The present collection of articles by thirty-six leading Greek historians is devoted to one of the most ubiquitous phenomena of the ancient Greek world: the polis. The questions addressed in this volume range from Classical Athenian ideology to the institutions of the Argive democracy, to oligarchy in both theory and practice, to the federal constitution of Boiotia, and the political definition of the regions of Arkadia and Elis. Together, the contributions explore both differences and similarities between individual communities in the ancient Greek world; but what unites them all is their focus on two fundamental issues: the polis as a physical entity and as the focus of the religious and political life of its inhabitants. The choice of these two main themes has been determined by the desire of the editors and contributors alike to mark the sixtieth birthday of Mogens Herman Hansen, whose scholarship over the past thirty-five years has contributed greatly to our understanding of the phenomenon of the Greek polis.

Contributions by: H.-J. Gehrke (Freiburg), W. Burkert (Zürich), M.H. Jameson (Stanford), O. Murray (Oxford), S. Hornblower (London), P. Cartledge (Cambridge), P. Gauthier (Paris), E. Badian (Harvard) , P.J. Rhodes (Durham) et al.