Forms of Interaction among the City-States

Prior to the fifth century, the city-states conducted little trade among themselves, as each unit was virtually self-sufficient in the few necessities of life and the commodities needed to sustain a fairly simple technology. Governments gener­ally took no part in trading activities (except in some cases, to obtain revenues), and merchants faced numerous obstacles to successful transactions, including

³³H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks (Edinburgh: R. Clark Ltd., 1951),p. 94. ³⁴ Ibid., p. 76.

Historic International Systems

land and sea pirates, nonconvertible monies, and nonenforcement of debts among citizens of different city-states.³⁵ By the fifth century, however, the growth of population and merchant classes and the need to obtain military supplies prompted rapid development in commercial activity among the units. Commer­cial transactions aided the city-states in their internal development but also led to important rivalries. By the time of the Peloponnesian Wars, private mer­chants no longer operated on their own, but relied extensively on governments to provide protection and open new sources of raw materials and markets. Simul­taneously, many governments used trade to build up military resources and employed their merchants as agents through which they could place diplomatic pressure by threatening boycotts and embargoes on other city-states. The trades­people of Athens, backed by the powerful Athenian fleet, were particularly ag­gressive in developing markets abroad, and the Athenian government occasion­ally helped them exclude the trade of rival city-states, such as Corinth, from sources of supply. By the time Athens dominated large parts of the Aegean Sea and the Gulf of Corinth, no city-state could conduct extensive overseas trade without the tacit approval of Athenian authorities.

One form of interaction that prevailed even in the early period of the city-states was the meetings of Greeks at religious festivals and councils. The Greeks observed one basic religious form and created a number of institutions (called amphictyomes) to maintain the purity of the religion and provide means for organizing common festivals and sacrifices. The shrines at Olympia and ^/ Delphi offered centers for interaction of all Greeks. Religion, then, was one of the unifying elements in the system (truces were always declared during the Olympic games) and helped the Greeks appreciate their common inheritance and distinguish themselves from the "barbarians" with whom they had developed many contacts. The religion did not, however, lead to any political unification among the many units; indeed, as each city-state had its own deities, religious v symbols were often the basis for violence and conflict, not political cooperation. One of the major problems of the system was that despite the Greeks' propensity to fraternize with each other in social, religious, recreational, intellectual, and aesthetic matters, they were unable to carry these forms of cooperative behavior ^к into political and military relationships.

If the political units could cooperate in some questions of common concern, generally their interests conflicted and their governments resorted to the use of force to resolve those conflicts. War was a recurrent phenomenon of the system, and most peace treaties were drafted to remain in effect for only a specified time. Part of the explanation for the frequency of violence lies in the coupling of religious and political symbolism within the city-states. In the early period of the Greek system, wars arising over territorial quarrels often developed into ideological crusades involving the honor and glory not only of the city-state, but also of its particular deities. For this reason, many

³⁵ Hasebrook, Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece, p. 85.

46 Historic International Systems

,, wars were fought with terrible brutality, resulting in destruction of the defeated city-state and sale of its inhabitants into slavery.

The sources of war varied. In the early period, wars over religious issues were numerous; one example was the conflict between Athens and Crissa, which erupted into armed violence after the Crissans destroyed Apollo's temple at Delphi. Border conflicts frequently led to warfare, and conflicts arising out of internal revolts and civil wars, in which outside city-states intervened, were not uncommon after the fifth century. War was also used to obtain control over • strategic waterways and mountain passes. Athens used force several times to punish recalcitrant allies or city-states that had attempted to defect from the empire or Delian League to join the league of states led by Sparta. Finally, the search for booty and commercial advantage were important sources of mili­tary violence. Throughout the period, economic interaction became more promi­nent but did not always lead to cooperative forms of behavior. On the contrary,

' wars, conflicts, and rivalries tended to become more intense as the economic stakes involved in a quarrel increased. However, not every divisive issue could become a cause for a contest of arms, since wars were costly, destructive, and often indecisive. Other means of wielding influence had to be employed as well.

Among these was the practice of diplomacy, formal efforts by the govern­ment of one city-state to induce another city-state, through oral persuasion,

■ to act in the interests of the first. Diplomacy was conducted through the medium j/ | of the ambassador, usually an honored citizen with oratorical skills, who was sent to persuade governing officials of another city-state to make formal decisions by concluding treaties of friendship, alliance, or commerce. In wartime, ambassa­dors—including those sent by the "barbarians"—normally enjoyed diplomatic •J immunities and were used primarily at the end of hostilities to negotiate the terms of peace, deliver prisoners, and make arrangements for burial of war victims.

Major Rules of the Greek System

, The Greeks developed a number of rules, observed in treaties or custom, that * regulated diplomatic relations and the conduct of warfare. These gave recogni­tion to the independence and equality of the units and defined the limits of immunities for both diplomats and religious shrines in time of war; other rules pronounced standard procedures for declaring war, providing asylum, and con­ferring citizenship.³⁶ Since wars were often costly and indecisive, the Greeks 'also developed procedures for resolving conflicts short of force. Arbitration and conciliation, two procedures for interjecting third parties into diplomatic I bargaining situations, were among the important contributions the Greeks made

³⁶ Arthur Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Motions (New York: Macmillan, 1961); Coleman Phillipson, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Macmillan, 1911).

47 Historic International Systems

to subsequent diplomatic practices.³⁷ They occasionally employed these proce­dures for handling recurring boundary disputes, conflicts involving public debts, and quarrels arising from differing interpretations of treaties.³⁸ Normally, parties to a dispute honored the decisions of arbitrators, particularly since the arbitrators enjoyed great public prestige. Despite arbitral procedures, war and violence continued to be employed as means of settling conflicts, leading ultimately to the exhaustion of the most important city-states.

The fate of the Greek system was analogous to that of the Chinese: j Both succumbed, after a long period of bitter strife between two major blocs,(' to a superior force that, although part of the system, was considered to be "barbarian" and alien. For the Chinese states, Ch'in was the danger lurking behind the Wei River; for the Greeks, Macedonia was the external threat.

It could be argued that the development outside Greece of much larger territorial and administrative units commanding extensive military power made the Greek city-states obsolete, just as developing dynastic states in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe superseded the small independent walled cities of medieval Europe. By the third century B.C., no system based on such small j units as the city-states could remain isolated from the new giants. Larger political I units—first the Persians, succeeded by the Macedonians and ultimately the Ro­mans—made the city-states appear weak and paltry in comparison. Either the!,Greeks would have had to unite into one large territorial empire, participating as just one of several larger entities in the politics of the Mediterranean area, or they would be engulfed, as they were, by new states that had previously been merely peripheral actors in Greek life. The small republics and city-states of Renaissance Italy were similarly engulfed by the larger dynastic states of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

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