Perhaps the greatest problem in the study of the Greek poleis has been the way it has been perceived and treated as a solitary entity. No definition or study of the Greek polis has yet attempted to incorporate the fact that every historical Greek polis was part of a system of interactions between poleis, ethnê, koina and non-Greek communities and polities. The historical institutional environment of the Greek poleis has usually been discarded by recourse to two complementary strategies. The one is the well-known Occidentalist practice of evolutionism: different forms of polities are classified as steps in the evolutionary ladder, with ‘archaic’ forms of ethnê co-existing with progressive classical poleis and ‘old-fashioned’ Greek poleis co-existing with ‘modern’ Hellenistic kingdoms and koina. At the same time, the other Occidentalist discourse on the origins and history of the West creates a dichotomy between a Greece of the polis and an Orient, each with its own separate history, although they might from time to time interact in the well-known billiard game. One of the most malignant results of these approaches is the abandonment of political history to the most traditionalist histoire évènementielle. The static, evolutionist and reified definitions of the polis leave little space for a processual and theoretical approach to Greek political and military history.

Our aim here is to overcome these well-entrenched practices and view Greek poleis as part of a système-monde of polities in the wider context of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.