The Polis vs Modern American Democracy Essay Example
ThisismyName
PS 201 – 03
10/19/2012
The Polis and the “Just City” vs. Modern American Democracy
It is common to refer to the Greek city-state as the Greek polis and in order to understand ancient Greece one must have an understanding of what the polis was to the Greeks. First, let’s consider the physical characteristics and dimensions of the Greek polis. The single most striking feature of a Greek polis is its small size. It can be easy to overlook this fact because the classical sense of the word polis is dominated by the thought of Athens, which was very atypical in its population size, over 300,000 people. It was thought that the ideal polis should only be about 5,000 households, and that each citizen should know each other by sight. Politics, a word that is derived from the Greek word polis, was of a face-to-face variety in these small communities.
Although there was variation in details from polis to polis, there were some standard physical features of the polis which one could expect to find. The polis had a place of citizen assembly. These public places were most often located on a defendable high ground of the community, which served as a place of refuge in time of attack. The polis would typically have a marketplace, which was the center of communal life. Here, the adult male citizen lived most of his life, engaging in informal public conversations, informing himself on matters of the state. The polis also had a religious center for public worship; most every polis had its temple to the protecting god of the political community. And all poleis shared the same political characteristics of citizen participation in public life. There was no desire to retreat from the world of public affairs; in men’s minds, the private life did not yet exist. In the polis, the individual was interested in not only his affairs, but also the affairs of the state. Even those who were mostly occupied by their businesses were well informed on general politics.
PS 201 – 03
10/19/2012
The Polis and the “Just City” vs. Modern American Democracy
It is common to refer to the Greek city-state as the Greek polis and in order to understand ancient Greece one must have an understanding of what the polis was to the Greeks. First, let’s consider the physical characteristics and dimensions of the Greek polis. The single most striking feature of a Greek polis is its small size. It can be easy to overlook this fact because the classical sense of the word polis is dominated by the thought of Athens, which was very atypical in its population size, over 300,000 people. It was thought that the ideal polis should only be about 5,000 households, and that each citizen should know each other by sight. Politics, a word that is derived from the Greek word polis, was of a face-to-face variety in these small communities.
Although there was variation in details from polis to polis, there were some standard physical features of the polis which one could expect to find. The polis had a place of citizen assembly. These public places were most often located on a defendable high ground of the community, which served as a place of refuge in time of attack. The polis would typically have a marketplace, which was the center of communal life. Here, the adult male citizen lived most of his life, engaging in informal public conversations, informing himself on matters of the state. The polis also had a religious center for public worship; most every polis had its temple to the protecting god of the political community. And all poleis shared the same political characteristics of citizen participation in public life. There was no desire to retreat from the world of public affairs; in men’s minds, the private life did not yet exist. In the polis, the individual was interested in not only his affairs, but also the affairs of the state. Even those who were mostly occupied by their businesses were well informed on general politics.