The Greek Conception of Polis as a City with a Hinterland

As shown above, a polis in the sense of ‘city’ was thought of as the centre of a polis in the sense ‘state’, and in most poleis in the sense of ‘state’ there was only one city called polis. It had a hinterland called chora or ge, and a polis by the sea had a harbour, called limen or epineion. Linked to the harbour there was often an emporion, a distinct market for the long-distance trade of the city-state.3 Large cities situated inland could have a harbour-town, often treated as part of the city itself, and sometimes connected to the city by walls.5 In other cases the harbour-town had succient self-government to count as a dependent polis. Almost all poleis had a city wall that separated the city from its hinterland. Larger poleis had villages within their hinterland. If the citizen body was subdivided into territorially based groups, many of those districts would have had a village as their central place; but in other cases the villages were just settlements with no political status.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Geography · Harbour · Human settlement · Political science · Politics · Situated · State (computer science) · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law