Politics and political institutions in Archaic and Classical Greek cities

Although the Greek city-states exhibited considerable institutional variety in the Archaic and Classical periods, this chapter introduces readers to some political commonalities among poleis. Most cities came to distinguish between citizens (politai ) and outsiders and to possess a basic tripartite structure of council-assembly-magistrates. If political stability (eunomia ) depended on the cooperation of elites in the Archaic period, the emergence of a single ruler or tyrant (tyrannos ) represented cooperative breakdown. In the Classical period, the opposition between a more mass-centered form of politics called dêmokratia or “the power of the [common] people” and oligarchia or “the rule of the [wealthy] few” led to frequent stasis or civil strife. While these were the dominant forms of constitution, the Greeks also continued to experiment with and think through single rule during this period, in addition to experimenting with federal leagues. A form of democracy predominated in the ensuing Hellenistic period.