Growth of the City-States

Greece is a country of numerous small valleys. As cities grew up, each became a city-state, a pocket of population surrounded by a limited area of farmland confined by a wall of mountains. Among the early city-states were Athens, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and Thebes.

At first a city-state was ruled by a king, assisted by a council. By the end of the Dark Age, monarchy had given way in most places to group rule by the aristocracy. Sometimes one man would seize power and rule alone. He would be known as a tyrant , meaning dictator. Some tyrants were excellent rulers, beloved by their people.

The stony soil of Greece and Asia Minor could not long support a growing population. In the eighth century B.C., the Greeks began establishing colonies in unsettled areas. Each colony was sponsored by a city-state, but was permitted to govern itself.

Greek colonies were founded in Macedonia and Thrace along the northern shore of the Aegean, around the Sea of Marmara, and along the southern shore of the Black Sea; on the African coast in Libya; in Sicily and Italy as far north as the Bay of Naples; and on Sardinia, Corsica, and the coasts of France and Spain. Istanbul (called Byzantium by the Greeks), Benghazi (Berenice), Naples (Neapolis), and Marseille (Massalia) began as Greek colonies. The economy at home was so strengthened by the colonies that soon Greek cities were doing a brisk trade with Egypt, Phoenicia, Lydia, and Mesopotamia, as well as with Italians, Etruscans, Gauls, and Iberians.

In Asia Minor, Ionia (the region in which the Ionians had settled) was especially well located for commerce. Not only did the Ionian city-states prosper, but through their close contact with their neighbors they introduced into Greek life cultural developments from neighboring countries. These included writing, from Phoenicia; coinage, from Lydia; a system of weights and measures, from Babylonia; and improved methods of metalworking and weaving, and knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, from Egypt.

Western philosophy began in Ionia with Thales, a scholar born in the mid-seventh century B.C. Important advances in mathematics and astronomy were made by Ionian philosophers. Art, sculpture, and literature flourished. In the middle of the sixth century Ionia was conquered by Croesus, king of Lydia.

Sparta, in the Peloponnesus, was the main city of Laconia, where the native population had been reduced to slavery by the Dorian conquest. The Spartans extended their rule over neighboring Messenia. To keep their subject peoples under control, Spartan men spent most of their lives as soldiers. Sparta contributed little to Greek artistic and intellectual development, but it became the largest and strongest of the city-states.

Athens, the principal city of the district of Attica, developed slowly. About 594 B.C. the soldier-poet Solon was given the powers of a tyrant. He reformed the laws, increased the rights of the people, and established an economy based on industry and commerce. Social reforms were continued under the tyrant Pisistratus. With Ionian culture as inspiration, drama, poetry, and art began to flourish. Trade made Athens prosperous. A system of democratic government was established under Cleisthenes about 507 B.C. Athens became the leading city of Greece in political, intellectual, and artistic development.