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There can be no doubt that ancient Greece occupies an important place in connection with the development and fundamental understanding of the political in Europe and even beyond its borders. This pertains particularly to the so-called Greek classical period beginning with the military conflicts between the Greeks and the Persians to the coronation of the soon-to-be Macedonian King Alexander the Great – the time from around 500 to 336 BC. In this classical period, the Greek city states (Old Greek: polis (sing.); poleis (pl.)), including Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, achieved their uniquely great historical, political, and cultural importance of global significance, which would have been impossible in this fashion without the political organisation of the polis. And that occured – surprising as it may seem – in spite of many internal political conflicts within the city states themselves, as well as those among the city states, and external military threats from other regions of the Mediterranean.

In the classical period, there were likely more than 800 settlements that could be classified as a polis; their physical appearance differed greatly although, “in principle, the inner structure of the settlement space was the same.”¹ This usually consisted of an urban centre with a political, economic, and cultural infrastructure with the economic and/or political agora, the meeting place for trade and politics in the centre, bordering on administration and cult buildings, as well as the land surrounding the urban centre that was necessary for agricultural purposes. For example, all of Attica belonged to the polis of Athens and citizens living anywhere in Attica referred to themselves as Athenians even if they lived in a village far away from the main city itself.² It seems that Athens, the most influential polis, had a population of between 200,000 and 300,000 during the classical period with the majority of the inhabitants living in rural areas.³

The ideal of the “political self-administration and government by the citizens and striving for internal and external independence” was a characteristic of the political self-image of the city states.⁴ This shows that the goals of political autarchy and autonomy, which were inseparable from the striving for permanent economic stability to be able to provide the citizens with the goods that were necessary and desirable for life at the time, stood at the forefront of the endeavours of the city states. This suggests that there was active economic exchange among many city states. However, most poleis had their own army, their own legal system as well as their own calendar, and different priorities were even set in connection with the mythical cult within the individual city states.

The political self-image of the ancient city state of the classical era was founded on two historical-categorical facts of political practice (and, to a large extent, also of political theory) that have to be dealt with in any examination of the subject of political participation in antiquity: the division of the polis into free and unfree people as well as the paradigm of the free (male) citizen within the polis. In spite of “the great variety of social and state manifestations in ancient Greece”, the separation into free and unfree must be considered “a fundamental characteristic of any ancient political system”,⁵ and the same also applies to the limitation of civic rights and duties to the free (male) citizens of the polis.

From the political perspective, the differentiation between free and unfree was an everyday normality, a common political practice. The citizen was usually considered free and could lay claim to a number of civic rights for himself: political participation, acquisition of property, etc. However, these rights usually went hand in hand with duties: military service, political participation in accordance with the valid laws, the obligation to accept a public office, accompanied by the obligation to fulfil public offices to the benefit of the polis for a specific period, etc. On the other hand, those who were considered unfree, especially slaves in the so-called “state of unfreedom”, were granted no personal and political rights. But there were social differences among the unfree members of society, and the spectrum of the different activities and obligations was rather large. On the one hand, there were state slaves (official servants, watchmen, and labourers). On the other hand, there were house slaves, maids and manservants, who carried out a number of duties in the oikos (the household or family property) where they worked as kitchen help, tutors, nannies, family physicians, etc. Women and children also had absolutely no political rights, although the woman’s position varied from polis to polis. The rights – or, more precisely, lack of rights – of guests (the metics) and foreigners (the xenoi) were also defined differently in the laws of the individual city states.

In connection with the classical Greek era, it is necessary to bear the following in mind:⁶ (i) The dichotomy of the differentiation between “free” and “unfree” was a fact that was socio-politically accepted and unquestioned to a large degree in political practice even though there were occasional discussions about the (possible) justification for this separation in literature and philosophy. (ii) The differentiation between “free” and “unfree”, the designation of the “free citizen” in contrast to the “unfree slave”, not only reflected a formal legal status but also implied an ancient political self-awareness. It is already possible to identify this trace in the works of Aeschylus where the Athenians – after the Persians had asked them for the name of the ruler over the Athenians – were described as free citizens, the slaves of no master, and nobody’s subject.⁷ (iii) On the “unfree” side, the slaves worked in a number of areas and relationships, some of them confidential, which did not change the existing legal status in any way except that of the master’s claim of ownership. (iv) Slaves were defenseless to human trafficking; they were regarded as goods, as possessions, and as tools. (v) Unfree (men, women, and children) were not only expropriated legally and politically, but also – from the anthropological-philosophical perspective – in a worse position and seen in a different way than free people.