sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

John Ma: Polis

For a merciful price of 33 US dollars, one can buy a book of more than seven hundred densely printed-out pages (with illustrations and maps) about the Greek polis, traditionally rendered as "city-state," from its inception in the Bronze Age to beyond 400 CE. As should be expected, Ma's project took a long time. He summed up some of its results in a lecture in April 2011. [1]

Ma has since then scaled down his project's chronological limits, ending it at the turn of the fifth century, which is the end of antiquity not only for Byzantinists (G. Dagron: Naissance d'une capitale, 1974; S. Destephen. In: DOP 73, 2019), but also for Fergus Millar, the dedicatee of Ma's book: F. Millar: A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II, 408-450, 2006. Yet, Ma does not seem to say anywhere that the polis disappeared at that time.

The nature of the book as a grand synthesis determines its organization and content. Part I progresses from specific details to general, and generalizing, reflections. Part II (1100-700 BCE) covers the Bronze, Iron, Dark, and Archaic Ages (although Ma questions the validity of this division), examining the advances which, he believes, led to the rise of the polis. Parts III (675-450 BCE), IV (480-180 BCE), and V (180 BCE-400 CE) offer a chronological overview of the development and decline of the polis, with individual chapters displaying a thematic focus. Of the remaining two parts, Part VI defies chronological limits to theorize the polis in social, cultural, and political terms, and Part VII crosses geographical boundaries to fit the polis into a global contemporary history of city-states.

The book understandably has no conclusion, and the seven-page-long index is not surprising. The "back matter" includes 64 pages of notes and 73 pages of bibliography, further indicating that this is not a polemic work but the "deep history of the polis" (488) or "a biography" of the polis as a political and social form (541). To that aim, the book offers a coherent personal picture of the history of the ancient Greek polis through general observations based on an extensive assemblage of regionally and topically diverse evidence and many exciting terms, such as "clustervilles," "originalism," "distanciation," "instrumentalization," and "polis-hood."

In Part II, Ma links the beginning of the polis with (the disappearance of) the Palatial civilization, although acknowledging their antithetical character in historiography (25-29), speculating about the connection between "the social complexity alongside the ownership and power structures" of the "palatial systems" and "a large element of sub-elite individuals" (29-37). He also speaks of "Homeric polis" because "the world of the Homeric epics is about the city" (59-61). Many will doubt seeing Homeric city (a shaky idea in itself) as a (proto-)polis.

Part III studies the "institutionalization" of polis, which ended by the late seventh century, in the sense of the "presence of regular institutions" that assumed the form of city laws and the division into tribes as non-gentilician structures (80-85), so that "their invention represents as much of a rupture as the emergence of political institutions" (85). These assertions pertain to much bigger topics, such as the reason for the emergence of written laws, which co-existed with oral regulations long past the seventh century; whether the emergence of written laws resulted from "structuration" or "power relations" within the community, as Ma believes, or its growing interaction with outsiders; and whether the transition from gentilician to territorial tribes - which was typical for both ancient Greece and Rome - was a political development, which is relevant to a popular but doubtful opinion that tribal membership offered political rights. Part III also asserts that archaic warfare was conducted not for resources but as "part of a series of processes of affirmation and competition by emerging states, and generally of structuration" (92), specifically referencing Sparta. The First and Second Messenian wars certainly affected the structuration of the polis of Sparta, giving it its traditional political, social, and legal form. Still, one might reasonably question whether the Spartans had such considerations in mind when they seized the land of the Messenians whom they turned into helots.

Part IV, which focuses on the political history of the polis in 480-180 BCE with no specific definitions for "polis," "city," "polity," "politeia," and "political rights," abandons the traditional division into "classical" and "Hellenistic" periods in favor of a "Hundred Years War" (c. 464-362) and "a great convergence of polis forms, producing a developed form of polis centered around autonomy and democracy" in 362-180 (157). One wonders not only whether the period from the fourth to the second century was the time of autonomy and democracy (unless these words serve as legal terms defining the status of Greek cities), but whether the dividing line should be drawn in 362 - which, according to Ma himself, marked "the undecisive battle of Mantinea" (160) - or in "357, or 355" (as suggested by him a little below), or in connection with "Macedonian conquests" between c. 350 and 280, which became a "major historical watershed" (205). The word "Hellenistic" continues to be used (228, 265), just as the traditional view of the Greek poleis being influenced by interaction with monarchies that partitioned the Greek world late in the fourth century.

"Dependent cities" are used interchangeably with "dependent poleis," and sympoliteia is understood as a political union (208-211). Ma's discussion of democracy (189-193) avoids defining "demos" and "political rights," while a reference to "full citizens" (195) shows his adherence to the theory of "full" and "partial," or "potential," citizenship. An overview of democracy, oligarchy, and stasis precedes a chapter on polis identity, discussing civic subdivisions, "stateness," and communal activities (247-257).

Part V, which examines the polis' many interactions with Rome in 180 BCE-400 CE, refers to the "Indian summer of the polis" in 150-86 BCE (269), thus measuring the old age as five hundred years. The "Indian summer" meant Roman encouragement of local liberty, mainly due to "Roman neglect" and provincialization (268-270). Using "civic liberty" and "civic autonomy" interchangeably (also 328-333) and passing over the complexity of the cities' status, this Part focuses on trends in local civic life (271-275) and the "democratic intensification" combined with the rise of elitism based on benefactions (276-289) until the First Mithridatic war "assimilate[ed] almost all poleis to a subordinate status" (293), marking the end of Greek liberty (301-333) and Rome's impact in the form of colonization, new religious cults, and the "provincialization" of the poleis as constituents of imperial administration (318-325). Ma's conclusion that rising local elitism coexisted with the constitutionalism of the poleis (which does not surprise, since the two developments were different) leads him to see the social importance of popular assemblies as a political activity and as evidence for the survival of democracy (334-368).

Ma ends his historical survey of the polis by discussing other forms of urbanism: local cities, Roman veteran settlements, colonies, and refoundations (including Aelia Capitolina) (368), and poleis in the Roman Near East - with a special focus on the "Roman polis" of Palmyra (387) - which developed as part of the Roman provincialization policy, often had the status of colonies, and directly submitted to imperial administration (390-391).

Part VI sums up and expands Ma's views on poleis' origin, development, and eventual transformation into the Late Antique cities (403-408), examining them as society (409-438: politics, civic activity, popular participation), ideals (439-458: institutions, ideology, political philosophy, idealized perception), and interests (459-479: by their inhabitants, and by their ancient and modern interpreters). Part VI's two last chapters - "Bad polis" (480-500: violence, including "elite conflictuality," lack of individual rights, inequality, and tensions between elitism and "popular sovereignty") and "Worst polis" (501-538: exclusivity, injustice, control over women, including "citizen-status women," slaves, and foreigners, with a discussion of "citizenship" without discussing politeia) - well combine with the only chapter of Part VII ("polis of our wishes," 541-554) to provide Ma's negatives and positives of the poleis' existence and perceptions. This last chapter examines polis in its "world-historical context," traces the reception of the idea of the polis in modern times, and interprets its historiography in intellectual and social frameworks (543). Ma's propensity for historical parallels makes him search for the poleis' similarities with medieval European communes (545), and for the impact of the polis on modern history, although the laws of Minos, which the French revolutionaries tried to use for drafting the 1793 constitution (549), were not polis regulations.

Assembling an immense amount of ancient (and later) evidence and adducing many modern academic, political, and social theories, this book raises numerous important questions, and it will undoubtedly be of long-lasting interest to many people from different fields.

Note:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEvv1PvVTA0.