A city-state is an independent, autonomous, separate town-centered state, also known as a "city-state". The city-state was the main concept in ancient Greek politics. From the Homeric Hymns.
Basic introduction Chinese name ：City-state Foreign name ：City-state Nature ：It is the main concept of the connotation of politics in ancient Greece Also translated ：City-state Meaning ：A state centered on a single town English name ：City-state Etymology, introduction, city-state domain, town square, amphitheater, stadium, religious worship, Etymology In the political discourse of ancient Greece, the term "politics" was used to refer to a state that was not a city-state, but rather to the city-state. In ancient Greek political discourse, the word "polis" is derived from "polis", which in Homer's Odyssey refers to a fortress or an acropolis. It is the opposite of "demos" (countryside). The hilltop acropolis of Athens, Akropolis, was often called simply Polis by the Athenians. The "city" around the fortress was called "asto" (asto). In later times, the acropolis, the city, and the countryside were collectively called a "polis", and the combination of the land, the people, and their political life gave it the meaning of a "state" or a "country", which evolved into a "city-state". The name "city-state" was given to it because of the combination of the land and its people and its political life, which evolved into the term "city-state", which is characterized by its autonomy and small size. Introduction A city-state is a region controlled by a city, usually with sovereignty. Historical city-states were usually part of larger cultural circles, such as the ancient Greek city-states (e.g., Athens, Sparta), the Phoenician city-states of Canaan (e.g., Tyre, Sidon), the Mayan city-states of Central America, the small states on the Silk Road (e.g., Samarkand, Bukhara), and the Italian city-states (e.g., Florence, Venice). The Chinese city-states of the Yellow River basin in East Asia. There are two important city-state periods in European history-the city-states of Ancient Greece and the Italian city-states of the Renaissance-from which the civilizations of present-day Europe originated. However, the city-states of these civilizations usually survived only for a short period of time because they did not have enough land or power to resist the foreign enemies around them. Moreover, these small regional organizations, which coexisted among loosely organized geographic and cultural individuals, became an obstacle to the establishment of a solid power by the great powers. Therefore, they must eventually be integrated into larger social systems and even nation-states. At present, only Singapore, Monaco and the Vatican fit the traditional definition of a city-state. However, Singapore still has a part of its territory that is not urbanized, and the metropolitan areas of the Vatican and Monaco are merely continuations of the surrounding cities of Rome and Bissaule. There are also city-state-like territories within some sovereign states, such as Berlin, Germany; Washington, D.C., United States; and Gibraltar, United Kingdom. City-state domain In the Greek city-state, the public ****domain or "city-state domain" was represented by the public ****space of life, which in turn was formed through the pattern of public ****buildings. At the same time, Greek city-states were usually formed around a central city, which was the primary focus of the city-state's public **** architecture. According to archaeologists based on modern concepts of the division of the city state's most important public **** building can be divided into three categories: First, religious public **** building such as temples, shrines, altars and public **** cemetery; Second, the city state's municipal buildings such as municipal plaza, council chamber, the Citizens' Assembly meeting place, the courtroom, the public **** cafeteria, etc.; Third, the city state's social and cultural activities, such as gymnasiums, stadiums, wrestling arenas, Amphitheater and so on. These public **** buildings are majestic and sturdy, and they have become the constant human landscape of the city-state. Until today, more than two thousand years later, many ancient Greek temples, amphitheaters and stadiums still stand on the ruins of the city-states, demonstrating to future generations, without words, the unique charm of the Greek culture, while at the same time solidifying the most striking features of the Greek city-states in the long term. Archaeological research has shown that the emergence of public **** architecture and the rise of the city-state are closely linked. The typical architectural remains of the pre-City-State era are not public buildings, but the royal palaces and castles of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. Even religious buildings were usually associated with royal palaces in the form of sacred chambers or shrines. Obviously, the royal palaces and the religious buildings attached to them were used primarily by members of the royal family and were not open to the public, and therefore were not public **** buildings in the strict sense of the word. In the "Dark Ages" following the destruction of the Mycenaean civilization, large-scale architecture of any kind is no longer archaeologically documented, although some magnificent palaces are described in the Homeric poems. And even in the Homeric accounts, religious rituals tended to be localized, rather than at a fixed sacred site. By the beginning of the Archaic period, with the rise of the Greek city-states, public **** buildings began to appear all over Greece. Archaeological data show that the emergence of basic political institutions of the city-state, such as civic assemblies and councils, was accompanied by the emergence of municipal public **** buildings, such as town squares, civic assembly halls, and city halls. The earliest temples appeared in the 8th century B.C., coinciding in time with the rise of the city-state. During the same period, cultural public **** buildings such as stadiums, gymnasiums, and wrestling arenas also appeared. Scholars believe that the emergence of public **** buildings is closely related to the rise of the city-state. While municipal buildings such as council halls and town halls were a direct result of the rise of the city-state, the construction of other public buildings such as temples and stadiums was also a sign of the rise of the city-state. This is because for a relatively small city-state, the construction of such huge buildings required ****same effort and collective decision-making by the city-state. Town Square The town square of a city-state is the center of its economic and political life. It is the largest bazaar, with many stores, where people regularly gather from all over the world to buy and sell. At the same time, it was also the place where municipal buildings were concentrated, and was the space for the city-state's public **** life and political life. In ancient Greek, the word "town square" (êgorê) originally meant "popular assembly", and was gradually used to indicate the town square, which itself contained the meaning of "place of meeting The word êgorê originally meant "popular assembly" and was gradually used to denote the town square, which itself meant "place of assembly. It was here that people exchanged information about the affairs of the city and state, and participated in municipal councils and civic assemblies. In the town square of Athens, there was a building called the "Eponymous Heroes Wall" (Eponymous Heroes), at the top of which were erected bronze statues of 10 Athenian heroes, representing the 10 tribes of Athens, and the body of the wall was used as a bulletin board. The wall was used as a bulletin board, where the affairs of the city such as the Citizen's Assembly were announced, and the drafts of the decrees were announced for discussion, and then voted on in the Citizen's Assembly. The decrees passed by the citizens' meetings were engraved on stone tablets and published in the square. At the end of the 5th century B.C., the city of Athens built the Temple of the Mother Goddess, called Metroon, on the town square, which was also the archive of the Athenian public ****, where all the city's laws, decrees, resolutions of the Citizens' Assemblies and of the Council of 500, as well as the accounts of revenues and expenditures, were stored for the citizens to consult. In Sparta, the center of public **** life was the training ground and the public **** canteen. Spartan citizens, whose primary duty is the defense of the city-state, spend most of their time on the training grounds for group physical or military training, and eat their meals in the communal mess halls rather than at home. All male citizens - including underage adolescents - eat in the public **** canteen. Because of Laikougou's legislation, citizens who do not participate in the ****meal system lose their citizenship. Also, the ****meal system existed in some of the city-states of Crete. Open-air theater An open-air theater was a place where theatrical performances were given and plays were watched. Theater appeared in Athens in the 6th century BC and quickly spread throughout the Greek world. By the classical era, the amphitheater had become one of the landmarks of the city-state. As a place to perform and watch theater, the amphitheater was a typical public **** space. In order for all citizens to be able to watch theater performances, it was generally large enough to hold thousands or even more than 10,000 people, with the Dionysus Amphitheater in Athens holding around 15,000 people. However, the amphitheater was not just a place to watch plays; it was also often used as a space for political activities. In Athens, civic assemblies were sometimes held in the Dionysus Theater. What's more, what seems to us to be a purely cultural activity, theater performance was tightly intertwined with the political life of the city-state. Every year at the opening of the Dionysus Festival, the city-state of Athens displayed the tributes paid by the allied states to all its citizens on the center stage of the Dionysus Theater, while the children of the citizens who had died in the wars came to the stage one by one to receive their pensions from the city-state. The festival became a stage for the demonstration of the power of the city-state and for the political education of the citizens. On the other hand, even the theater performances themselves had strong political connotations. Fundamentally, theater was a civic community activity, with actors and actresses and song teams made up of citizens, and often used to represent the citizens of the city-state collectively. The audience that watched the performances were the citizens of the city-state, not passive spectators, but active participants and judges. Above all, theatrical performances were organized and managed directly by groups of citizens. In Athens, officials chosen by lot from among the citizens determined the repertoire of plays to be staged at the annual theater festival and appointed wealthy Athenian citizens to serve as producers of the plays. Secondly, the theatrical performances were staged in the form of competitions and judged by the citizens. This was done by drawing lots from each tribe to select the judges, who then judged the winners. Moreover, the content of the performances was often closely related to the interests of the city-state and its citizenry. Aeschylus' The Persians depicts the Athenian victory over the Persians at the Battle of the Sea of Salamis, while Aristophanes' The Arcanians expresses the author's attitude towards the war between Athens and the Peloponnesian League. Through the form of theatrical performances, groups of citizens reflected y on the affairs of the city-state in order to correct at times thoughts and behaviors that went against the principles of city-state politics and to further clarify the ideals of city-state politics. Finally, theater performance cultivated the collective spirit of citizens. Citizens gathered in the same theater watched the same performance and experienced the same feelings. Such identical experiences made them realize that they were a united whole, a whole distinct from the theater and from other theaters, and a ****same feeling grew among them. Stadiums Stadiums were likewise important public **** living spaces in the city-state. As Burckhardt says, the spirit of competition was the most important spirit of the Greeks. And sports competition was one of the most important forms in which the Greeks expressed their competitive spirit. In addition to the four major pan-Greek games, the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games, the Isthmus Games, and the Nemean Games, each city-state had its own games, and those who won the championships at the games received great honors, as well as heavy prizes from the city-state. For example, at the biggest games in Athens, the games of the Pan-Athenaic Festival, the prize for the winner of the junior sprint was 50 vats of olive oil, worth about 600 drachmas. In addition to the prizes, the winners of the Panhellenic Games received other rewards from the city-state, such as monetary awards and statues in their honor. In the Greek conception, winning in athletics was in itself an excellent quality (êrete). As a result, the citizens of the city-state devoted a great deal of time and energy to athletic training. In Sparta, the main duty of the citizens was to engage in military training and physical exercise. In response to this need, every city-state had stadiums, gymnasiums, wrestling rings, and other sports arenas, which became the prototypes of modern sports arenas. The difference was that the stadiums of the Greek city-states were also the main socializing places for the citizens, and were important public ****ing spaces for the city-states. Citizens participated not only in sports training here, but also in the social life of the city-state. Even those who were not directly involved in sports training tended to spend their time in the gymnasium. But he was more than a mere spectator; more importantly, he was a participant in the public **** life of the city-state. Religious Worship In ancient Greece, religious worship differed from the later emergence of Christianity in that, although the Greeks all worshipped an Olympian family of gods, they had neither orthodox and abstract religious doctrines nor an all-encompassing bible, and religious worship appeared chiefly in the form of communal **** festivals. In ancient Greece, such religious festivals were numerous; according to incomplete statistics, there were more than 300 of them, and more than 400 gods were worshipped. In the city-state of Athens alone, there were 144 days a year for public **** religious festivals. During the festivals, great processions were often held to welcome the gods, followed by ceremonies of sacrifice at altars in sacred places. The sacrifices used are usually cows or sheep, and as many as hundreds of cows and sheep are slaughtered during the grand sacrifices. After the dedication ceremony, all the participants in the sacrifice held a sacrificial meal together, sharing equally the meat of the ox or sheep used in the sacrifice. Although the Greeks restricted the participants in different religious festivals, on the whole, the public *** religious festivals were open to all citizens of the city-state, and the sacrificial meal that followed the sacrificial rites was a gathering of the citizenry as a group. On the other hand, the form of religious worship in Ancient Greece also differed from that of Ancient West Asia, Egypt and other ancient civilizations. On the whole, there was no privileged priestly or monastic class, and religious worship was conducted not by priests with specialized knowledge, but directly by officials appointed by the city-state. In Athens, the officials responsible for sacrificing to the gods and presiding over the ceremonies were elected by lot from among the citizens for a term of one year only. In other words, it was the ordinary citizens who performed the rituals. Moreover, for the Greeks, communication with the gods generally did not require specialized knowledge. Thus, Herodotus was surprised to see in Persia that prayers were conducted by specialized sorcerers (magus). It is obvious that religious worship in Greece was not a privilege of the ruling class, but a public **** activity of the city-state, an activity with which all citizens **** in common. The religious public **** space was therefore essential to the life of the city-state. It is only by viewing religious cultic activities as the public **** life of all citizens **** the same that one can understand why the Greek city-states expended such enormous human and material resources on the construction of magnificent temples. Generally speaking, a city-state with a total population of only a few tens of thousands of people, both in terms of manpower and financial resources, to build huge temples is not an easy task, and often takes several generations of effort, but each city-state still seems to have spared no effort. In Acragas, in western Sicily, the ruins of at least six temples remain today, all built of local limestone. In Posidonia, in southern Italy, three huge marble temples still stand intact, as well as the ruins of one that has collapsed. These two small city-states played no significant role at all in Greek history, and little has been written about them. But anyone who has visited the magnificent temples and their remains on the sites of these two city-states can scarcely imagine that they were extremely marginalized in the Greek world. Not only that, but the religious cults of the city-states had important political implications. The French scholar dePolignac points out that city-state religious cults were central to understanding the political culture of the city-state. He begins his study with the relationship between the rise of city-states and religious worship, suggesting that religious worship did immediately lead to the formation of city-states through the construction of temples and the definition of religious shrines. He argues that through ****same religious worship, people gained a sense of self, a collective identity, which was the most fundamental basis of the city-state. On the other hand, religious sanctuaries also defined the territorial boundaries of city-states. In Greece, in addition to the religious shrines located in the center of the city, there were also temples and religious shrines built on the borders of the city-state. These shrines echoed those in the city center, clearly defining the territorial boundaries of the city-state through a specific religious cult, different from that of the other city-states, on the one hand, and on the other hand, there was a two-way communication and interaction between the shrines at the borders and those in the city center. During religious festivals, processions either start from the sanctuary in the city center and march to the border sanctuary or march in the opposite direction. The movement of people back and forth between the two religious sanctuaries incorporated the population of the city-state residing outside the central city into the communal **** life of the city-state, thus forming a conscious whole of its members, and allowing the periphery to acquire a centrality. The British scholar Sourvinou-Inwood, in his study of the Eleusis Mysteries, came to the same conclusion, that the Eleusis Mysteries, located in the northwestern frontier of the Athenian territory, were intertwined with the most central institutions of the city-state to form "an important and centrally important center of worship in the city-state".