoplite orthodoxy.” So that’s the narrative I’ll present, and then at the end, I’ll mention a few of the main objections to it.

 So, the story begins with the increasing population in the 8th century BCE and the gradual transition away from pastoralism toward agriculture. As I mentioned in the episode on the Lelantine War, that in itself leads to a change in the nature of Greek fighting. Back in the Early Iron Age, war was mainly a matter of raids on a neighboring chief’s territory, maybe to steal some cattle or other livestock and generally to boost your image as a courageous warrior. In this new, more agricultural era, it’s more about neighboring communities fighting over the best arable land. 

 The watershed moment comes sometime around 700 BCE, when a new kind of shield appears, which is designed for fighting in a close formation. It’s a round shield, and it’s big — usually a little under a meter across, sometimes a little more, but there’s not much variation in size. It’s made of wood, usually with a covering of leather or a thin sheet of bronze, and it has a double grip — that is, there’s a band that you put your left forearm through, and then a grip that you hold with your hand. That double grip is necessary, because this thing is heavy and bulky, so you need those two contact points to hold it steady. They tried to minimize the weight by using lighter types of wood like poplar or willow, but common estimates are that it weighed around 14 or 15 pounds. 

 A lot of modern books say this special kind of shield was called a hoplon, which is of course the root of the word “hoplite” to refer to the soldier. But hoplon really just means “implement,” so the word “hoplite” isn’t necessarily connected specifically to the shield. It just means something like “equipped” or “outfitted.” But still, the shield is a defining attribute of a hoplite soldier. A full set of hoplite armor includes a bronze helmet, a breastplate, and bronze shin-guards called greaves. Offensive weapons are a long spear that’s used for jabbing, not throwing, and a short iron sword as a backup if the spear breaks. The crucial point here is that this heavy armor, and especially that big shield, only make sense in a tight formation known as the phalanx. 

 In a phalanx, you have a long row of hoplites facing forward, each holding his shield on his left forearm, so that it protects the left half of his body, while his right half gets protection from the shield of the guy to his right. So you can see how important it would be for the soldiers to stay in formation. Every man depends on someone else for his safety. Obviously, the guy on the right end of the line is going to be the most exposed, so you’d want someone with extraordinary courage and discipline in that spot. Behind that front row, you have multiple ranks of hoplites. So in battle, when one guy in the front line falls, the guy behind him moves up to take his place. Typically, a phalanx is eight ranks deep, but it can vary. If the opposing phalanx has a longer front line, it’s very important that yours equals it, so you might have to sacrifice depth for length if you don’t have as many soldiers. 

 In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve gone down a pretty deep rabbit hole. You might ask, what does the action of a hoplite battle have to do with the workings of the city-state? I’m digressing a bit just because I think some of the details are interesting, but I promise it will all connect with the development of the polis. Anyhow, just before the battle, two phalanxes are lined up opposite each other. There are sacrifices where each army tries to get the gods on its side, and the general gives the troops a pep talk. Then the armies start moving toward each other at a good clip, while staying in formation. At least in some cases, there’s a musician playing a flute-like instrument to keep time. And we know from several literary sources that there was a war cry, which comes through in the texts as “eleleu!” or “alalé!” To me, those sound like attempts to approximate a kind of ululating cry in writing. I imagine in real life, it must have been terrifying.

 Beyond those basics, we don’t have a lot of information about how a phalanx operated. Ancient authors typically don’t spend much time on it, because any Greek reader would already be familiar with hoplite warfare. But there is a fascinating passage in Thucydides where he gives us some insight into how interdependent the hoplites were and how that could affect battle maneuvers. He says, quote:

 All armies are alike in this: on going into action they get forced out rather on their right wing, and one and the other overlap with this their adversary’s left; because fear makes each man do his best to shelter his unarmed side with the shield of the man next him on the right, thinking that the closer the shields are locked together the better will he be protected. The man primarily responsible for this is the first upon the right wing, who is always striving to withdraw from the enemy his unarmed side, and the same apprehension makes the rest follow him. Unquote

 Well, the phalanxes come closer together, doing their best to stay in formation while probably drifting to the right, until finally they crash together. It’s debated whether they actually crash or come to a stop so that they can wield their spears more effectively. My best guess is that these guys would be so pumped up with adrenaline that they’d hit each other full force. And Greek authors often describe hoplite battles as a “clash of shields.” So the front lines are trying to knock each other back with their shields, and meanwhile, they’re thrusting with those spears, trying to stab their opponents in a vulnerable spot. One puzzling part of the action is what ancient authors call the othismos, the “push.” Some people think that means all those ranks of hoplites are pushing the front line forward to drive the enemy back. It’s hard for me to imagine how you could maintain any control doing that, and it may be more of a metaphor for the two armies banging against each other. But however you imagine it, I have to think a hoplite battle would be an absolute nightmare for anyone on the front lines. While you’re trying to inflict as much damage as you can, there are multiple spearpoints coming at you, and in that tight formation you’re trapped. There’s nowhere to run or even retreat. You have no choice but to stand your ground and either kill or be killed.

 So both sides stand their ground as long as possible, but at some point, one side is going to break. And when it’s clear that your side has lost, the only option is to turn around and run. That usually doesn’t result in a massacre, though, because the victorious army doesn’t chase the losers very far. If you’re a hoplite running for your life, the first thing you’re going to do is ditch that big, heavy shield. Throwing away your shield was considered a terribly shameful thing to do. It was synonymous with cowardice. But when your army has been routed, the reality is that you’re on the run, and you’re going to get rid of anything that slows you down. The victors keep their shields and their full armor, so they’re not going to keep pursuing the opposing army while weighted down with all their gear. 

 When the fighting is over, the victorious army sets up a trophy at the point where they won the battle. That might be just a stake driven into the ground with some captured armor hanging from it to proclaim the victory. The word “trophy,” in fact, comes from the Greek word tropé, which means “turning.” Because the trophy marks the spot where the battle turned, in other words where the losing army turned and fled. Then, as a final ritual, the losing side sends a herald to ask permission to come and collect their dead soldiers for burial. And it’s expected that permission will be granted.

 The kind of warfare I’ve just described has a ritualistic feel to it, and some scholars call it “agonistic” — that is, it has some characteristics of a game. Contests were so much a part of the culture, it’s not surprising to me that war would have some of the same qualities. Herodotus tells an interesting anecdote that relates to this. The Persian king Xerxes is getting ready to invade Greece, and his general Mardonius is telling him it’ll be an easy victory, because of how stupidly the Greeks fight. In the translation by Andrea Purvis, quote:

 Whenever they declare war on one another, they seek out the finest and most level land and go there to fight, so that the victors depart from the field only after great damage has been done, and I won’t say anything at all of the defeated, for they are completely destroyed… If they absolutely must wage war against one another, they should seek out the place where either of the two sides would be the most difficult to subdue and then try to fight there. Unquote

 Herodotus’ description is simplified and a bit idealized, but it reflects a sensibility that an honorable hoplite battle is a kind of contest and should be a fair fight under equal conditions.

 So, there we have a basic picture of what the hoplite phalanx was and how it operated. We can tell that it became widespread in the first half of the 7th century BCE, in part because that’s when hoplite armor starts appearing in the archaeological record. Victors in battles often took armor captured from their enemies and offered it as dedications in temples like the one at Olympia. There’s also a striking depiction of hoplites in formation on a piece of pottery called the Chigi Vase from about 650 BCE. The painting shows two lines of hoplites with overlapping shields marching toward each other with spears raised. It even shows the musician following along, playing the flute to keep time. 

 So now we can climb out of the rabbit hole and take up the big question: How did the rise of hoplite warfare contribute to the development of the polis? Well, even if a lot of this is debated, one thing we know for sure is that a polis normally didn’t provide armor and weapons. A hoplite had to buy his own, and that wasn’t cheap. Naturally, the wealthy aristocrats would be in the best position to afford the bronze helmets, breastplates and so on. But there aren’t enough of those guys to make up a full hoplite phalanx, so the majority of hoplites come from a so-called “middle class” of mostly landowning farmers who are successful enough to be able to afford the hoplite armor. So now, middling farmers and probably some fairly well-to-do artisans are fighting in the phalanx right alongside the bluebloods. And that has an equalizing effect. In the phalanx, there isn’t much opportunity for the kind of heroics we see in the Homeric epics. Everyone’s job is to stay in formation, to fight as a unit. You can see that egalitarian spirit in the word the Spartan hoplites used for themselves — “homoioi,” which means something like “equals” or more accurately “similars.” But when I say “egalitarian,” that doesn’t mean “democratic.” It applies to the hoplites, which means those who are wealthy enough to afford hoplite armor. Those middling farmers are looking out for their own interests, which may or may not align with those of the lowest class. The power dynamic will vary depending on the conditions in different cities.

 Now, obviously, it took enormous courage to fight in the hoplite phalanx. But if we compare it to Homeric courage, which was all about gaining honor and glory for an individual hero, we can see that it’s directed to a different goal — the defense, and yes, also the glory, of the polis. That spirit comes through in the works of a lyric poet named Tyrtaeus, who worked in Sparta in the 7th century BCE. Tyrtaeus wrote inspirational poems to promote courage and a fighting spirit in the Spartan hoplites. His works became such classics that they continued to be sung centuries later in the common mess that the citizen soldiers shared. Here’s a sample of what those Spartan soldiers would have heard from Tyrtaeus, as translated by Richmond Lattimore. Quote:

 Here is courage, mankind’s finest possession, here is

  the noblest prize that a young man can endeavor to win,

and it is a good thing his city and all the people share with him

  when a man plants his feet and stands in the foremost spears

relentlessly, all thought of foul flight completely forgotten,

  and has well trained his heart to be steadfast and to endure,

and with words encourages the man who is stationed beside him…

Unquote

 Tyrtaeus goes on to describe the honors that come to a man who dies while bravely fighting for his city, and how his memory will live on. Quote:

 His shining glory is never forgotten, his name is remembered,

and he becomes an immortal, though he lies under the ground…

Unquote

 The hoplite who gives his life attains a kind of immortality, which is bestowed by the polis.

 So all the hoplites, both nobles and middle-class farmers, are fighting side by side for the same cause, the polis. And the importance of middling farmers in the phalanx gives them leverage to demand more of a say in government. To distill it down to one simple statement, the rise of the hoplite phalanx is what breaks the aristocracy’s stranglehold on power. And that’s not just a theory cooked up by modern scholars. Aristotle tells us in his Politics, as translated by Carnes Lord, quote:

 The first sort of regime that arose among the Greeks after kingships was made up of the warrior elements, and initially of cavalrymen. For strength and preeminence in war then belonged to the cavalrymen… But as cities increased in size and those with heavy arms provided relatively more strength, more persons took part in the regime. Unquote

 In another passage, Aristotle neatly connects the dominant type of military force in a city to the type of government it has. If it relies mainly on cavalry, it will be a narrow oligarchy, because only the richest citizens can afford horses. If it depends on heavily armed troops, by which he means hoplites, it will be a broader oligarchy composed of those who can equip themselves. And if the navy is the predominant force, it will be a democracy, because the men who row the warships are drawn from the lowest economic group. We’ll see that dynamic playing out in future episodes when we get to democratic Athens. 

 So the hoplite orthodoxy gets some support from Aristotle, who was both very smart and a lot closer to the events than we are. Personally, I find the narrative I’ve just presented attractive, because it gives such a clear explanation of how the political structure of the polis developed. But scholars have raised some serious objections to it, so before I finish this section, I think I ought to touch on a few of the main ones.

 First, the orthodoxy assumes that the hoplite phalanx developed and spread very quickly in about the first half of the 7th century BCE. That Chigi vase I mentioned earlier shows that a fully developed hoplite infantry existed by about 650. But a lot of other vase paintings from the archaic period show battles in more open formations, often with light-armed troops like bowmen and slingers mixed in with the hoplites. So one view that’s gotten some traction is that the development of hoplite infantry that we know from the classical period took place over centuries, so there would have been no sudden challenge to the aristocracy. 

 Some scholars in this camp have argued that the hoplite shield was much more mobile than the traditionalists have assumed, so that it could be used for one-on-one fighting, not just in a tight formation. And of course, there are reenactors and people who try to recreate hoplite equipment to see how it handles. Just search “hoplite” in YouTube, and you’ll turn up a good number of those. Some demonstrate that the shield can be moved around more quickly than you might imagine. My thought on that is: it’s not a question of whether you can move the shield quickly, it’s a question of whether you can sustain it, and if there’s any advantage to that big, heavy, double-grip shield in one-on-one fighting. If its size and weight slow you down by 10%, that could make the difference between life and death in a fight against a lighter-armed opponent. It makes sense to me that the hoplite shield is designed specifically for the phalanx.

 Finally, scholars are divided on whether the hoplite infantry really was composed mainly of those middling farmers. One leading champion of the hoplite orthodoxy is Victor Davis Hanson, who’s all in on the hoplites-as-farmers position. His opinions are partly informed by his own experience growing up on a family farm in California. For him, the small family farmers are the backbone of the phalanx, and so they become the most potent force in shaping the values of the polis. One of the most prominent critics is a historian by the name of Hans van Wees, who points out that class differences didn’t really disappear in the phalanx. The guys who could afford the full hoplite panoply with the breastplate, the greaves, the bronze helmet, and maybe a fancy design on their shield would have to be members of the leisure class, and they had more clout in the phalanx. A less wealthy hoplite might have only the minimum necessary equipment – the shield, spear and sword, maybe a leather helmet instead of a bronze one. Even van Wees, though, has to admit that when it come to sheer numbers, the majority of hoplites would have to have come from that middling farmer class. 

 It's not my goal in this podcast to present cutting-edge scholarship. What I want to provide is a solid introduction to Greek history while pointing out where the facts aren’t firmly nailed down. To me, it makes sense that the rise of hoplite tactics was important in breaking the aristocratic monopoly on power. In an upcoming episode, I’ll explore one way that could play out. But one important point to make clear is that the aristocracy never goes away. Its power may be reduced, but its influence remains strong. There continue to be wealthy, noble families who consider themselves a cut above the rest and who play leading roles in the polis. In the archaic and well into the classical period, generals who lead the phalanx are aristocrats. Even when Athens was at its most democratic in the 5th century BCE, its leading citizen was Pericles, whose blood was as blue as anyone’s.

 And that’ll bring us to our second break. Which means it’s time for…

 [SFX: Random Facts!]

 Hoplite shields all had to be roughly the same size, but they could be personalized with a wide variety of designs. As time went on, some city-states developed more standardized shield designs, like the Spartans with the letter lambda, for their region of Lacedaemon. But when hoplites appear on archaic vase paintings, they almost always have bold designs on their shields. A popular design was a gorgon’s face, which would be appropriate if you were trying to look scary in battle. Other common images were wild animals like lions and boars, or mythological creatures like Pegasus. Some shields would have a cartoon-like face with a big, goofy grin. Which I guess would be the ancient equivalent of painting a smiley face on the bomb you’re about to drop. And occasionally, there’d be a shield with an image of a small animal like a rabbit. Some people speculate that a design like that might have been some kind of inside joke like a pun on the hoplite’s name. I prefer to think its proof that the Monty Python killer rabbit was real. And that’s today’s random fact!

 [SFX]

 Up to now, I’ve been focusing mainly on the early developments that shaped the Greek polis. In this last section I want to zoom out and talk more generally about the values and ideals associated with it. There’s a famous passage from Herodotus that very colorfully illustrates those values. His work was primarily a history of the wars between the Greeks and the Persian empire, but he included a great deal of backstory about early Greek states and Near Eastern kingdoms. A lot of that material is legendary, and it’s often a challenge to separate fact from fiction in Herodotus. Part of his charm is that he’s such a good storyteller. But even if a story isn’t historical fact, it can still tell us something about what the Greeks of the time thought about themselves and their city-states.

 This is one of those stories, and it involves an Athenian statesman named Solon, who played a crucial role in addressing class conflict and reforming the constitution of Athens. Not too long from now, there will be a whole episode on Solon. In any case, he was known as a wise man who traveled extensively, saw a lot, and learned a lot the world. So according to the story, his travels took him to the court of Croesus, the king of Lydia. We met Croesus in the last episode, the one on the Delphic oracle. He was famous for being super rich. Back in the days when more people studied ancient history, “rich as Croesus” was a familiar saying to describe someone fabulously wealthy. If you’re a Simpsons fan, you may have caught the detail that Mr. Burns lives at the corner of Croesus and Mammon.

 Well, as the story goes, Croesus knew Solon’s reputation as a wise, well-traveled man, so he had his servants give him a tour of his palace and show him all the king’s jewels, his treasures, his solid gold toilet, what have you. And at the end of the tour, he asked Solon, “Who would you say is the happiest, most fortunate man in the world?” Without missing a beat, Solon answered, “Tellus the Athenian.” Croesus was taken aback. He asked, “Who is this Tellus? What makes him the most fortunate?” And according to Herodotus, this was Solon’s answer. Quote:

 For one thing, his city was prospering; he had good and noble children, and he saw all his children and grandchildren surviving him. Besides, he was well off, at least by our standards of living, and he ended his life in the greatest glory, for he came to the aid of the Athenians in a battle against their neighbors in Eleusis and forced them to flee before he died most nobly on the battlefield. The Athenians buried him at public expense in the very place he fell and gave him great honors. Unquote.

 Notice that the very first thing Solon mentions is that Tellus’s city, his polis, was doing well. It’s a striking illustration of how much a citizen’s identity is wrapped up in the polis. If Athens is prospering, that’s a big part of Tellus’s good fortune. Solon goes on to say that he was wealthy “by our standards.” Greek authors often compared the richness of Near Eastern kingdoms with the simpler, more rugged Greek life. That was often exaggerated, but it was a point of pride that the polis was ideally about something more than amassing wealth. And finally, Tellus got to die gloriously, fighting for his polis, and received the highest honors. It’s a lot like what we saw earlier in that Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, that he attains a kind of immortality because of the honor given to him by the polis.

 Now, Solon doesn’t mention this specifically in his speech, but one of the benefits Tellus would have enjoyed as a citizen of a Greek polis was freedom. That meant partly individual liberty, but also the freedom to participate in the state and not just take orders from a king or an aristocratic council. And it also meant the freedom of the polis itself to conduct its own affairs. The Greeks saw a sharp contrast between the polis system and the monarchies of the Near East, which in the classical period meant the Persian Empire. 

 This was a key difference that the Greeks saw between themselves and those they called “barbarians.” The word “barbarian” didn’t have quite the negative connotation for them that it has for us. A barbarian was just a non-Greek, someone who spoke a language that sounded like “bar-bar-bar.” There’s an oversimplistic view that the Greeks regarded themselves as superior to barbarians in every way. In fact, they often showed a lot of admiration for bravery and cleverness in people from other cultures. In the opening of his Histories, Herodotus says he’s written his work so that great deeds may not be forgotten, some done by Greeks and some by barbarians. But when they compared their own political systems with what they saw across the Aegean, they saw that monarchy was the prevailing system over there, as opposed to freedom as they conceived of it. And to them, monarchy essentially meant slavery. That contrast between political systems came to be seen as a natural difference between Greeks and Asiatic peoples, so that in the 4th century Aristotle could write, quote: “It is because barbarians are more slavish in their character than Greeks (those in Asia being more so than those in Europe), that they put up with a master’s rule without making any difficulties.” Unquote.

 So, in contrast to the Eastern kingdoms, there was always a feeling that a Greek polis should be independent, self-sufficient and self-governing, without interference from outside. If one polis tried to assert its dominance over another, the others would frown on that. It went against the grain of what a polis should be. On the other hand, if your polis was the one throwing its weight around, you might be inclined to give it a pass. We’ve seen that early on, before we have any detailed records, Athens got control over all the towns in Attica. We can guess that in some places that amounted to a hostile takeover. Up north of Attica, Thebes tried again and again to bring the cities of Boeotia under its thumb, and for a very long time it could never quite pull it off. In the years leading up to the Peloponnesian war in the 5th century BCE, the leading powers Athens and Sparta formed “alliances” — and I’m putting that in quotes — where they could put a lot of pressure on smaller states. So things got messy in practice, but the ideal was always that the polis should be independent. 

 To sum this all up, there’s an overall sense that the polis is the right place for a free human being to live. And nobody articulates that better than Aristotle, who defines a human being as a “politikon zoon.” That’s often translated as “political animal,” but that’s misleading. “Politikon” doesn’t mean “political” in our sense; it means belonging to the polis. You could say the polis is the natural habitat for the human animal. Why? Because humans need law and justice, which reside in the polis. In the same passage, Aristotle says, quote: “For just as man is the best of the animals when completed, when separated from law and adjudication, he is the worst of all.” Unquote. Law and justice have a salutary effect on a person. They make a citizen better. And that, for Aristotle, is the business of the polis. It’s there for the purpose of promoting virtue and good living. If it doesn’t do that, says Aristotle, it’s not a polis, it’s just an alliance for mutual advantage.

 Well, the polis is a complex beast, and in one hour I’ve tried to cover the basics. But before I finish, this episode needs an epilogue. Our view of ancient Greek culture tends to be a little skewed, because all the historians, playwrights, and philosophers and so on lived and worked in the city-states. But the polis wasn’t the only system in the Greek world. In large parts of Greece, especially in the northern regions like Thessaly or Aetolia, the predominant form of organization was not the polis but the ethnos, which means something like “tribe.” In those places, villages were often not synoecized into a central state, but they were connected by family and clan ties, common religious rites, and so on. Greeks who lived in the polis culture tended to look down on the people of an ethnos as not entirely civilized, maybe not even entirely Greek. And so we don’t hear as much about those areas until one of them, Macedonia, produces first Philip and then his son Alexander the Great, who will change the course of Greek history forever.

 But that’s a topic for a much later episode. I hope you enjoyed this one, and if you did, please leave a positive review and help the podcast grow. If you have comments, questions, or corrections, I’d love to hear from you at scott@epicgreekhistory.com. Or you can leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and recorded by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork are by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε! Be well!