How Did Greek Polis Develop

In order to gain a better understanding of how Archaic Greece developed, it is essential to explore the concept of the ‘polis’ and the reasons as to why it emerged. The word ‘polis’ has multiple meanings that depend on the context of its use and to whom the question is directed towards. To understand what the word meant to the Archaic and Classical Greeks, it is crucial to understand the emergence of their city-states from small villages present in the Dark Ages, as well as how they identified themselves, as it is evident that the word ‘polis’ was used to refer to both.

It is crucial to first gain an understanding of how Archaic and Classical Greek civilisation emerged and developed, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the “polis”. During the transition from the Dark Age to the Archaic period, regions known as Attica saw an economical growth, which consequently influenced the size of their population exponentially. This growth influenced various villages to gather and create an urbanised and politically organised “city-state”. This gave them …show more content…
To the Greeks, not all settlements were considered a polis and not all ‘poleis’ (singular: ‘polis’) had walls. A typical Greek polis included the usually fortified city as well as its surrounding hinterland (referred to as ‘chora’) and had only one city which was also a political centre. Furthermore, about 98 per cent of all occurrences of ‘polis’ in written history is used either in the sense of settlement which could be simplified to ‘city’, or in the sense of a self-governing, political community, which can be seen as a ‘state’. Thus the adoption of the word ‘polis’ to mean ‘city-state’ is an extremely accurate translation. Through this, it can be extrapolated that the Greeks often referred to their ‘city’ or ‘city-state’ as the