14 Why did Greece develop city-states?

http://www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/background/9b_p1.html

Why did Greece develop city-states?
One major reason why ancient Greece was dominated by small city-states and independent towns, rather than by one all-powerful king, is its geography. The country's mountainous terrain, many isolated valleys, and numerous offshore islands encouraged the formation of many local centers of power, rather than one all-powerful capital. Another key factor influencing the formation of city-states rather than kingdoms was the Mediterranean. Such a calm and easily navigable sea provided the Greeks with an opportunity to found new colonies in times of crisis and overpopulation. It also appealed to their sense of heroism and adventure. Starting in the 8th century BC, colonies were eventually founded all over the Mediterranean, from Naples in Italy, to Marseilles in France, Cyrene in Northern Africa, Byzantium, close to the Black Sea, and numerous cities all along the western coast of modern-day Turkey. These colonies remained in contact with their mother cities, and acknowledged their 'blood ties' with them, but in most other respects they soon acted independently of them. A final reason behind the development of city-states was the Greek aristocracy, who acted to prevent any permanent monarchies from forming. They defended the political independence of their cities vigorously. As a result any individual who did manage to take over a city could only hope to do so for a short time as a 'tyrant' rather than a king. THE BIRTH OF THE CITY-STATE During the so-called “Greek Dark Ages” before the Archaic period, people lived scattered throughout Greece in small farming villages. As they grew larger, these villages began to evolve. Some built walls. Most built a marketplace (an agora) and a community meeting place. They developed governments and organized their citizens according to some sort of constitution or set of laws. They raised armies and collected taxes. And every one of these city-states (known as poleis) was said to be protected by a particular god or goddess, to whom the citizens of the polis owed a great deal of reverence, respect and sacrifice. (Athens’s deity was Athena, for example; so was Sparta’s.) Greek military leaders trained the heavily armed hoplite soldiers to fight in a massive formation called a phalanx: standing shoulder to shoulder, the men were protected by their neighbor's shield. This intimidating technique played an important role in the Persian Wars and helped the Greeks build their empire. Though their citizens had in common what Herodotus called “the same stock and the same speech, our shared temples of the gods and religious rituals, our similar customs,” every Greek city-state was different. The largest,Sparta, controlled about 300 square miles of territory; the smallest had just a few hundred people. However, by the dawn of the Archaic period in the seventh century B.C., the city-states had developed a number of common characteristics. They all had economies that were based on agriculture, not trade: For this reason, land was every city-state’s most valuable resource. Also, most had overthrown their hereditary kings, or basileus, and were ruled by a small number of wealthy aristocrats. These people monopolized political power. (For example, they refused to let ordinary people serve on councils or assemblies.) They also monopolized the best farmland, and some even claimed to be descended from the gods. Because “the poor with their wives and children were enslaved to the rich and had no political rights,” Aristotlesaid, “there was conflict between the nobles and the people for a long time.” COLONIZATION Emigration was one way to relieve some of this tension. Land was the most important source of wealth in the city-states; it was also, obviously, in finite supply. The pressure of population growth pushed many men away from their home poleis and into sparsely populated areas around Greece and the Aegean. Between 750 B.C. and 600 B.C., Greek colonies sprang up from the Mediterranean to Asia Minor, from North Africa to the coast of the Black Sea. By the end of the seventh century B.C., there were more than 1,500 colonial poleis. Each of these poleis was an independent city-state. In this way, the colonies of the Archaic period were different from other colonies we are familiar with: The people who lived there were not ruled by or bound to the city-states from which they came. The new poleis were self-governing and self-sufficient. THE RISE OF THE TYRANTS As time passed and their populations grew, many of these agricultural city-states began to produce consumer goods such as pottery, cloth, wine and metalwork. Trade in these goods made some people—usually not members of the old aristocracy—very wealthy. These people resented the unchecked power of the oligarchs and banded together, sometimes with the aid of heavily-armed soldiers called hoplites, to put new leaders in charge. These leaders were known as tyrants. Some tyrants turned out to be just as autocratic as the oligarchs they replaced, while others proved to be enlightened leaders. (Pheidon of Argos established an orderly system of weights and measures, for instance, while Theagenes of Megara brought running water to his city.) However, their rule did not last: The classical period brought with it a series of political reforms that created the system known as demokratia, or “rule by the people.”