The polis
The citizen city-state, and the idea that a community is its people rather than its ruler.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 300 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
The Greek polis emerges from the eighth century BCE as a small self-governing community with an assembly, magistrates, laws and a defined citizen body. It is not democratic by default — most were oligarchies or tyrannies — but it establishes that political authority derives from the citizens collectively rather than from a king or temple. Aristotle's definition of a human being as a creature of the polis assumes this had always been obvious. It had not.