Greek Polis on the Scale of Potestary Formations: State, ‘Proto-State’, ‘Post-State’?
Journal: Social Evolution & History. Volume 24, Number 2 / September 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/seh/2025.02.15
Igor E. Surikov
Institute of World History Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
First of all, it should be noted that any debate on State and statehood in contemporary scholarship is to some extent irrelevant due to the serious terminological difference between classical and modern political vocabulary. In most modern European languages, the term under discussion (State, Staat, État etc.) is derived from the Latin word status. A special case is the Russian language, where the term for the State – государство (gosudarstvo) – is generated directly from государь (gosudar’) ‘sovereign’, that is, the monarchical ideology is immanent.
Quite another situation is there in classical languages, be it Latin with its res publica (applied mainly to the Roman State properly) and civitas or Greek with its πόλις and πολιτεία. The latter word shows especially close connection with the notion of citizenship. Πολιτεία is both statehood (‘constitution’) and citizen rights. The above-mentioned circumstances should be taken into account in the fullest degree.
Was polis a (kind of) State? Scholars who deny that (they are very rarely ancient historians, but very often political scientists) point out to the virtually complete absence of bureaucracy in Greek poleis, which really makes this structure extremely different from ‘normal’ States. Sometimes, the term ‘proto-State’ is applied to polis; so the latter is equated, say, with chiefdoms in late tribal societies. The ‘proto-’ prefix clearly marks something imperfect and incomplete compared to traditional bureaucratic states.
But as a matter of fact, the situation is rather contrary. First, polis was a full-fledged State, which possessed all the attributes of statehood, such as political sovereignty and independence (I mean normal poleis; there were dependent ones, of course, but they existed, and were considered, deviations), a full set of state institutions, an army, finances, laws, etc. However, second, polis is truly unique, looking radically different from most other states, both ancient and modern.
It may be said that the polis is not a ‘backward’ but rather a more perfect kind of human community than traditional states. It better favoured the development of both individuals and the collective body; it promoted true rather than fake equality among citizens, and true rather than fake political participation. All other political forms seem to be some degradation as compared to the polis, which provided a great degree of emancipation of creative and competitive spirit, as well as cultural flourishing.
It is characteristic that, as Ivan A. Ladynin noticed (Ladynin 2024), the return to traditional (monarchical and bureaucratic) forms of state in the Greek world took place in the Hellenistic period, that is, in the times of decline.
May it be that the polis is (if not a State) not a ‘proto-State’ but rather a ‘post-State’, a kind of a τέλος for human beings (using Aristotelian terminology)? The notion of ‘post-State’ implies something that exists, by definition, ‘after the State’; ironically, poleis originated in Greece exactly after ‘normal’ bureaucratic states (the Mycenaean kingdoms), on and from their ruins.
The basic principle of the polis was egalitarianism, which, as is often ascertained, was typical not only for democratic poleis but also for oligarchic ones (in the latter, all full-right citizens were also equal to each other). Only tyrannies lacked this principle, but the tyrannical form was considered deeply alien to the polis order.
Lot is a manifest symbol of the polis. The phenomenon of lot-drawing in Greek political (and not only political, see below) life has been neglected in historiography for a long time but quite recently (and almost simultaneously) two monographs on the subject have been published (Malkin and Blok 2024; Gebler 2024), which clearly indicates increasing interest in this topic. Of these books, the latter provides a thorough analysis of specific practices, but of more importance is the former, which was written by prominent experts in the fields of Greek colonization and Athenian civic institutions, respectively.
Malkin and Blok insist that the lot was the real core of the Greek polis. When a polis was founded (e.g., a colony), the first thing to do was to divide its chora (by lot!) into land plots for citizens. Each such plot was the main criterion for civic status (only citizens had the right to possess it) and was called a κλήρος; the Greek word has the same root as the verb κληρόω ‘to cast lots’. So the very process of the polis emergence was closely connected to law-making.
Now, the principle of lot clearly denies any hierarchy. Dmitri Bon-darenko argues that there do not exist and cannot be non-hierarchical, completely egalitarian societies (Bondarenko 2024: 19). We can assume this to be true. However, if any society in the world history approached closest to the ideal of egalitarianism and absence of hierarchies, it was the Greek polis-based society. I should emphasize that I am specifically talking about hierarchy, as I would like to avoid using that term coined by Professor Bondarenko's team, ‘homoarchy’, especially since it is formed not quite correctly (‘homarchy’ would be better).
It is necessary to emphasize that I mean only the Greek polis. The Roman civitas, although it is a very similar structure in many ways, differs greatly in this respect. It was hierarchical, as is well-known. The career of a Roman politician was his cursus honorum; it may be compared to a staircase in which every step has an absolutely definite place. In the democratic Greek polis, there is nothing like this. If an ex-consul in Rome would never pretend to say, quaestorship, there were cases in Athens when an ex-strategos (a citizen who had held generalship, the highest magistracy) later took a lower position. But later in the Roman period even Greek cities became hierarchical (Zoumbaki 2024: 311).
The idea of lot implies that all citizens are absolutely equal in political respect and the place of each person in public life is determined solely by chance (or, rather, by the gods' will, which the Greeks themselves believed the lot was). Having noted this, let us return to the question of the State terminology. Earlier, it was said that modern European languages derive their terms for the State from status. But the notion of status, as such, is inseparably connected with the hierarchical nature of the society in question. A person's status is his place in a relevant hierarchy. The Greeks, not having a political hierarchy, did not recognize statuses. In this sense, their polis was not a State, as it did not have a system of statuses. However, as we have seen, neither was it something like a ‘proto-State’ or a chiefdom (by the way, chiefdoms do have hierarchies). The polis had all the attributes of a normal state and performed all functions of a normal state. However, it was an anti-hierar-chical (and therefore anti-bureaucratic) State, a state not based on statuses. Instead, it was based on equality. In such a State all are ἴσοι, and the extent of words with the ἴσ- root in the Greek political language is very impressive: ἰσονομία (‘equality of rights’, the earliest term for democracy), ἰσηγορία (‘equality in speech’), ἰσοπολιτεία (‘equality in citizenship’), and so on. Is not this model of statehood (a ‘post-State’), based on ἰσότης without privileges for anyone, preferable to the traditional model?
REFERENCES
Bondarenko, D. M. 2024. Principles and Forms of Organization of Societies as Systems of Institutions (The ‘Conceptual Frame’ of This Book). In Bondarenko, D. M., Aleksandrov, G. V. (eds.). Principles of Sociocultural Organization: Historical Contexts of Interaction (pp. 7–47). Moscow: LRC Publishing House. Original in Russian (Бондаренко, Д. М. Принципы и формы организации обществ как систем институтов (‘концептуальная рамка’ этой книги) // Принципы и формы социокультурной организации: исторические контексты взаимодействия / отв. ред.: Бондаренко, Д. М., Александров, Г. В. М.: Издательский дом ЯСК).
Gebler, A. 2024. Die Verwendung und Bedeutung von Losverfahren in Athen und im griechischen Raum von 7. bis 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Ladynin, I. A. 2024. The Ancient Greek Polis: From Homoarchy to Heterarchy and Back Again. In Bondarenko, D. M., Aleksandrov, G. V. (eds.). Principles of Sociocultural Organization: Historical Contexts of Interaction (pp. 51–79). Moscow: LRC Publishing House. Original in Russian (Ладынин, И. А. Древнегреческий полис: от гомоархии к гетерархии и обратно // Принципы и формы социокультурной организации: исторические контексты взаимодействия / отв. ред.: Бондаренко, Д. М., Александров, Г.В. М.: Издательский дом ЯСК).
Malkin, I., Blok, J. 2024. Drawing Lots: From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zoumbaki, S. 2024. Civic Hierarchies. In Hallmannsecker, M., Heller, A. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek Cities in the Roman Empire (pp. 311–326). Oxford: Oxford University Press.