Introduction

During the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the Greeks inhabited more than a thousand poleis scattered across the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. The Greek term “polis” (plural, poleis) is often translated as “city-state,” and the translation is a good one: Poleis were states in that each of them was a sovereign political unit, independent of the others; and they were city -states in that they typically comprised a densely populated urban core along with its surrounding territory. By the standards of modern polities, poleis tended to be very small: Most had between 1,000 and 20,000 inhabitants and occupied between 10 and 100 square miles. Collectively, however, they housed a population of between 7 and 10 million. And, because the vast majority of poleis were situated on or near the coast, they occupied a substantial portion of the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastline.