The Hellenistic Polis

Abstract

Abstract In this book the main weight has been placed on the Archaic and Classical periods, when the polis was the exclusive society of adult male citizens to deal with their political institutions, when war between the city-states was the order of the day, and when the majority of the citizens preferred to live within the city’s protecting walls. In the course of the Hellenistic period the polis underwent a set of changes, which have already been noted in the relevant contexts, but not assembled as a whole. So to set the classical polis in relief, I will give a sketch of a polis from the second half of the second century bc, when Greece had become a part of the Roman Empire. By then not just some but almost all poleis were dependent states.