The economic and religious components of the Greek city-state

Abstract

This research deals with the economic and religious components of the ancient Greek city-state, the impact of the economic factor on the existence, continuity and advancement of the state in ancient Greek thought, and the impact of these economic and religious components on ancient Greek thought. The city-state, with its economic and religious developments, represents the field in which the Greeks excelled, as they made it, for natural and geographical reasons, the space in which political ideas mature and develop. The economic and religious aspects had a clear impact on the development and maturity of these political concepts. This is what we later noticed through the emergence of thinkers who put forward their visions about the ideal image of the city-state. The emergence of these thinkers was nothing but a manifestation of the city-state that was established and in which political values ​​expanded to allow the emergence of thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, and intellectual schools such as Epicureanism and Stoicism at a later time. The emergence and development of the city-state system among the Greeks was linked to the economic life, which was based on a number of powerful and ancient aristocratic families who owned the largest area of ​​fertile land, at a time when the common people settled in the less fertile lands on the edges of valleys and at the foot of mountains, or worked as farmers for wealthy families. On the other hand, the Greeks have had a close and delicate relationship since ancient times between political organization and religion. The need for mutual defense represented by the acropolis (the high city) or the walls that appear in a religious image, as each city and each family has its god, and all political systems and social measures have been based since the beginning of history on religious beliefs. During our study of the factors leading to this political development, we raise several questions about the motives for this system, so that each city has its castle as a center of political rule, and its temple as a center of religious rule, which is considered one of the most important components of the Greek city, and that there are small communities living in isolation in the country that do not know any religious or political connection between them, and each has its own region and borders.