For a well-governed city is the greatest bastion; everything is in it, and as long as it is preserved, everything is whole, but he dies, [with him] and everything perishes.
Polis ( dr. Greek πόλις , πολιτεία ; lat. Civitas ) is the initial public form of the state, consisting of several rural settlements, united around one urban center, designated in Greek by the word “policy” (Greek - “city”, in lat. - “civitas”, “civic community”), a special form of organization of society - a political organization (quite often the state ) [2] . Both words mean essentially the same thing: a special form of government is a city-state in which all citizens have certain rights and obligations [3] .
The policy as a social form of the ancient urban civil community most fully corresponded to the level of development of the ancient society. The economic basis of the policy was the antique two-pronged form of ownership: on the one hand, this is the property of the civil community over the entire territory and wealth of the policy, and on the other, the individual property of each citizen. Every adult citizen with citizenship rights and owning a private household: “oikos” (home) participated in the civil life of the policy [4] .
History
The territory of the policy usually included the actual urban center (city) and the choir ( suburb ) - the adjacent agricultural district. The policy was composed of full citizens - members of the community - each of whom had the right to land ownership and political rights. A part of the population did not belong to the policy and did not have the rights of citizens : meteki , perieki , freedmen , slaves . The political system in the policies was different: oligarchy , democracy , monarchy (the latter was typical of policies during the archaic period), etc.
Both large and small Greek policies minted their own coin [5] .
Sometimes the policy is considered as one of the types of " city-state ". At its core, the policy is an agricultural community, therefore the most important features of the policy include the supreme ownership of the community over the land plots of citizens. The policy is not only a political and economic, but also a religious organization , in which the spiritual and secular authorities coincided, and the polis priesthood was part of the system of policy magistrates.
Having carefully analyzed the problem of the policy, the central problem of Greek history, K. Marx and F. Engels see it as a special socio-economic organism based on the ancient form of ownership, and at the same time the community of landowners, who at the same time are full citizens and warriors. The antique form of ownership is the coexistence of private property of citizens and communal (state) property belonging to the entire collective of citizens [6] .
The city-states of Mycenaean Greece were not classical policies. The policy device in Greece takes shape in the Archaic period [7] . The intensive growth of policies, called the urban revolution, began in the middle of the VIII century BC. e. As Professor Arseny Chanyshev writes: “On the basis of the separation of craft from agriculture, the ancient policy flourishes - a city-state in which the rural areas included in the policy are economically and politically subordinate to the city” [8] . An important stage in the history of the formation of many ancient Greek policies was Sinoikism - the unification of several primary communities - the fem (the Roman analogue of the theme - the tribe ) - in a common urban center. Synoykism contributed to the formation of the polis government.
The history of a number of ancient Greek states and the history of Rome at a certain stage of its development is the history of individual policies [2] . During the period of Roman rule, policies spread throughout the empire, being used as a convenient form of local government. In a number of regions (for example, in Roman Egypt), policies were only a form of territorial administration, and their citizens did not have Roman citizenship. In the actual Roman territories there was a system of municipalities similar to the polis.
According to Professor Mikhail Suzyumov , the fact that the crisis of ancient civilization affected primarily the condition of the city is justified by the fact that the collapse of the slave system affected, first of all, those institutions that were most actively associated with it [9] .
Notes
- ↑ Anthology of world political thought
- ↑ 1 2 Antiquity // Soviet Historical Encyclopedia : in 16 vol. / Ed. E. M. Zhukova . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1961-1976.
- ↑ D. Yu. n V.A. Tomsinov. General history of state and law . - M: ICD "Mirror-M", 2011. - T. 1. - S. 97-115. - 640 s. - ISBN 978-5-94373-194-5 .
- ↑ Antique policy as a unique phenomenon . http://www.bibliotekar.ru/ . Date of treatment June 23, 2019.
- ↑ Medvedev A.P. Was the Greek policy a state?
- ↑ The study of the history of Ancient Greece in the XIX - early XX century
- ↑ Bonnard. A .: Greek civilization. Foreword
- ↑ Chanyshev A.N. Lecture Course on Ancient Philosophy. Theme 23
- ↑ Polyakovskaya M. A. Scientist and time: on the 100th anniversary of the birth of M. Ya. Suzyumov (Russian) // Byzantine Temporary. - 1993 .-- T. Vol. 54 (79) . - S. 170-182 .
Links
- Frolov E. D. Birth of the Greek policy. - L .: publishing house of St. Petersburg. University, 2004.