{"id":80756,"date":"2026-03-24T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=80756"},"modified":"2026-03-23T10:34:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T14:34:57","slug":"qotd-citizens-of-a-polis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/03\/24\/qotd-citizens-of-a-polis\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Citizens of a polis<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A polis<\/em><\/a> is most importantly made up of the citizens, the politai<\/em> (singular polites<\/em> (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2), plural politai<\/em> (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9)); indeed, Aristotle says this too in his Politics<\/em> (Arist. Pol<\/em>. 1274b): “for the state [polis<\/em>] is an assembly of citizens [politai<\/em>].” Now we are used to the idea that most<\/em> people in a country are citizens of it, but the idea of the politai<\/em> is much narrower. In its fundamental meaning a polites<\/em> is a person engaged in the running of the polis<\/em>; it is an idea defined by political participation. The politai<\/em> were adult, citizen men; women, children, the enslaved and free non-citizens were all excluded from this group. A bit of demographic math might suggest that a modest polis<\/em> with 2000 inhabitants might thus have just 300-400 politai<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not everyone born in a polis<\/em> was a member of the politai<\/em><\/strong>. Women could be of citizen status<\/em> (and thus able to bear citizen children in poleis<\/em> where that was required), but they could not be citizens at all. Being the male child of citizen parents was generally the core requirement of citizenship and in a democratic polis<\/em> that was generally enough, but oligarchic poleis<\/em> typically imposed wealth qualifications for political participation so not everyone born to citizens might themselves be a polites<\/em> if they ended up too poor to meet the requirements. The terms astos<\/em> and aste<\/em> (\u1f00\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 and \u1f00\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae), “townsman” and “townswoman” respectively, might be used to make this distinction between the politai<\/em> and people who were “merely” natives of the polis<\/em> but barred for whatever reason from political participation. These distinctions become a lot more meaningful when you realize the point Aristotle is making defining the polis<\/em> this way: if the polis<\/em> is a community of politai<\/em> then the residents of a polis<\/em> (the physical space) who are not citizens are not members of the polis<\/em><\/strong> (not merely, we might imagine, non-participatory members).<\/p>\n

Now the politai<\/em> themselves also existed in subdivisions. We’ve mentioned division into demes<\/em> or neighborhoods; while notionally geographic, demes<\/em> could become hereditary (and indeed did become so in Athens). In Sparta and some poleis<\/em> on Crete, citizens were divided into mess groups (syssitia<\/em> or andreia<\/em>). But by far the most common and important such division was into “tribes” or phylai<\/em> (\u03c6\u03c5\u03bb\u03b1\u03af, sing. \u03c6\u03c5\u03bb\u03ae), inherited kinship groups that often formed the largest subdivision of the politai<\/em> of a polis<\/em>, with even very small poleis<\/em> having attested divisions into phylai<\/em> in some cases (e.g. Delos as noted by M.H. Hansen in “Civic Subdivisions” in the Inventory<\/em>). The politai<\/em> might also be subdivided by other groupings like phratria<\/em> (brotherhoods) and indeed a polis<\/em> might have multiple such groupings, either neatly nested (as in Athens’ demes<\/em> sorted into thirty trittyes<\/em> sorted into ten phylai<\/em> to make up the citizen body) or they might confusingly cross-cut each other.<\/p>\n

There’s another key distinction between the politai<\/em> \u2013 or at least men who might be politai<\/em> \u2013 which isn’t a legal distinction but nevertheless matters for understanding how the Greeks imagined civic governance: the distinction between the few (hoi oligoi<\/em>) and the many (hoi polloi<\/em>). The few were the economic elite of the politai<\/em> \u2013 the wealthy landowners \u2013 and the dominant group in oligarchies. A few terms might signify this group: “the few” (\u03bf\u1f31 \u1f40\u03bb\u03af\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9 \u2013 hoi oligoi<\/em>) or “the best” (\u03bf\u1f31 \u1f04\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9 \u2013 hoi aristoi<\/em>), or “the rich” (\u03bf\u1f31 \u03c0\u03bb\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9 \u2013 hoi plousioi<\/em>) and can also be part of the meaning of the appellation “beautiful and good” (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2 \u03ba\u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2 = \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2 \u2013 kalos kagathos<\/em>) which translates more idiomatically to something like “gentleman” with an implication of both good conduct (especially in war) and high status. At its broadest reach, the few might consist of those politai<\/em> with enough wealth to serve as hoplites<\/em>, though it seems in most cases this group is understood much more narrowly and might be defined by heredity in addition to wealth in some cases.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the few were, of course, the many. Once again a few terms might signify this group: “the many” (\u03bf\u1f31 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03af \u2013 hoi polloi<\/em> or \u03bf\u1f31 \u03c0\u03bb\u1fc6\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u2013 hoi plethos<\/em>) or “the poor” (\u03bf\u1f31 \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bf\u1fd6 \u2013 hoi aporoi<\/em>) or the people (\u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 \u2013 demos<\/em>), the last of which gives us the word democracy<\/em> \u2013 rule by the demos<\/em>. At its narrowest extent, these are all of the people too poor to serve as hoplites<\/em> but who would otherwise be politai<\/em>; in fact in a democracy they are politai<\/em>, but in closed oligarchies they may not be. More broadly the concept of the demos<\/em> can encompass all of the politai<\/em>, both wealthy and poor, especially in a democratic context. Nevertheless the Greeks often understand these two groups as oppositional and non-overlapping: the politai<\/em> composed of “the few”, with money and high status lineages and “the many”, without that, but with far greater raw numbers.<\/p>\n

As we’ll see, it is that distinction \u2013 between “the few” and “the many” which the Greeks used to define the different forms of polis<\/em> government, what they called a politeia<\/em> (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03b1), which we might translate as “constitution” with the caveat that these are not written constitutions. And that’s where we’ll go next: now that we have our subdivisions, we’ll discuss next week the different ways they are organized and governed.<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How to Polis<\/em>, 101: Component Parts”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2023-03-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A polis is most importantly made up of the citizens, the politai (singular polites (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2), plural politai (\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9)); indeed, Aristotle says this too in his Politics (Arist. Pol. 1274b): “for the state [polis] is an assembly of citizens [politai].” Now we are used to the idea that most people in a country are citizens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,41],"tags":[1527,1457,766,1051,315],"class_list":["post-80756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-quotations","tag-ancientgreece","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-democracy","tag-oligarchy","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-l0w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101494,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756\/revisions\/101494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}