Creating a common polity: religion, economy, and politics in the making of the Greek koinon

In: Hellenistic culture and society, 55

Abstract

In the ancient Greece of Pericles and Plato, the polis, or city-state, reigned supreme, but by the time of Alexander, nearly half of the mainland Greek city-states had surrendered part of their autonomy to join the larger political entities called koina. In a study that tackles the rise of these so-called Greek federal states, the author charts a complex map of how shared religious practices and long-standing economic interactions facilitated political cooperation and the emergence of a new kind of state.