ipl-logo

Greek Polis Research Paper

440 Words2 Pages

The Greek polis is often translated as “city-state.” The word “political” and the suffix “polis” come from this word. The polis began as agricultural villages or towns. A polis was a city or town and its surrounding land. By the 5th century, poleis were surrounded by walls. They included an acropolis, or elevated place, with temples, alters, public monuments, and dedications to the gods. They also included a public square or marketplace called an agora. The polis depended on citizen soldiers for protection and the chief source of wealth was its agricultural land. Each polis was a self-governing political unit with its own legal system, yet they were also a community of relatives. Every citizen of a polis was descended from a common ancestor; …show more content…

The polis preserved memory and honored descendants after death. It was considered as the ruler and the molder of citizens. The polis was basically a small, transparent political organization with its own set of beliefs. It required the citizens to serve in public office, attend political and religious events, and military service. The polis was a form of political process, assembly, and public meeting, which involved everyone in the polis. Decisions were made based on these processes. There was a sharing of political powers and military duties. There was also a shared culture of art, theater, music and religion shaping the identity of the polis. The polis had a wide range of involvement in everything, but women and foreigners did not have political representation.
The polis initially was successful, but because the separate polis were weak, in the long run they were a failure. The different polis did not work with the other polis to protect their citizens and land. The separate polis found it difficult to work together to protect against foreigners and enemies. The individuality of each polis created fear, suspicion and distrust among other city-states and there was no way to regulate the power between two or more city-states. This would result in their eventual demise. The polis did however create a concept of a public political process and involvement in the

Show More
Related
158 Words | 1 Pages

They thought that the general population should have direct influence on the government and represented the common person of the

Read More
1072 Words | 5 Pages

In mid-6th c. BCE Athens, just five years after the government of Solon (594), the Athenians found themselves encompassed by dissension and internal disorder. Athens created the first democracy-based government, although their government became more of a republic with democratic attributes. They, the electors, were unable to elect an Archon for five years due to their dissent with the former principles ran by the State. All people within Athens viewed these principles with contempt, those in the elite[upper] class were ‘estranged because of the abolition of debts,’ while the poor people wanted the distribution of all land and property. Both parties were unhappy with the changes made by Solon’s reforms and so many refused to vote for any new

Read More
1185 Words | 5 Pages

Writing Assignment Using material from the reading, answer the following questions. How did people in Athens obtain the right to participate in public life and make decisions affecting the community? Who held public office?

Read More
908 Words | 4 Pages

This shift was not in the form of a sudden revolution, and rather grew as a gradual switch from a monarchy previously under the Etruscans. The republic stood for liberty and extended citizenship of the people. In the Roman republic, the people chose officials to represent their interests. Dominating the government was a senate that was primarily made up of the wealthy, landholding class, known as patricians. This outraged the lower class plebeians, who later gained power and elected their own officials.

Read More
741 Words | 3 Pages

Who held public office? What rules governed the selection of public office holders? In Sparta, native Spartan boys who were healthy by birth survived and became soldiers (Brand, n.d.). The Periokoi who were in Laconia and were dominated by Sparta by 750 BCE were not Spartan citizens nor slaves, but they were inferior to Spartans (Brand, n.d.).

Read More
498 Words | 2 Pages

Like most of the things about Greece’s geography, this did the opposite of make life simpler for the Greeks. Because of the mountains, the Greeks could not move around easily on land. As said in Document 5, this caused the polis, or city-states, to develop as separate communities with their own governments. The city-states were practically their own countries, and rather than living in harmony, as they might’ve if they didn’t feel so detached from each other, they were distrustful of each other. Several, like Sparta and Athens, who started the Peloponnesian Wars, were actively malicious toward one

Read More
1227 Words | 5 Pages

The latter of which was willing to rely on the structures of government to express popular will and opinion in order to lead the nation in a virtuous

Read More
594 Words | 3 Pages

One of these major differences was their political systems. Though both classical Persia and Greece were comprised of a number of divided regions, their government sought to control these regions in different ways. While Persian rulers attempted to unify these regions through infrastructure, Greece’s mountainous landscape contributed to the empire’s overall lack of connectedness. Greek city-states (or polis’) varied in terms of the way in which they were governed: some were monarchies, while others were oligarchies. Other polis’ were ruled by tyrants.

Read More
394 Words | 2 Pages

The geography of Greece influenced the development of ancient Greek government and politics. When describing ancient Greece, “mountainous land” is the phrase one would use because Greece is made up of many mountains. Because of the mountains, it was difficult to commute from place to place. As a result of that, instead of Greece being ruled by one government, it formed many different poleis, which each had their own government Polis is the Greek word for independent city-states. Greeks had a strong connection with their polis, and they strongly identified with them.

Read More
1224 Words | 5 Pages

Ancient Athens used a series of magistracies both civil and military to control the populace and provide citizens of nobility more notable rank. The decisions in Athens must go through a council of representatives called the Proedrol which was selected through the nine tribes of the governing bodies in each region of the city. This is nearly identical to the Brunis praising of the representative system of the standard bearers and the good men for decision making. The majority of the political systems which he glaringly orates are updated versions of the classical age structure of Athenian

Read More
1298 Words | 6 Pages

“The Athens’ political affairs were open to all citizens. Every citizen had the right and obligation to take part in state affairs and voice their opinions.” The changes that Athens put in place were so important that they impact us even until this day.

Read More
967 Words | 4 Pages

In the expected way, government in the ancient Greek world used diverse forms and, across dissimilar city-states and over many centuries, political power could rest in the hands of a single individual: for example, monarchies, tyrants, the oligarchies and

Read More
903 Words | 4 Pages

Introduction Monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy were all forms of government found at different times and in different city-states in Ancient Greece. Elements of more than one of these forms also co-existed, however, and the modern connotations of labels such as these are not necessarily the same as those that prevailed in Ancient Greece. In this paper I firstly describe these various forms of government and provide examples of their use in Ancient Greece. I then compare and contrast the models.

Read More
1255 Words | 6 Pages

in the more advanced areas of Greece, economically and socially speaking” (“Greek Administration”, 1988). The polis was a way of the Greeks finding a way to organize themselves into a society, becoming more civilized. According to Greek Administration, “In its fundamental essence it was never conceived as an extent of territory, although its boundaries could be drawn on a map, but rather as a group of citizens feeling themselves bound together under the rule of law” (“Greek Administration, 1988). In terms that are more familiar to the way we teach history today in our society, the polis is what we would call a city-state, each individual polis being its own city-state, acting almost like a small country. According to Nardo, “Although all Greeks, the residents of the various poleis developed differing local governments and customs as well as different forms of currency” (Nardo, 2007).

Read More
893 Words | 4 Pages

History 1421 Week One Written Assignment University of the people Abstract This week, as a prompt for our written assignment we were given five questions relating to the text provided as week one’s reading material, “Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship” by Dr. Peter J. Brand; how did people in Athens and Sparta obtain the right to participate in public life and make decisions affecting the community, who held public office, what rules governed the selection of public office holders, how were the two city-states similar in their governmental structures, and how did they differ.

Read More

More about Greek Polis Research Paper

Related Topics

Open Document