Editing Polis (section)

===Aristotle's polis===
[[File:Scaristotle.jpg|thumb|150px|Statue of Aristotle, founder of political science. Degree of similarity to the real Aristotle is not known.]]
Modern theorists of the polis are theorizing under a major disadvantage: their topic has not been current for thousands of years. It 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 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.

[[File:Ortigia dall'alto.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Ortygia, site of the original polis of classical Syracuse (now Italian speaking), the largest ancient Greek-speaking polis, larger even than Athens. The polis was a colony placed on the island in 733/732 BC as a [[Ancient Corinth|Corinthian]] enterprise under [[Archias of Corinth|Archias]].<ref>{{harvnb|Hansen|2004|p=19}}</ref> It began as a united polis with a constitution and subsequently synoecised gradually with villages of indigenous population on the mainland. Non-Greek, they were invited to join. This city began with a centralized city thrown suddenly up and acquired the districts later. There were no connections of kinship between the polis and the komai.]]
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 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Hansen|2004|p=70}}</ref>

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 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,{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Probably in the order of days or weeks, as the deal needed to be closed.}} is a logical necessity; otherwise, the citizenship recedes indefinitely into 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 the same or similar. It is a figure of speech, the most general instance being sunoik-eioun, "to be associated with",<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοικειόω | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aalphabetic+letter%3D*s111%3Aentry+group%3D157%3Aentry%3Dsunoikeio%2Fw}}</ref> its noun being sunoik-eiosis, the act of association.

A second verb, sunoik-ein,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοικέω | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsunoike%2Fw}}</ref> "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 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,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοίκια | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsunoiki%2Fa1}}</ref> 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 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,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοικίζω | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsunoiki%2Fzw}}</ref> "combine or join into one city", with its nouns sunoik-isis and sunoik-ismos,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοικισμός | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsunoikismo%2Fs}}</ref> "founding a city", from which the English scholarly term ''[[synoecism]]'' derives. All poleis looked back to 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Hansen|2004|p=141}}</ref>

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]] 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 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.<ref>II.15.</ref>{{refn|group=lower-alpha|"Theseus ... abolished the councils and magistracies of the minor towns and brought all their inhabitants into union with what is now the city, establishing a single council and town hall, and compelled them, while continuing to occupy each his own lands as before, to use Athens as the sole capital.... And from his time even to this day the Athenians have celebrated at the public expense a festival called the Synoecia, ...."}} 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.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | title=συνοικιστήρ | encyclopedia=A Greek-English Lexicon |author1=Liddell | author2=Scott | publisher=Perseus Digital Library |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsunoikisth%2Fr}}</ref>  Lippman applies two concepts previously current, the political synoecism and the physical synoecism, to events at the polis of [[Pleuron (Aetolia)]] described by [[Strabo]].<ref>{{cite journal | first=Michael B. | last=Lippman | title=Strabo 10.2.4 and the Synoecism of Newer Pleuron | journal=Hesperia | volume=73 | year=2004 | issue=4 | pages=497–512| doi=10.2972/hesp.2004.73.4.497 }}</ref> 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 the Newer were united with a political synoecism.