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134-521: The province was one of the richest of the Empire and was at peace for most of the Imperial period. It contained hundreds of largely self-governing Greek city-states , who competed fiercely with one another for status, through appeals to the Imperial authorities and the cultivation of prestigious cultural institutions such as festival games, religious cults, and oratory. The province of Asia originally consisted of

268-518: A genos , "family"; the Italics, a gens . Corresponding to Greek phratry , a group of families, was the Italic curia . Corresponding to Greek phyle , a tribe of multiple phratries, was the tribus . The comparison of IE cultures is a solid technique, but it is not enough to develop a solid model of "the ancient city", which must take historical disparities into consideration. From the analogy Coulanges weaves

402-465: A proconsulship for the province of Asia, embracing the regions of Mysia , Lydia , Caria , and Phrygia . To its east, the province of Galatia was established. The proconsul spent much of his year-long term traveling throughout the province hearing cases and conducting other judicial business at each of the assize centers. Rome's transition from the Republic to the early Empire saw an important change in

536-466: A sovereign state . As a strict rule, the definition fails on its exceptions. A polis may not be urban at all, as was pointed out by Thucydides regarding the "polis of the Lacedaemonians", that it was "composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas". Moreover, around the five villages of Lacedaemon, which had been placed in formerly Achaean land, were the villages of the former Achaeans, called

670-459: A "just city" are wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. With all of these principles, classes and virtues, it was believed that a "just city" (polis) would exist. Breaking away from Plato and the academy, a professor there, Aristotle, founded his own school, the Lyceum, a university. One of its strongest curricula was political science, which Aristotle invented. He dispatched students over the world of

804-502: A bankrupt state, the latter must be the one that prevails. For survival the citizens of each city build a privately owned pool of diverse resources, which they can exchange for mutual ("reciprocal") benefit. The theory of equal reciprocity is nothing more than a statement that owners of diverse assets must make profitable deals with each other. Roman diocese In the Late Roman Empire , usually dated 284 AD to 641 AD,

938-461: A center of the dominant Hellenistic culture in the east for centuries. The territory remained part of the (Eastern) Roman Empire until the end of the 14th century when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire . Rome had always been very reluctant to involve itself in matters to the east. It typically relied on allies to arbitrate in the case of a conflict. Very rarely would Rome send delegations to

1072-476: A city nor an acropolis, but all the historiographers referred to it as a polis. The rule of the city-state persisted until late in the 20th century, when the accumulation of mass data and sponsored databases made possible searches and comparisons of multiple sources not previously possible, a few of which are mentioned in this article. Hansen reports that the Copenhagen Centre found it necessary to "dissociate

1206-571: A community politically or to enlarge the buildings in which it resides. Finally in the Classical Period and later, the -z-/-s- extension began to be used, as evidenced in Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch: sunoik-izein, "combine or join into one city", with its nouns sunoik-isis and sunoik-ismos, "founding a city", from which the English scholarly term synoecism derives. All poleis looked back to

1340-489: A different polis. These are three. A polis has a particular location, population, and constitution ( politeia ). For example, if a polis moves en masse, receives a different form of government, or an influx of new population, it is not the same polis. Aristotle expresses two main definitions of polis, neither of which is possible as stated. In the second (see below for the first) a polis is "a collection of citizens...." (Book III I 2). If they already are citizens, then there

1474-508: A federation with binding membership, etc. The Perioeci were included in this category. When the models are set aside as primary sources (which they never were) it is clear that historiography must be founded on what the authors and inscriptions say. Moreover, there is a time window for the active polis. The fact that polis was used in the Middle Ages to translate civitas does not make these civitates into poleis. The Copenhagen Study uses quite

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1608-513: A few evidential indications of a probable polis, in addition to the manuscripts and inscriptions, some of which are victory in the Panhellenic Games, participation in the games, having an official agent, or proxenos, in another polis, presence of civic subdivisions, presence of citizens and a Constitution (Laws). Modern theorists of the polis are theorizing under a major disadvantage: their topic has not been current for thousands of years. It

1742-423: A hundred by the time of his abdication. The multiplication of the provinces was probably undertaken for military, financial, and economic reasons. It brought the governor closer to the cities which were responsible for the collection of taxes. It also limited the power of the governors and the autonomy of the cities. At the same time, the status of the provinces was regularized. Egypt lost its unique status and

1876-428: A maximum of 2,943. A study of inscriptions found 1,450 that use polis prior to 300 BC, 425 Athenian and 1,025 from the rest of the range of poleis. There was no difference in meaning between literary and inscriptional usages. Polis became loaded with many incidental meanings. The major meanings are 'state' and 'community'. The theoretical study of the polis extends as far back as the beginning of Greek literature, when

2010-399: A network of micro-states. Many of the settlements still exist; e.g., Marseille , Syracuse , Alexandria , but they are no longer Greek or micro-states, belonging to other countries. The ancient Greek world was split between homeland regions and colonies. A colony was generally sent out by a single polis to relieve the population or some social crisis or seek out more advantageous country. It

2144-600: A number of smaller, subordinate cities. These assize centers, which developed into the Roman dioceses , included Ephesus , Pergamum - the old Attalid capital, Smyrna , Adramyttium , Cyzicus , Synnada , Apamea , Miletus , and Halicarnassus . The first three cities - Ephesus, Pergamum, and Smyrna - competed to be the dominant city-state in Asia province. Age-old inter-city rivalry continued to inhibit any sort of progress towards provincial unity. After Augustus came to power, he established

2278-598: A precedent of jumping over the wall in mockery of it. There were no families, no phratries, no tribes, except among the already settled Latins, Greeks, and Etruscans. The warriors acquired a social structure by kidnapping the nearby Italic Sabines (" the Rape of the Sabine Women ") and settling the matter by agreeing on a synoecism with the Sabines also, who were Latins. Alba Longa was ignored, later subdued. The first four tribes were not

2412-511: A priori assumptions as though they were substantiated facts and were not the pure speculations they actually are. One of the most influential of these translative models was the French La Cite antique , translated again into English "the ancient city", by Coulanges. Only to read the title gives credibility to the idea that there is a model type inclusive of all ancient cities, and that the author need only present it without proving it. This type

2546-578: A result of the establishment of the first themes (military districts governed by a strategos with military and civilian authority) and the invasions of the Arabs and Slavs, the Praetorian Prefectures of the East and of Illyricum disappeared. The last certain attestation of a Praetorian Prefect of the East is in 629, while Illyricum survived to the end of the 7th century, but without any effective power since

2680-492: A single site, and the single city belongs to its citizens in common." Aristotle's description fits the landscape archaeology of the poleis in the Copenhagen Study well. The study defines settlement patterns of first-, second-, and third-order. The third, dispersed , is individual oikiai distributed more or less evenly throughout the countryside. The other two orders are nucleated, or clustered. 2nd-order settlements are

2814-446: A synoecism under any name as their source of politeia . Not all settlements were poleis; for example, an emporion, or "market reserved for foreign trade", might be part of a polis or out on its own. In any particular synoecism recorded by either ancient or modern epigraphists a major problem has been to fit the model credibly to the instance. For example, Thucydides refers to Spartan lack of urbanity as "not synoecised", where synoecism

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2948-422: A tale of imaginary history. Families, he asserts, originally lived dispersed and alone (a presumption of Aristotle as well). When the population grew to a certain point, families joined into phratries. Further growth caused phratries to join into tribes, and then tribes into a city. In the city the ancient tribes remained sacrosanct. The city was actually a confederacy of ancient tribes. Coulange's tale, based on

3082-429: Is actually a lessening of unity and would destroy the state. The individual is actually most united and effective; the polis the least. To take away the property and therefore the powers of the individual diminishes the state to nothing, as it is composed of citizens, and those citizens have been rendered null and void by the removal of their effectiveness. As an example Aristotle gives a plot of land, which owned by one man

3216-621: Is based on the ancient practice of translating polis in Greek literature to civitas (early form of city) in Latin literature and vice versa. Coulanges' confidence that the Greek and Italic cities were the same model was based on the then newly discovered Indo-European language : "Go back as far as we may in the history of the Indo-European race, of which the Greeks and Italians are branches,...." The Greeks had

3350-414: Is carefully tended, but owned by the whole community belongs to no one and is untended. The ideal state therefore is impossible, a mere logical construct accounting for some of the factors, but failing of others, which Aristotle's examples suffice to demonstrate. For example, in some hypothetical place of no polis, a buyer would apply to an individual builder for a house. In an ideal polis, he would apply to

3484-449: Is concerned with the two underlying principles of any society: mutual needs and differences in aptitude. Starting from these two principles, Socrates deals with the economic structure of an ideal polis. According to Plato there are five main economic classes of any polis: producers, merchants, sailors/shipowners, retail traders and wage earners. Along with the two principles and five economic classes, there are four virtues. The four virtues of

3618-560: Is highly critical. The Theory of the State is not so much political by today's definition. The politics are covered by the New Plan. The topic of the Old Plan is rather society , and is generally presented today in sociology and cultural anthropology . At the end of Book III, however, Aristotle encounters certain problems of definition that he cannot reconcile through theorization and has to abandon

3752-434: Is no need for anyone to collect to create a polis, as it already exists. If they are not citizens then they cannot be defined as a polis and cannot act as such. Aristotle's only consistent meaning is that at the moment of collecting together a population creates a polis of which they are now citizens. This moment of creation, however long it might be, is a logical necessity; otherwise, the citizenship recedes indefinitely into

3886-409: Is not left to the moderns to redefine polis as though it were a living institution. All that remains to ask is how the ancients defined it. It is not to be redefined now; for example, a polis is not a list of architectural features based on ruins. Any community might have those. Moderns can only ask, what did the ancient Greeks think a polis is. Whatever they thought must per force be so, as they invented

4020-445: Is not whether poleis can be found to fit a particular model (some usually can), but whether the model covers all the poleis, which, apparently, no model ever has, even the ancient ones. The re-defining process continues. The Copenhagen study rejects either model and proposes instead the microstate. Some few scholars have become totally cynical, rejecting the idea that any solution has been or can be found. This argument places polis in

4154-406: Is the creation of common living quarters (see above). Here apparently it means only the building of a central urban area. The reader of Plutarch knows that another synoecism existed, one instituted by Lycurgus, founder of the military state. The single overall synoecism is apparently double, one for the facilities, missing in this story, and one for the constitution. He uses the same word to describe

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4288-501: Is the one that leads to the common good. The philosopher king is the best ruler because, as a philosopher, he is acquainted with the Form of the Good . In Plato's analogy of the ship of state , the philosopher king steers the polis, as if it were a ship, in the best direction. Books II–IV of The Republic are concerned with Plato addressing the makeup of an ideal polis. In The Republic , Socrates

4422-440: Is to know what information to select for a model and what to neglect as probably irrelevant. Classical studies of the last few hundred years have been relatively stable in their views of the polis, relying basically on just a few models: the concept of a city-state, and Fustel de Coulange's model of the ancient city. However, no model ever seems to resolve all the paradoxes or provide for every newly considered instance. The question

4556-488: The magister militum and was in charge of the duces who had the military command of individual provinces. Many modern scholars date the introduction of the dioceses to AD 296–297. A passage of Lactantius , who was hostile to Diocletian because of his persecution of the Christians , seems to indicate the existence of vicarii praefectorum in the time of Diocletian: And so that everything would be filled with terror,

4690-547: The Ancient Greek : dioíkēsis ( διοίκησις ) meaning "administration", "management", "assize district", or "group of provinces". Two major reforms to the administrative divisions of the empire were undertaken during the Tetrarchy . The first of these was the multiplication of the number of provinces , which had remained largely unchanged since the time of Augustus , from 48 at the beginning of Diocletian 's reign to around

4824-679: The Gothic War . The whole territory of the Empire in Africa, which had been the Diocese of Africa in the 4th and 5th centuries, was thus promoted to the rank of Prefecture. It was not divided into dioceses. It is unlikely that the Praetorian Prefecture of Italia was subdivided into two vicariates again in the Byzantine period. The authority of the two Italian vicars was definitely much reduced compared to

4958-799: The Long Walls was created in Thrace by Anastasius I (491-518). Around the end of the 5th century, the majority of the dioceses of the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist, following the establishment of the Barbarian kingdoms . There is no evidence that the Franks and Burgundians maintained the Roman provincial system; the Visigoths and Vandals did maintain the provinces (governed by rectores or iudices ), but not

5092-531: The Perioeci ("dwellers round"). They had been left as supposedly free poleis by the invaders, but they were subject to and served the interests of the Dorian poleis. They were not city-states, failing the criterion of sovereignty. Lacedaemon by the city-state rule thus falls short of being a polis. The earlier Achaean acropolis stood at the edge of the valley and was decrepit and totally unused. Lacedaemon had neither

5226-581: The Praetorian Prefect of Gaul . In fact, according to Jones, the diocese in which each Praetorian Prefect was based was generally under their direct control, except for the Diocese of Thrace , which was administered by a vicarius Thraciarum even though the Praetorian Prefect of the East had his seat in the diocese. The title of vicar was used in all provinces except for the Diocese of the East, which

5360-501: The Praetorian prefect , although some provinces were governed directly by the Praetorian Prefect. These vicars had previously been ad hoc representatives of the prefects, but they were now made into permanent, regularised positions. The vicar controlled the provincial governors (variously titled as consulares , correctores , praesides ) and heard appeals of cases decided at the provincial level (parties could decide whether to appeal to

5494-462: The Praetorian prefecture . Hitherto, one or two Praetorian prefects had served as chief minister for the whole empire, with military, judicial, and fiscal responsibilities. The political centralisation under Constantine, which culminated in the reunification of the whole empire under his rule, resulted in an "administrative decentralisation." A single emperor could not control everything, so between 326 and 337, Constantine progressively transformed

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5628-455: The pretender Eumenes III staged a rebellion. He defeated one of the consuls of 131 BC, Crassus Mucianus . The following year, the consul Marcus Perperna brought the war to a close by defeating Eumenes in the first engagement. He followed up his victory by laying siege to Stratonikeia , whither Eumenes had fled. The town was compelled by famine to surrender and the pretender fell into the consul's hands. Manius Aquillius formally established

5762-505: The right to collect taxes in Asia to members of the equestrian order . The privilege of collecting taxes was almost certainly exploited by individuals from the Republic. In case a community was unable to pay taxes, they borrowed from Roman lenders but at exorbitant rates. This more often than not resulted in default on said loans and consequently led Roman lenders to seize the borrower's land, their last remaining asset of value. In this way and by outright purchase, Romans dispersed throughout

5896-539: The themes until the second half of the 9th century. The vicarius was a high official appointed by the Emperor and accountable only to him. The position was held by equites who were given the rank of perfectissimus (before the egregii and after the eminentissimi ). Thus, in rank, the vicars were inferior to the governors of the senatorial provinces (the consulares ), although they had to exercise political authority over them. René Rémond suggests that this paradox

6030-527: The vicarius Italiae respectively. Italia Suburbicaria and Italia Annonaria were not de jure dioceses, but vicariates within a single Italian diocese, as the Laterculus Veronensis and the Notitia Dignitatum show. Constantine I also divided the diocese of Moesia into the dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia in 327. Under Emperor Valens (364-378), the Diocese of Egypt was split out of

6164-460: The 'ministerial' Praetorian Prefect into a 'regional' Prefect, in charge of a specific territory which contained several dioceses and was called a 'Praetorian Prefecture' ( praefectura praetorio ). These Praetorian Prefects had authority over the Vicars and Provincial Governors. Paul Petit argues that the dioceses "themselves prefigured to some degree" the regional praetorian prefectures. Thus,

6298-399: The 5th century. The successors of Justinian continued his policy of concentrating civilian and military power in the hands of a single individual. Maurice (582-602) transformed the old Prefectures of Italia and Africa into Exarchates governed by an Exarch , who held both civilian and military authority. The vicars and other civilian officials seem to have lost most of their importance to

6432-478: The Acarnanian people and poleis. A colony from there would then be considered Acarnanian, no matter how far away from Acarnania it was. Colonization was thus the main method of spreading Greek poleis and culture. Ancient Greeks did not reserve the term polis solely for Greek-speaking settlements. For example, Aristotle's study of the polis names also Carthage , comparing its constitution to that of Sparta. Carthage

6566-604: The Aegean for a few thousand years prior to the Dorian invasions , forming an "aggregate, the pre-Doric city". This type of city is not to be regarded as "the Hellenic type of the polis". The Greeks set adrift by the Dorian invasions countered by joining ( synoecism ) to form the Hellenic poleis. The polis can thus be dated to this defensive resettlement period (the Dark Age). Quite a few poleis fit

6700-513: The City when the Praetorian Prefect was absent since the Severan period , into the civil vicar of Italia Suburbicaria , as part of his demilitarisation of the city after his victory over Maxentius . Thus, under Constantine, the diocese of Italia was split into the two vicariates of Italia Suburbicaria in the south and Italia Annonaria in the north, under the administration of the vicarius urbis Romae and

6834-560: The Diocese of the East. The Notitia Dignitatum indicates that at some point, the Diocese of Gaul was suppressed and incorporated into the diocese of the Septem Provinciae . According to the Notitia Dignitatum , the dioceses of Dacia and Illyricum did not have vicars, but were governed by the Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum directly. Before its suppression, the Diocese of Gaul also seems to have been directly administered by

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6968-598: The Gauls, which was promoted to the rank of Prefecture with a capital at Arelate two years later. This Praetorian Prefecture was abolished in 536, during the reign of Vitiges , after the cession of Provence to the Franks. The rationale behind Odoacer and Theoderic's maintenance of the Roman provincial system was that they were officially viceroys of the Roman emperor in Constantinople, for whom Italia nominally continued to form part of

7102-419: The Greek conception ... but this was rather owing to their less vivid mental powers than to the absence of the phenomenon." Polis is thus often translated as ' city-state '. The model, however, fares no better than any other. City-states no doubt existed, but so also did many poleis that were not city-states. The minimum semantic load of this hyphenated neologism is that the referent must be a city and must be

7236-415: The Hellenic poleis and was continuous with the pre-Doric city phase, then pre-Doric Athens must have been a Hellenic polis even then. The model fails in its chief instance. A second approach to the modelling of the polis is not to use the word polis at all, but to translate it into the language of the historiographer. The model is thus inherent in the translation, which has the disadvantage of incorporating

7370-491: The Imperial centre and the individual provinces, the dioceses were created as a new territorial subdivision above the level of the province. The empire was divided into twelve dioceses. The largest of these, the Diocese of the East , encompassed sixteen provinces . Each diocese was governed by an agens vices praefectorum praetorio (Acting Representatives of the Praetorian Prefects) or simply Vicar ( vicarius ), under

7504-450: The Newer were united with a political synoecism. The first sentence of Politics asserts that a polis is a community ( koinonia ). This is Aristotle's first definition of polis (for the second, see above). The community is compared to a game of chess. The man without community is like an isolated piece (I.9). Other animals form communities, but those of men are more advantageous because men have

7638-729: The Phrygian cities of Apamea and Amorium . Auxiliary cohorts were stationed in Phrygian Eumeneia while smaller groups of soldiers regularly patrolled the mountainous regions. High military presence in rural regions around 3rd century AD caused great civil unrest in the province. Imperial cult was prevalent in provincial communities during the Roman empire. Soon after Augustus came to power, temples erected in his honor sprang up across Asia province. The establishment of provincial centers of imperial cult further spawned local cults. These sites served as models followed by other provinces throughout

7772-594: The Praetorian prefect of the East. The Prefect of Egypt, formerly in charge of the whole diocese, was renamed the dux augustalis , and left with control over only the provinces of Aegyptus I and Aegyptus II. Essentially, the modifications to the provincial system carried out by Justinian were motivated by the desire to end the conflict between civilian and military officials, and thus moved away from Diocletian's principle of completely separating civilian and military power. In this, according to J. B. Bury , Justinian anticipated

7906-403: The Roman empire. The civilian offices, including the vicars, praesides , and Praetorian Prefects, continued to be filled with Roman citizens, while Barbarians without citizenship were barred from holding them. According to Cassiodorus , however, the authority of the vicarius urbis Romae was diminished: in the 4th century, he no longer controlled the ten provinces of Italia Suburbicaria, but only

8040-479: The Third Century , contributed to failing feelings of security. Furthermore, as political and strategic emphasis shifted away from Asia proconsularis, it lost much of its former prominence. In the 4th century, Diocletian divided Asia province into seven smaller provinces. During the 5th century and, until the mid-6th century the cities and provinces of western Anatolia experienced an economic renaissance. But after

8174-569: The Treasury and Crown Estate officials but could not meddle in their routine business. The offices of the three regional ministries were located in the same towns or cities: this facilitated the work of the diocesan staffs which was to audit and process the huge amounts of fiscal and judicial work from the provincial level before being sent to the prefectures. He was tasked with regulating and controlling governors; exacting compliance from any officials he had partial or whole authority over in cooperation with

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8308-503: The Trojan War and had placed a polis (Livy's urbs) on one of the hills named Pallantium , later becoming Palatine . He had actually raised the Trojan boys and supported them now. When the band of marauders became populous enough Romulus got them to agree to a synoecism of settlements in the hills to form a new city, Rome, to be walled in immediately. Remus had to be sacrificed because he had set

8442-632: The area of the modern Republic of Greece . A collaborative study carried by the Copenhagen Polis Centre from 1993 to 2003 classified about 1,500 settlements of the Archaic and Classical ancient-Greek-speaking population as poleis. These ranged from the Caucasus to southern Spain, and from southern Russia to northern Egypt, spread over the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. They have been termed

8576-420: The argument there is "For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together .... and if they cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they hold together." In short Aristotle had stated two systems of property, one in which the polis holds everything, distributing it equally, and one in which some property is held in common but the rest is privately owned. As the former only leads to

8710-470: The authority of the Comes Orientis in this period. Furthermore, it seems from the fact that a Vicar of Thrace is again attested in 576, it also seems that the diocese of Thrace was revived at some point - perhaps even under Justinian. When Africa and Italia were reconquered, Justinian established Praetorian prefecture of Africa , while the Praetorian Prefecture of Italia returned to Imperial hands after

8844-400: The citizens and simultaneously a collection of some of the citizens. Similarly property shared by all cannot be shared by men who do not own it. These fictions led to endless conflict between and within poleis as the participants fought for citizenship they did not have and shares they did not own. A village (kome) is a community of several families (I.2). Aristotle suggests that they came from

8978-452: The collection of taxes, intervened in military affairs in order to fortify the borders, and judged appeals. They were not under the control of the Praetorian Prefect, but only to the Emperor himself. Appeals of their legal decisions went straight to the emperor. In as much as they were responsible for the integrity of the global diocesan budgets drawn up by the prefectures, they were in 328-329 AD given oversight powers and appeal authority over

9112-449: The concept of polis from the concepts of independence and autonomia". They were able to define a class of "dependent poleis" to consist of 15 types, all of which the ancient sources call poleis, but were not entirely sovereign, such as cities that had been independent, but were later synoecized into a larger polis, new colonies of other poleis, forts, ports, or trading posts some distance removed from their mother poleis, poleis that had joined

9246-466: The creation of the praetorian prefectures reduced the utility of the dioceses. The direct link between the prefects and the governors bypassed the Vicars and caused their power to decline; they increasingly became agents carrying out the will of the Praetorian Prefects. However, despite their decreased importance, the vicars played an important role in the court hierarchy - Constantine raised them to

9380-459: The dioceses or prefectures. In Italia, Odoacer and then the Ostrogothic kings, particularly Theoderic , basically retained the Roman provincial system, including the Praetorian Prefecture of Italia and the two vicariates of Italia Annonaria and Italia Suburbicaria, as well as the various provinces that they contained. When Theoderic conquered Provence in 508, he also re-established a Diocese of

9514-590: The east, much less have a strong governmental presence. This apathy did not change much even after the gift from Attalus in 133 BC. In fact, parts of the Pergamene kingdom were voluntarily relinquished to different nations. For example, Great Phrygia was given to Mithridates V of Pontus . While the Senate was hesitant in involving itself in Asian affairs, others had no such reluctance. A law passed by Gaius Gracchus in 123 BC gave

9648-753: The efficiency of provisioning troops garrisoned in Thrace, a new prefecture was introduced, the Prefecture of the Islands , which was governed by a quaestor exercitus (Quaestor of the army) based in Odessa . This prefecture contained the provinces of Moesia II , Scythia Minor, Insulae (the Cyclades ), Caria , and Cyprus . In 539, Justinian also abolished the diocese of Egypt, splitting it into five independent circumscriptions (groups of provinces) governed by duces with civilian and military authority, who were direct subordinates of

9782-402: The empire. Imperial cult served as a way for subjects of Asia province to come to terms with imperial rule within the framework of their communities. Religious practices were very much a public affair and involved citizens in all its aspects including prayer, sacrifice, and processions. Rituals held in honor of a particular emperor frequently outnumbered those of other gods. No other cult matched

9916-507: The entire territory to the Romans, who placed most of it under the control of the Attalid dynasty based at Pergamum . The western part of Phrygia was given to Mithridates V , King of Pontus , while Caria and Lycia were given to Rhodes . With no legitimate heir, King Attalus III of Pergamum , having been a close ally of Rome, chose to bequeath his kingdom to Rome. Upon his death in 133 BC,

10050-574: The exarchs and their subordinates, but did not disappear until the middle of the 7th century AD. After 557, there is no record of vicarii in Italia, but two agentes vices of the Praetorian Prefect of Italia with their seats in Genova and Rome are mentioned in Pope Gregory I 's letters. These Italian agentes vices are no longer attested after the first half of the seventh century. In the seventh century, as

10184-454: The first vicar of the Diocese of the East that we know of. Lactantius also mentions one Sossianus Hierocles as an ex vicario active in the East in this period. Septimius Valentio is also attested as agens vices praefectorum praetorio of Rome between 293 and 296. However, these sources do not prove that these vicarii or agentes vices were already in charge of dioceses with a well-defined and stable territory. Septimius Valentio in particular

10318-404: The fragmentary history of priesthoods, does not much resemble the history of cities such as it survives. For example, there was no familial and tribal development of Rome. Livy (Book I), the grandest of the historians of early Rome, portrays a city formed under competitive duress by a collaboration of warriors, some of whom were from among the neighboring Etruscans , led by Romulus and Remus ,

10452-470: The great plague of 543 many cities towards the interior of the province declined to the point where they were indistinguishable from common villages by the time of the Persian and Arab invasions of the 7th century. On the other hand, leading cities from the early empire including Ephesus , Sardis , and Aphrodisias retained much of their former glory and came to serve as the new provincial capitals. Asia remained

10586-473: The hatred of corrupt Roman practices, Mithridates instigated a mass revolt against Rome, ordering the slaughter of all Romans and Italians in the province. Contemporary estimates of casualties ranged from 80,000 up to 150,000. Three years later, Lucius Cornelius Sulla defeated Mithridates in the First Mithridatic War and in 85 BC reorganized the province into eleven assize districts, each central to

10720-433: The holding relationship implies. In Book II Aristotle begins to face the problem. The "polis men", politai , translated as 'citizens', must logically hold everything there is to hold, nothing, or some things but not others (II.I.2). In this sociological context politai can only be all the householders sharing in the polis, free or slave, male or female, child or adult. The sum total of all the specific holdings mentioned in

10854-422: The ideal state incapable of sustaining itself. Aristotle says, "A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state." He means that such a collection is not self-sufficient (II.1.4). He alleges the opposite: "components which are to make up a unity must differ in kind .... Hence reciprocal equality is the preservative of states, as has been said before in (Nichomachean) Ethics (1132b, 1133a)." In summary

10988-542: The imperial cult in terms of dispersion and commonality. Polis Polis ( pl. : poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek . The Modern Greek word πόλη ( polē ) is a direct descendant of the ancient word and roughly means 'city' or an urban place. However, the Ancient Greek term that specifically meant the totality of urban buildings and spaces was asty ( ἄστυ ), rather than polis. The ancient word polis had socio-political connotations not possessed by

11122-454: The individual. Families are bound by three relationships: husband to wife, owner to slave, and father to children. Thus slaves and women are members of the polis. The proper function of a family is the acquisition and management of wealth . The oikia is the primary land-holder. The koinonia, then, applied to property, including people. As such it is just as impossible as the collection of citizens mentioned previously, which cannot be both all

11256-514: The introduction of the themes in the 7th century. Morevoer, by abolishing the dioceses, Justinian attempted to simplify the bureaucracy and simultaneously decrease the state's expenses, noting that the vicars had become superfluous, since their courts of appeal were used ever less frequently and the provincial governors could be directly controlled by the Praetorian Prefect, by means of the so-called tractatores . Some of Justinian's decisions were subsequently revisited. In fact, thirteen years after

11390-418: The jurisdiction of a biocolytes (preventor of violence), in order to maintain order in the region. The jurisdiction of this official was reduced to just Lycaonia and Lydia in 553, since the other three provinces had been pacified. Novel 157 of AD 542, concerning Osroene and Mesopotamia is addressed to the Comes Orientis , suggesting that the northern part of the former diocese of the East remained under

11524-467: The komai, while the 1st order is the poleis. Approaching the polis from the outside of an aerial photograph one would pass successivle orders 3, 2, and 1. By the end of Book I of Politics Aristotle (or one of the other unknown authors) finishes defining the polis according to one scheme and spends the next two books trying to tie up loose ends. It is generally agreed that the work is an accumulation of surviving treatises written at different times, and that

11658-504: The land within forty miles of the City of Rome. In 535–536, Justinian decided to abolish the dioceses of the East , Asia , and Pontus ; their vicars were demoted to simple provincial governors. For example, the comes Orientis (count of the East) became the title of the governor of Syria I , while the vicars of Asia and Pontus became governors of Phrygia Pacatiana and Galatia I respectively, with

11792-475: The language of the historiographer. For example, Eric Voegelin wrote a work in English entitled "The World of the Polis". In works such as this the author intends to define polis himself; i.e., to present a model of society from one or more of a list of ancient Greek cities (poleis) culled from ancient Greek literature and inscriptions. For example, Voegelin describes a model in which "town settlements" existed in

11926-440: The legal incorporation of the settlements around Athens into the city by King Theseus , although no special building was required. The central polis already existed. In this story also there is a duality of synoecism with an absent change of physical facilities. Apparently a synoecism can be of different types, the selection of which depends on the requirements of the sunoikisteres. Lippman applies two concepts previously current,

12060-482: The main logical break is the end of Book III. Books I, II, and III, dubbed "Theory of the State" by Rackham in the Loeb Edition , each represents an incomplete trial of the "Old Plan". Books !V, V, and VI, "Practical Politics", are the "New Plan". Books VII and VIII, "Ideal Politics", contains Aristotle's replacement of Plato's ideology, openly called "communist" by modern translators and theoreticians, of which Aristotle

12194-678: The majority of the Balkans, aside from Thessaloniki , had fallen under the Slavs. Thus the Prefect of Illyricum was renamed the Praetorian Prefect of Thessaloniki. In the same period, the dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia finally disappeared as a result of the loss of almost all their territory. However, the Taktikon Uspenskij which was written at the beginning of the 9th century, mentions a Praetorian Prefect of Constantinople and Proconsuls ( anthypatoi ) of

12328-453: The many one-castle principates that abounded at the time. The name was applied to the polis by Herder in 1765. Fowler anglicised it: "It is, then, a city-state that we have to deal with in Greek and Roman history; a state in which the whole life and energy of the people, political, intellectual, religious, is focused at one point, and that point a city." He applied the word polis to it, explaining that, "The Latin race, indeed, never realised

12462-400: The model, no doubt, which was widely promulgated in the 20th century. Classical Athens , however, is a paradox in this model, to which Voegelin has no answer. He says, "in the most important instance, that of Athens, the continuity between the Aegean settlement and the later polis seems to have been unbroken." It seems a matter of simple logic that if Athens was a Hellenic polis in the time of

12596-544: The modern. For example, today's πόλη is located within a χώρα ( khôra ), "country", which is a πατρίδα (patrida) or "native land" for its citizens. In ancient Greece, the polis was the native land; there was no other. It had a constitution and demanded the supreme loyalty of its citizens. χώρα was only the countryside, not a country. Ancient Greece was not a sovereign country, but was a territory occupied by Hellenes , people who claimed as their native language some dialect of Ancient Greek. Poleis did not only exist within

12730-407: The polis to study the society and government of individual poleis, and bring the information back to document, placing the document in a political science section of the library. Only two documents have survived, Politics and Athenian Constitution . These are a part of any political science curriculum today. Both major ancient Greek philosophers were concerned with elucidating an existing aspect of

12864-519: The political synoecism and the physical synoecism, to events at the polis of Pleuron (Aetolia) described by Strabo . Pleuron, in danger of being sacked by the Macedonians, was officially moved up the slope of a nearby mountain, walled in, and named Newer Pleuron. This act was a physical synoecism. After the Macedonian threat vanished the former location was reinhabited and called Old Pleuron. The old and

12998-448: The power of speech as well as a sense of right and wrong, and can communicate judgements of good or bad to the community (I.10). A second metaphor compares a community to a human body: no part can function without the whole functioning (I.11). Men belong to communities because they have an instinct to do so (I.12). The polis is a hierarchy of community. At the most subordinate level is the family ( oikia ), which has priority of loyalty over

13132-469: The province of Asia. Other than to quell occasional revolts, there was minimal military presence in Asia province, until forces led by Sulla set forth in their campaign against Mithridates VI. In fact, Asia province was unique in that it was one of the few ungarrisoned provinces of the empire. While no full legions were ever stationed inside the province, that is not to say that there was no military presence whatsoever. Legionary detachments were present in

13266-406: The provinces were also sliced to bits; many governors and more offices brooded over individual regions and almost every city, as well as many rationales , magistri , and vicarii praefectorum , all of whose civil acts were exceedingly rare, but whose condemnations and proscriptions were common, whose exactions of innumerable taxes were not so much frequent as constant, and the damage from these taxes

13400-410: The rank of clarissimi (between the consulares and the proconsulares ). The other reason for the weakening of the vicars was the regular dispatch of comites , who outranked the vicars and probably had the role of inspecting their conduct. It was probably Constantine in 312 who transformed the agens vices prefectorum praetorio of Rome, which had been the commander of the troops stationed in

13534-421: The reforms of 535, in 548, Justinian decided to re-establish the diocese of Pontus due to serious internal problems. The vicar of Pontus was also given military powers, in order to effectively oppose the brigands that infested the region. In the same period, five provinces of the former diocese of Asia which had become infested with brigands ( Lycaonia , Pisidia , Lydia , and the two Phrygiae ), were placed under

13668-512: The region as the province of Asia. The bequest of the Attalid kingdom to Rome presented serious implications for neighbouring territories. It was during this period that the Kingdom of Pontus rose in status under the rule of Mithridates VI . He would prove to be a formidable foe to Rome's success in Asia and beyond. By 88 BC, Mithridates VI of Pontus had conquered virtually all of Asia. Capitalizing on

13802-568: The region in the Bronze Age . After the Greco-Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC, Greek sources often use it to refer to the whole continent , The territory was ruled by various Macedonian kingdoms following the conquests of Alexander the Great . In 190 BC, the Romans crushed Antiochus III the Great at the battle of Magnesia . In the subsequent Treaty of Apamea (188 BC), he surrendered

13936-470: The regional governance district known as the Roman or civil diocese was made up of a grouping of provinces each headed by a Vicarius , who were the representatives of praetorian prefects (who governed directly the dioceses they were resident in). There were initially twelve dioceses, rising to fourteen by the end of the 4th century. The term diocese comes from the Latin : dioecēsis , which derives from

14070-477: The regional officials of the respective jurisdictions; processing huge amounts of judicial and fiscal information before being sent up prefecture. The additional authority truly made vicars mini-prefects. The position went into decline from the first decades of the 5th century as the emperors switches back to the two tier prefect-governor arrangement rather than the 3 level with the diocese as regional level as fiscal officials for central headquarters became stationed in

14204-504: The relinquishing of property to form the polis is advantageous, and the maximum advantage is maximum possession of common property by a polis. The principle of advantage is unity. The more united, the more advantageous (compare the action of a lever, which concentrates advantage). The ideal commun-ity would be commun-ism, the possession of all property by the community. Personal property, such as wives and children, are included (II.1). Aristotle argues that this eminent domain of all property

14338-410: The result of any previous social evolution. They were the first municipal division of the city manufactured for the purpose. They were no sort of confederacy. Rome initially was ruled by Etruscan kings. Coulanges work was followed by the innovation of the English city-state by W. Warde Fowler in 1893. The Germans had already invented the word in their own language: Stadtstaat, "city-state", referring to

14472-461: The role of existing provincial cities, which evolved from autonomous city-states to Imperial administrative centers. The beginning of the principate of Augustus also signaled the rise of new cities in Mysia, Lydia and Phrygia. The province grew to be an elaborate system of self-governing cities, each responsible for its own economics, taxes, and law in its territory. The reign of Augustus further signaled

14606-427: The same category of Plato's indefinable abstracts, such as freedom and justice. However, there is a practical freedom and a practical justice, although not theoretically definable, and the ancient authors must mean something consistent when they use the word polis . The problem is to find it. In modern historiography of the ancient world πόλις is often transliterated to polis without any attempt to translate it into

14740-473: The same or similar. It is a figure of speech, the most general instance being sunoik-eioun, "to be associated with", its noun being sunoik-eiosis, the act of association. A second verb, sunoik-ein, "to live together," can mean individuals, as in marriage, or conjointly, as in a community. The community meaning appears in Herodotus. A closely related meaning, "to colonize jointly with", is found there also, and in

14874-480: The society in which they lived, the polis. Plato was more interested in the ideal; Aristotle, the real. Both had a certain view of what the polis was; that is, a conceptual model. All models must be tested, by definition. Aristotle, of course, could send direct observers. The only way to know a polis now is through study of the ancient literature (philology), and to some extent archaeology. There are thousands of pages of writing and certainly thousands of sites. The problem

15008-399: The sociology in favor of the New Plan, conclusions resulting from research on real constitutions. The difficulties with the Old Plan begin with the meaning of koinonizein, "to hold in common". Typically the authors of the Old Plan use the verb in such expressions as "those holding in common", "A holding in common", "the partnership", and the like, without specifying who is holding what or what

15142-420: The splitting (apoikia, "colonization") of families; that is, one village contains one or more extended families , or clans . A polis is a community of villages, but there must be enough of them to achieve or nearly achieve self-sufficiency. At this point of his theorization, Aristotle turns the "common" noun stem (koino-) into a verb, koinonizein, "to share" or "to own in common". He says: "A single city occupies

15276-505: The start of urbanization of Asia province, as public building became the defining characteristic of a city. The 3rd century AD marked a serious decline in Asia stemming in part from epidemic disease, beginning with the Antonine plague , the indiscipline of local soldiers and also the diminishing instances of voluntary civic generosity. The Gothic invasions of the 250s and 260s, part of the Crisis of

15410-408: The state, which would send other members of the united polis to do the work. They would also be sent for any other task: plumbing, farming, herding, etc., as any task could be performed by any member. This view is contrary, as Aristotle points out, to the principle of division of labor . The output of one professional building crew far exceeds the efforts any number of amateur ideal statists, rendering

15544-481: The term. There were no doubt many ancient experts on the polis, but time has done its work. The one surviving expert, Aristotle, is thus an indispensable resource. A polis is identified as such by its standing as polis among the community of poleis. Poleis have ambassadors, can join or host the Hellenic Games, etc. According to Aristotle, their most essential characteristics are those that, if changed, would result in

15678-452: The territories of Mysia , the Troad , Aeolis , Lydia , Ionia , Caria , and the land corridor through Pisidia to Pamphylia . The Aegean islands , with the exception of Crete , were part of the province of Asia. The western part of Phrygia was added to Asia in 116 BC. Lycaonia was added before 100 BC, while the area around Cibyra was added in 82 BC. The southeast region of Asia province

15812-426: The themes, which suggests that the Praetorian Prefecture of the East continued to exist even though it had lost most of its earlier powers and had only a few judicial functions. If the dioceses lost their fiscal functions during the 6th and 7th centuries, it may be that they were replaced by new groupings of provinces under the judicial administration of a Proconsul ( anthypatos ). The provinces continued to exist under

15946-463: The title of Comes Iustinianus and civilian and military powers. In May 535, Justinian abolished the vicariates of Thrace and the Long Walls, in order to improve the defence of the Long Walls by ending the continuous conflicts between the two vicars. He entrusted the administration of the diocese of Thrace to a praetor Iustinianus with civilian and military powers. A year later, in order to improve

16080-428: The treatise amount to the anthropological sense of property : land, animals, houses, wives, children, anything to which the right of access or disposition is reserved to the owner. This also happens to be Plato's concept of property, not an accident, as Aristotle was a renegade Platonist. The polis, then, is communal property. The theory of its tenancy is where Aristotle and Plato differ sharply. Plato had argued that

16214-512: The true descendants of the Trojans who with the aborigines had earlier formed the Latin people. They were not welcome among the Latins of Alba Longa, and so they had turned to raiding from their base in their seven hills. The myth supposes they had been nourished by a she-wolf and lived a wild life camping in the country. They were, however, supported by an ally. Evander had led a colony from Arcadia before

16348-408: The unknown past. All current citizenships must have had their first moments, typically when the law-maker had gotten his laws ratified, or the colony had broken with the metropolis. The ancient writers referred to these initial moments under any of several words produced with the same prefix, sunoik- (Latinized synoec-), "same house", meaning objects that are from now on to be grouped together as being

16482-404: The vicar or the praetorian prefect). The provinces governed by proconsuls ( Africa and Asia ) remained outside the vicars' jurisdiction,. as did the cities of Rome and Constantinople, which were governed by a Praefectus urbi instead. The vicars had no military powers. Troops stationed in the dioceses fell under the command of a comes rei militaris , who was directly under the control of

16616-401: The whole gamut of historical writers, Xenophon, Plato, Strabo, Plutarch; i.e., more or less continuously through all periods from Archaic to Roman. Associated nouns are sunoik-ia, sunoik-esion, sunoik-idion, sunoik-eses, sunoik-isis, a multiplication to be expected over centuries of a single language. These can all mean community in general, but they have two main secondary meanings, to institute

16750-457: The works of Homer and Hesiod in places attempt to portray an ideal state. The study took a great leap forward when Plato and the academy in general undertook to define what is meant by the good, or ideal, polis. Plato analyzes the polis in the Republic , the Greek title of which, Πολιτεία ( politeia ), itself derives from the word polis . The best form of government of the polis for Plato

16884-560: Was a Phoenician -speaking city. Many nominally Greek colonies also included municipalities of non-Greek speakers, such as Syracuse. The word polis is used in the first known work of Greek literature, the Iliad , a maximum of 350 times. The few hundred ancient Greek classical works on line at the Perseus Digital Library use the word thousands of times. The most frequent use is Dionysius of Halicarnassus , an ancient historian, with

17018-411: Was called a metropolis or "mother city". The Greeks were careful to identify the homeland region and the metropolis of a colony. Typically a metropolis could count on the socio-economic and military support of its colonies, but not always. The homeland regions were located on the Greek mainland. Each gave an ethnic or "racial" name to its population and poleis. Acarnania , for example was the location of

17152-568: Was definitely the commander of the Praetorian Guard during a period when the Praetorian Prefect was absent from the city, but was not in charge of Italia Suburbicaria . According to Zuckerman, the establishment of the dioceses should instead be dated to around AD 313/14, after the annexation of Armenia into the Roman empire and the meeting of Constantine and Licinius in Mediolanum . The matter remains controversial. From 310, Constantine I

17286-404: Was divided into three provinces, while Italia was 'provincialized' - the numbered regiones established by Augustus received names and were governed by correctores . The distinction between senatorial and imperial provinces was abolished and henceforth all governors were appointed by the Emperor. In order to compensate for the weakening of the provinces and to maintain the link between

17420-443: Was governed by a comes Orientis and Egypt, which continued to be governed by a Prefect . The successors of Theodosius I made few changes to the administrative subdivisions of the Empire. A few provinces were further subdivided. For example, the provinces of Epirus , Galatia , Palestina , and Thebais were split in two. At the beginning of the 6th century, the province of Aegyptus was also split in two. A separate Vicariate of

17554-560: Was later reassigned to the province of Cilicia . During the Empire, the province of Asia was bounded by Bithynia to the north, Lycia to the south, and Galatia to the east. The word "Asia" comes from the Greek word Ἀσία , originally only applied to the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea , which is attested in Mycenaean Greek texts as aswia and probably derives from Assuwa , the name of

17688-523: Was one of the Augusti of the Empire and from 324 he was the sole ruler of the whole state. During his reign, he carried out many crucial reforms creating the administrative and military organization of the empire which would last until the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The principal territorial reform undertaken by Constantine, as part of a process of trial-and-error, was the 'regionalisation' of

17822-417: Was resolved by promoting vicars whose dioceses contained provinces with senatorial governors to the rank of clarissimus , but there is no evidence for this. Constantine the Great raised them to the senatorial rank of clarissimus in 324-325. Initially, the powers of the vicars were considerable: they controlled and monitored the governors (aside from the proconsuls who governed Asia and Africa), administered

17956-523: Was unbearable. Thus Lactantius refers to the vicarii praefectorum as being active already in Diocletian's time. Other sources from Diocletian's reign mention one Aurelius Agricolanus who was an agens vices praefectorum praetorio active in Hispania and condemned a centurion named Marcellus to be executed for his Christianity, as well as an Aemilianus Rusticianus, who is considered by some scholars to have been

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