The Poli

Ancient Greece was not a unified nation, but a collection of city-states known as poli.    A Greek polis consisted of a small walled area and the surrounding farmland.  Some poli consisted of several small villages.  Poli is the plural of polis, a word often translated as city, but there was one very important difference between an ancient Greek polis and a modern city.   

The ancient Greeks saw themselves as citizens of their poli no matter where they lived. Today we think of the people who live in a place as citizens, but to the ancient Greeks the people were as much a part of the poli as the land or the buildings.  The word we use today for making decisions as a group is politics.  Politics is derived from an ancient Greek word term that refers to the Greek polis.

The Greek poli developed independently of one another because they were isolated by rugged mountains or were located on small islands, but the people of the poli spoke similar languages and worshipped many of the same gods.  The poli were also small and often had to depend on one another to survive.  The city-states often developed alliances, called leagues, for protection against other cities and foreign invaders.  Each polis contributed soldiers and ships to form a common army and navy.

The Greek poli met every four years at a great athletic contest to honor the god Zeus.  A period of four years in ancient Greece was known as an Olympiad, so the contests were known as the Olympics.  During the Olympic games, poli that were at war would suspend hostilities until the contests ended.  We don’t know when the ancient Greeks began told hold Olympic games, because the contests are older than any Greek writing.  Today the spirit of the ancient Greeks live on as most of the nations of the world participate in Olympic games every four years. 

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