mined, and Stična in Slovenia, where iron was smelted and
forged. To the west, wealthy and powerful chiefs and their re-
tainers lived in hilltop settlements known as hill forts, such as
those at Maiden Castle in England, Mont Lassois in France,
and the Heuneburg in Germany.
By the time of the Roman invasion in the fi rst century
b.c.e. the inhabitants of western Europe were beginning to
expand some settlements into fortifi ed cities called oppida.
Described by Julius Caesar in his account of his campaigns,
oppida combined residential, industrial, commercial, and ad-
ministrative functions. Some of the most famous oppida are
found in France at sites like Alesia and Gergovia, while others
in Britain eventually became the Roman towns of Camulo-
dunum (modern Colchester) and Verulamium (modern St.
Albans). Th e Roman towns were laid out in a grid pattern,
with wooden shops and houses lining the streets. Th e Roman
style of towns and villages dominated until the Germanic in-
vasions of the 300s c.e. For protection nearly every village
had a small fortress, and during the Common Era churches
became standard in villages and towns.GREECE
BY SPYROS SIROPOULOS
Greece is a mountainous country. Its irregular topography
makes communication and trade diffi cult and led to the for-
mation of many small, independent political units. Driven by
social and economic necessity, some of these small communi-
ties united, which led to the formation of larger villages and
towns. In Politics Aristotle argued that the city was the natu-
ral culmination of a series of associations and is the only en-
vironment in which the human being can reach completion.
Th e fi rst union, he argued, was between man and woman and
then between master and slave; the result of these unions was
the household or family (oikia). Households came to realize
that to fulfi ll all their needs, they needed to consolidate into
a village (kome). Eventually various villages joined together
to form a city (polis), which ideally were self-sustaining, in-
dependent, and dedicated to meeting people’s need to live the
best possible life.
Th ucydides was also aware that long ago the Greeks lived
in wretched villages and the union of several of them led to
the formation of cities. Th is process, known as synoicism,
also occurred in Attica, when the people from the area con-
fi ned by the Parnetha, Penteli, and Hymettus mountains
were united in roughly 700 b.c.e. under the leadership of
Th eseus. Th e result was Athens, whose origins may explain
its plural name.
A deme was the smallest political division of a city-state.
Athenian demoi are the best documented, but demoi are
also found in other city-states, like Eretria, Cos, and Rhodes.
Th e Athenian politician Cleisthenes turned about 150 demoi
into the basis for the arrangement of citizenry into 10 phylai
(tribes). Archaeological excavations have shown that smaller-
sized townships and secluded cottages and farms existed allover Attica, but residence there was seasonal. Possibly small
unions of villages or farms were formed, but it is unlikely
that the modern equivalent of a big village, secluded in the
countryside, could be found in antiquity. Th e deme was the
ancient equivalent of the modern village or small town.
Th e economic character of Greece remained essentially
agricultural throughout the ancient period, which means
that the civic centers, irrespective of their size, depended on
the farming produce of the countryside. Many Athenians had
their summerhouses outside the walls of Athens, in the coun-
try or the popular suburbs of Agryle. Th e countryside of the
Attic Peninsula abounded with disparate cottages. For a long
time the noblemen of Athens had large cottages and farms
in the country, which gave them the right to excel in politics
because the amount of crop a man had determined his politi-
cal status. Th e statesman Pericles, of the fi ft h century b.c.e.,
had lands and houses in Attica, too, and he had promised to
bequeath them to the state unless the invading Laconians
burned them. In his Oeconomicus Xenophon describes viv-
idly the life of country noblemen and praises agriculture as
the source of all virtue, but he also hints at the sprawl of these
cottages, with people building them anywhere they fancied.
Most farmers in classical times would have lived in the
urban centers for protection and easy participation in poli-
tics. Fish was never the main course of the Athenian diet;
therefore, small fi shing villages around Attica never grew to
considerable size, unless they turned into important trade
and military centers. One example is Piraeus, which grew
from a modest village to the largest port city in Greece.
Many people preferred to live outside the urban cen-
ters. For instance, in his comedy Th e Clouds Aristophanes
describes the play’s hero, Strepsiades, as a farmer from the
deme of Acharnae who curses the fact that political obli-
gations force him to leave his village at the break of dawn.
Aristophanes makes clear the distinction between the asty
(urban center), which Strepsiades hates, and the deme, which
he longs for. In Boeotia it seems that people preferred to live
permanently in the countryside. According to Th ucydides,
before Brasidas was received at Amphipolis he “had con-
quered the fortunes of Amphipolis’ citizens who lived scat-
tered all over the vicinity”—a clear description of people
who resided in disparate farms and cottages rather than in
organized towns and villages.
Like Strepsiades, most villagers and townsfolk had to
commute to Athens if they wished to actively participate in
the aff airs of the state. Nevertheless, each deme maintained
some form of independent local administration. A demar-
chos was elected as the head offi cial and presided over a local
council. Th e deme possessed land and had local cults. Most
important, the deme maintained a list of its members, who
were offi cially registered aft er being on the list 18 years. Like
cities of the classical period, smaller communities pursued
the ideal of self-suffi ciency. However, to sell or buy products,
the villagers had to go to Athens. In Argolis (in the area of
the Peloponnese) scholars have observed that two of the area’s1092 towns and villages: Greece0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1092 1092 10/10/07 2:31:02 PM