Origins of States: The Case of Archaic Greece

Author(s): W. G. Runciman
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 351-377
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178506
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Origins of States: The Case of
Archaic Greece
W. G. RUNCIMAN

TrinityCollege, Cambridge

The plurals in my title carry two implications, neither of which I take to be

controversial, if they ever were: first, that there is more than one kind of
"original" state; second, that there is more than one way in which states
originate. There is, admittedly,continuingcontroversyover the definition of
"state." But for the purposes of this article, I assume that there are four
necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the emergence of a state from
nonstateor statelessforms of social organization:specializationof governmen-
tal roles; centralizationof enforceableauthority;permanence,or at least more
than ephemeral stability, of structure;and emancipationfrom real or fictive
kinship as the basis of relationsbetween the occupantsof governmentalroles
and those whom they govern. All four admit of differences of degree. But
they furnish an adequateframeworkwithin which the different processes by
which different states have come into being can be analyzed and compared.
Once, however, monocausaltheoriesof the decisive importanceof trade,or
warfare,or religion, or populationgrowthhave all been abandoned,what is it
about the origins of states which either ought to, or can, be explained in
general terms at all? Something, to be sure, has to happento bring about an
evolution from statelessnessto statehood.It is not an automaticsequence. But
it may be that once certain initial conditions are fulfilled, one or other of a
range of functionally equivalent processes is bound sooner or later to get
under way which will in due course bring one or more states into being. In
what follows, I shall argue that the critical transitiondepends on the condi-
tions for a cumulative accretion of the power available to the incumbentsof
prospective governmental roles; and I shall do so with particularbut not
exclusive reference to the case of archaic Greece.
The choice of Greece is for two reasons. First, the emergence of statehood
out of the unpromisingbackgroundof post-Mycenaeanpovertyand depopula-
tion is no less remarkablean example thanis affordedby the Near or FarEast,
or North India, or Peru, or Central America. Second, the Greek example

I am indebted to Sir Moses Finley, S. C. Humphreys, and G. S. Kirk for useful criticisms of
earlier drafts.
0010-4175/82/3156-7348 $2.50 ? 1982 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History

351
352 W. G. RUNCIMAN

carries the advantage of literary as well as archaeological evidence. It is true

that much of the literary tradition is of little value for reconstruction of the
events of the Archaic Age: the narratives recounted centuries later by Strabo
and Pausanias have to be heavily discounted in the absence of contemporary
corroboration. But it is only necessary to ask what we would not give to have
a Mesopotamian or Mesoamerican Thucydides and Aristotle, or indeed
Homer and Hesiod, to appreciate the value of literary materials, problematic
as their interpretation may be. Precise chronology, moreover, is not essential
to the argument. In order to document the critical stages of the transition from
statelessness to statehood, it is only the sequence, not the dates, which must
be right.1

PROTOSTATES AND SEMISTATES

A distinction is often drawn between states which originate independently of
the influence of preexisting states and states which originate through emula-
tion of, or coercion by, others. But to give priority to the analysis of primary
over secondary state formation is to ignore the likelihood that different an-
tecedent events may generate similar processes. As it is put by Ronald Cohen,
"primary and secondary states differ in the way they are set into motion: the
triggering events are dissimilar. But the internal interactions necessary to
transform a non-state society into one recognizable as a state do not vary
significantly from one kind of state to the other. "2 Furthermore, even where
states are recreated in conscious imitation of a remembered or mythologized
past, the same kind of transitional process may still be necessary and/or
sufficient for the attempt to succeed. The more important distinction is that
between what I propose to call "semi" and "proto" states. Both have
passed beyond the stateless stage of primitive hunter-gatherers, nomadic pas-
toralists, slash-and-burn cultivators, or such aggregations of autonomous pa-
triarchal households as Homer's mythical Cyclopes.3 But the difference be-

' It follows thatthe Iliad and Odyssey can be used in evidence even if it is agreed with A. M.
Snodgrass, "An HistoricalHomeric Society?" Journal of Hellenic Studies, 94 (1974), 114-25,
thatthey cannotpossibly reflect the institutionsof Greeksociety as they were at any one period. It
is no doubt true for the purposes of an archaeological historian such as J. N. Coldstream,
GeometricGreece (London, 1977), 18, that "Homer we cannot use." But for the purposesof a
sociologist, it is not. From this point of view, the discussion by M. I. Finley in The Worldof
Odysseus (London, 1956) remains fundamental, irrespective of whether he is right that the
Odyssey gives a picture of "the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., distorted here and there by
misunderstandingsand anachronisms"("The Worldof OdysseusRevisited," Proceedings of the
Classical Association, 71 (1974), 23).
2 Ronald Cohen, "Introduction," in
Origins of the State, Ronald Cohen and Elman R.
Service, eds. (Philadelphia, 1978), 12-13.
3 Odyssey IX. 112-15: They have no assembly and no customarylaw (themistes), but each
individualpatriarchlays down the law (themisteuei)for his own wives and childrenregardlessof
any other. The fact that no such actual society exists in the ethnographicrecorddoes not alter its
significance as an ideal type with which Homer and his audience contrastedtheir own societies.
But it is a contrastbetween civilization and the absence of it, not between statehoodand stateless-
ness.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 353

tween them is that the quasi-governmentalroles by which semistates are

structuredcarryno inherentpotentialfor progressin the directionof statehood
as defined above. In a protostate,by contrast, they do.
The difference can be well illustratedby a comparisonof CapetianFrance
with traditionalHawaii. Both are instances of what Aidan W. Southall calls
"segmentary states"4-societies, that is, in which there is no central coer-
cive, but only ritual, authorityand the roles constitutiveof the centralauthor-
ity are or might well be duplicatedat the peripheries.But the Hawaiianchiefs,
for all their apparentpower over theircommoners, were not and never became
kings: "they had not broken structurallywith the people at large."5 The
Capetiankings, on the other hand, for all their apparentpowerlessness over
their vassals, were engaged in rebuildinga central authoritywith the support
of specialized, permanent administrators.In Hawaii, no chief could ever
establish a state. Political roles were still constrainedwithin a frameworkof
kinship;force could not be effectively appliedat any distancefrom the centre;
the danger of rebellion was endemic; and the exaction of tributecould never
be organized on a basis adequateto sustain a bureaucracywhich could con-
tinue to exact it. But in eleventh- and twelfth-centuryFrance, a king was able
to retain and even extend the royal demesne, to raise an army independentof
contingents from his immediate vassals, and to draw on the services of a
household which included a seneschal, a constable, a butler, a chamberlain
and his staff, and a chancellor and clerks who "became almost exclusively
responsiblefor political decisions, royal grantsof privilege, and the determi-
nation of legal proceedings."6
In those examples, the evidence is sufficient to documentthe difference in
roles directly. But even where the evidence is archaeologicalonly, it is possi-
ble to identify protostatehoodin, for example, the evolution of San Jose in the
Oaxaca Valley; and even where, as for example in the case of the Shilluk of
the Upper Nile, there is a well-attested "kingly" role, it is possible to show
that this is a case of no more than semistatehood. The Oaxaca excavations
provide unmistakableevidence for a cumulative accretionof power: out of a
group of villages of roughly comparablesize, one can be seen to begin to
develop as a tradingand ceremonialcentre and from there to what can uncon-
tentiously be labelled a regional capital. Although no direct evidence exists
for the emergence of kings, magistrates, generals, ministers, or other gov-
ernmental roles, there can be no doubt whatever that, by the end of the
process, offices and positions necessary and sufficient for the administration
and maintenanceof a centralizedstate had evolved.7 Among the Shilluk, by

4 Aidan W. Southall, Alur Society (Cambridge,England, 1957), ch. 9.

Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (London, 1974), 148.
6 Ch.
Petit-Dutaillis, The Feudal Monarchy in France and England, E. D. Hunt, trans.
(London, 1936), 80.
7 See WarwickBray, "From Village to City in Mesoamerica," in The Origins of Civilization,
P. R. S. Moorey, ed. (Oxford, 1979), 78-102.
 354 W. G. RUNCIMAN

contrast,althoughthe powersandprivilegesofo the retharefully documentedin

the ethnographicrecord, there seems equally little doubtthatthey never accu-
mulatedto the point that the "structuralbreak," in Sahlins's phrase, could be
achieved. It is true that the reth was a real king to the extent that he was the
sole recognized hereditarymediator. But he had no coercive authority, and
any attempton his partto exercise it, whetheron his own accountor underthe
pressureof a colonizing power, met the immediateand effective oppositionof
the constituentsegments of the society.8
No such clear-cut and decisive examples can be cited from the ancient
world, since the evidence is not there to vindicate them. But the difference
between a semistate and a protostatecan still be broughtout by contrasting
Odysseus's Ithacaas Homer describes it with the Germanictribes of the first
centuryA.D. as describedin Tacitus's Germania. For this purpose, it does not
matterhow far either account may fall short of the standardsof the trained
academic ethnographer;9the similarities and differences as presented to us
still serve to illustratethe crucial differencebetween a society with a political
organizationstuck, as it were, midway between statelessness and statehood
and one in which statehood is already visibly embryonic in the accretion of
power available to the incumbentsof identifiablegovernmentalroles.
The two are initially similar not only in having passed the stage at which
political and kinshiproles are coterminousbut also in having evolved roles to
which authorityattacheswhich is superiorin both kind and degree to that of
the lineage head, the village elder or the leader of a hunting band. Fur-
thermore, both are societies in which brigandageis customaryand admired
("materia munificentiaeper bella et raptus" is very Homeric), and in which
the combination of heroic prowess and eloquence in debate ("auctoritas
suadendi" is just what Odysseus possessed to the full) is the basis of leader-
ship. But these similaritiesare overriddenby three all-importantdifferences.
First, landholding among Tacitus's Germans is on the basis of distribution
accordingto rankby villages as a whole, not distributionamong autonomous
oikoi.'0 Second, Tacitus's reges and duces, unlike the basileis who ruled
Ithaca, can commandgenuine militaryretinues:they are not dependenton the
support only of their own friends and servants,1 and the career of a

8
Cf. E. E. Evans-Pritchard,"The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan,"
reprintedin his Essays in Social Anthropology(London, 1962), 73, and P. P. Howell, "Observa-
tions on the Shilluk of the Upper Nile. The Laws of Homicide and the Legal Functions of the
Reth," Africa, 22:2 (1952), 106.
9 I do not, in other words, seek to dissent from the remarkof J. M. Wallace-Hadrill,Early
GermanicKingship in England and on the Continent(Oxford, 1971), 2, that "the Germania is
not only an unsafe guide to futureGermansociety, it also affords no solid groundfor generaliza-
tion about Germanicsociety at large of the historian'sown time."
10 Tacitus, Germania 26: "agri pro numero cultivorumab universis vicis occupantur, quos
mox inter se secundumdignationempartiuntur."
1 It is worthnoting how, when Telemachushas to find a crew, he can only do so among those
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 355

Maroboduuswas feasible among them in a way that it could not be for any of
the basileis of Ithaca, including Odysseus himself.'2 Third, a legal system is
in existence such that, according to Tacitus, there are fixed rules for the
settlementof feuds; it is permissibleto lay capitalchargesbefore the assembly
(at which the priests, ratherthanthe reges, have ius coercendi); andprincipes
chosen by the assembly are sent out with supportingretinuesto administerthe
law (jura) in the villages. Despite the similarities, therefore, there are no
governmentalroles in the Ithacancase which go beyond patriarchaldomina-
tion in the Weberian sense.13 But in the German case there are. It may,
admittedly, be relevant to point out both that Ithaca is an island and that the
plot of the Odyssey dependson Odysseusbeing absentfor twenty yearsduring
the minority of his only son, whereas Germanyby the first centuryA.D. was
ripe for secondary state formationin response to Roman pressure. But what-
ever the particularcauses behind it, a critical process has been at work in the
one case which has not been at work in the other. In the first, something will
have to happento bringaboutstatehood;in the second, somethingwill have to
happen to prevent it.
It might perhaps be objected that the distinction between semistates and
protostates is teleological-that the difference is merely between those
societies which do and those which don't become states. But if the diagnosis
is correctly made, it can in principle be predictedin advance which will do
which. It is a matterat once of the roles which have been evolved and of the
power available to attach to them. Sahlins contrasts the societies in which
prestigious huntersor big-men must "personally constructtheir power over
others" with chieftainships "properly so-called" in which men "come to
power,"'4 and it is this difference which is critical. When Herodotusis giving
his accountof the origins of the Macedonianroyal house, he talks of Perdiccas
as having acquired (ktesamenos) the "tyranny" or, in a later passage, the
"sovereignty" (VIII.137, 139), which is to say thatthe power was thereto be
come to, or taken. But in Homeric Ithaca, the power from which Laerteshas
abdicated, which Odysseus has not come back to take up, and which Tele-
machus is too young to assume, is of the kind which has to be built up and
maintainedby the personal prowess of the incumbentof the "kingly" role.

of his contemporarieswho are also his friends(Odyssey III.363), and when Antinousasks how he
achievedit (IV.642-44), the only alternativehe puts is thatof householdservantsof Telemachus's
own.
12 Maroboduus
appearsin Germania42 as a rex of noble genus, but his assumptionof a royal
title apparentlyrenderedhim fatally unpopular(Annals II.xliv: Maroboduumregis nomen in-
visumapud popularis). E. A. Thompson, The Early Germans (Oxford, 1965), 68, speaks of him
as a "permanentautocrat"who had "won despotic power," but in the event, his power, despotic
as it may have been, was temporaryonly.
13 Max
Weber, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft, 4th ed. (Tiibingen, 1956), II, 588: "Bei der
patriarchalen Herrschaft ist es die personliche Unterwerfungunter den Herrn...."
14 Sahlins, Stone
Age Economics, 139.
356 W. G. RUNCIMAN

Indeed, the description of Laertes living away from the town on his farm
"unable," as M. I. Finley puts it, "to rule iphi, by might"15is more reminis-
cent of an ousted Anuak headmanwho has retiredto the village of his mater-
nal kin where he has kept a separate set of gardens16than of a deposed or
abdicatedex-king in the full monarchicalsense. In more general terms, the
difference between a world in which semistates only are possible and one in
which protostate power is available to be come to or taken is implicit in
Thucydides's celebratedopening chapter.He had, to be sure, less knowledge
of the actual societies of Mycenaean Greece than we do. But he was fully
aware of the significance of the change from a world of nomadic tribes,
shifting allegiances, chronic piracy, and impermanentcultivation to one of
investible surpluses(periousia chrematon), effective navies, inheritedruler-
ships, and the permanentsubjectionof smaller towns by larger ones-or, in
other words, a world with the foundations on which roles constitutive of
statehoodcould be built.
A different objection might be that if protostates are defined by the
emergence of governmentalroles, then there can be no real difference be-
tween a protostate and a state. But the critical transitiondoes not happen
overnight; it is not a "phoenix-like birth"17by which a city-state, or any
other, is broughtinto being. It is truethat there can be instancesof secondary
state formation where the imitation or imposition of the institutions of a
central governmentis a single event ratherthan a gradualprocess. It is also
true that at one point in the course of a gradualprocess a lawgiver may codify
legal and governmentalpracticesinto whatthereafterremainstheirestablished
form. But it is still necessaryto allow for a stage correspondingto what Henri
J. M. Claessen calls the "transitional,"as opposed to the "inchoate," type of
early state.18If, after a generationor two, the structureof governmentalroles
is sufficiently stable for one group or faction of incumbentsto be replacedby
another(even if by violence) without bringingabout regressionto semistate-
hood or anarchy,then and only then can the society in questionbe designated
without qualificationas a state.

EMERGENCE OF GOVERNMENTAL ROLES

It is a safe assumptionthat the cumulativeaccretionof power in the handsof
the incumbentsof emerging, specialized, permanent,nonkin, governmental
roles will be mirroredin the languageof the society concerned. But there is a
15 Finley, Worldof Odysseus, 95.
16 Max
Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford, 1965), 125. For
Gluckman, as for some other anthropologists,the Anuak (and indeed the Shilluk) count as a
"state," but on a definition so broad as to include any form of minimal governmentof what on
the definition advancedhere is only a "semistate" kind.
17 Carl
Roebuck, "Urbanizationin Corinth," Hesperia, 41:1 (1972), 127.
18 Henri J. M. Claessen, "The Early State: A StructuralApproach," in The Early State,

Claessen and Peter Skalnik, eds. (The Hague, 1978), 589.

 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 357

danger of readingback into "their" terminology assumptionsabout political

institutionsand activities which they may not have held or even been capable
of formulating:the extent to which the power of a ruler can properly be
categorized as "political" as opposed to "economic," or "secular" as op-
posed to "religious," is as problematicfor the Mycenaean wanax as for the
Sumerian lugal19 and not always straightforwardeven in the much fuller
literarysources for the archaicGreek basileis. There is also the furtherdiffi-
culty that by the time the powers attachingto governmentalroles have been
clearly formulated,it is likely thatthe criticaltransitionwill alreadyhave been
made: the cosmoi and titai of the poleis of archaic Crete were magistrates
whose functions already presuppose a permanentcentral authoritywith the
capacity to enforce the rules and punishmentswhich the law lays down.20
Vocabulary alone, therefore, cannot by itself be used to distinguish semi-
from protostates.But where their termscan be tracedthrougha succession of
changingmeanings, it does at least documentthe sequence by which therehas
accrued to recognized governmentalroles a kind and degree of power such
that the critical transitionhas been made.
One example is the role of aisymnetes, which in the Odyssey (VIII.258) is
merely that of one of a number of umpires chosen to supervise the games
organized for Odysseus's benefit by the Phaeacians, but which in Aristotle's
Politics (1285a) is thatof an elected dictator.In between, aisymnetaiare to be
found in Miletus, Megara, Teos, and Cyme in what appear to be gov-
ernmentalroles, althoughthe sources unfortunatelydo not make it possible to
specify their powers at all precisely.21The case which Aristotle particularly
cites is that of Pittacus, who was elected aisymnetes at Mitylene in orderto
fight off the rival party which had been driven into exile. But irrespectiveof
the variations in their tenure, on which he specifically comments, Aristotle
makes it clear that aisymnetai were by definition elective. The role seems,
accordingly, to have developed from that of a judge or arbitratorchosen for a
particularoccasion to that of an elected magistrateto that of a dictatorwho
comes to power, in the first instances at least, by popular acclaim. The
obvious parallel is to the North Italiancities in the late Middle Ages, and to
the roles of consul, podesta, captain-general,and ultimatelysignore: all were
elective in some sense, but as the power attaching to them progressively
increased, there came a point at which tyrannywas the appropriatedescrip-
tion.22
More illuminatingare the changes in the role of basileus. Whetheror not

19 Cf. Joan Oates, Babylon (London, 1979), 25, and J. T. Hooker,

Mycenaean Greece
(London, 1977), 183.
20 See R. F. Willetts, AristocraticSociety in Ancient Crete (London, 1955), 105-8.
21 L. H.
Jeffery, Archaic Greece (London, 1976), 47, 158, 226, 238.
22
Cf. Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics(London, 1969), 231, and the quotationfrom
Machiavelli's Discorsi there cited.
358 W. G. RUNCIMAN

derived from the qa-si-re-u who appears as a subordinateofficial of some

kind in the Linear B tablets from Pylos, the basileis of post-Mycenaean
Greece can not be consideredtruemonarchssuch as the Mycenaeanwanakes.
Both Thucydides (I.13) and Aristotle (Politics 1285b) are quite explicit in
their belief that the archaic basileis occupied a hereditaryposition of leader-
ship whose powers were circumscribedby custom. In Homer, the basileis are
nobles, not kings in the propersense, and their poleis are communitieswith a
residentialcentre, not states. A "palace" like that of Alcinous does not make
its occupanta monarchany more than a wall and a place of assembly make a
village a capital. Nor are the dorophagoi basilies of Hesiod's Worksand
Days "bribe-devouringkings," although sometimes translatedas such; they
are nobles who receive gifts as mediators in local disputes.23The role of
basileus did, to be sure, survive the transition to statehood. But it then
became one governmentalrole among several, as in Sparta,or retainedonly
its ritualauthority,as in Athens. When the shadowy but impressive-sounding
Pheidon establishedhimself as ruler of Argos, then in Aristotle's description
(Politics 1310b), he turned from a basileus into a tyrannos. The word
basileus appearsin an inscriptionof the early sixth century from Chios in a
context which appears to relate to the acceptance of what were, by then,
bribes;but it appearsalongside the role of demarchos.24An inscriptionrelat-
ing to the foundation of Cyrene in the late seventh century designates the
founderas archagetes and basileus, which parallelsHerodotus'sdesignation
of him (IV. 153) as higemon and basileus; but the role here is that of an oecist
sent out from a mother-state.25Only much later, as in Macedonia, can
basileus be correctly translatedinto English as "king." When in the post-
Mycenaeanperiodthe termdesignatesthe single topmostrole, it is a semistate
role, and once statehoodhas evolved, the role which is designatedis no longer
the single topmost one.
The critical transitionis discernible also in the role of the "people." Al-
ready in the semistates of the Homeric poems there are not only identifiable
superordinateand subordinateroles but also distinctions between the public
and the private realms. When Telemachus arrives in Sparta, he at once tells
Menelaus that the business which brings him is private, as opposed to public
(demios) (Odyssey III.82; cf. IV.314); and it seems clear in both the Iliad
(XIII.669ff.) and the Odyssey (XIV.239ff.) thatthe decision to send a contin-
gent with Agamemnon to Troy was at least in part a public one. But the
membersof the Homeric demos are not quite citizens: theirrole in the assem-
bly is essentially that of an audience. Nor are they quite subjects: they are

23
Cf. M. L. West, ed., Worksand Days (Oxford, 1978), 151.
24
Russell Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of GreekHistorical Inscriptionsto the End of
the Fifth CenturyB.C. (Oxford, 1969), 14-17.
25 Ibid. 6-9.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 359

neitherconscriptednor taxed.26Nor is there epigraphicevidence for a demos

exercising a fully political function before the damioi of Dreros, in Crete, in
the second half of the seventh century, by which time the polis appearsalong
with them in the same inscriptionas a full-fledged state.27At the same time,
where there are identifiable subject peoples who are excluded from govern-
ment but who have thereforeto be controlledby a centralcoercive authority,a
whole range of new terms appearsby which to designate them. Again, it may
be dangerousto infer too much from the mere existence of a vernacularterm:
the Thessalianpenestai, whom Aristotle(Politics 1269a) likens to the Spartan
helots, may or may not have requiredthe same degree of centrallyorganized
policing, and the precise position of the Cretanapetairio and klarotai, or the
Argive gymnetes, or the Locrianwoikiatai, or the Maryandinianssubjectedto
the colonists of Heraclea Pontica, is at least as difficult to reconstructas the
precise role of aisymnetai or basileis. But they are equally symptomaticof a
common process.
Similarly revealing is the transitionof demiurgos, which in the Odyssey
(XVII.382-84 and XIX.135) covers prophets, doctors, builders, minstrels,
and heralds, but which by the classical perioddesignateseither magistrateson
the one hand or artisans on the other. This "very strange fact"28 poses a
problem in itself. But it seems clear that the Homeric demiurgoi, although
they may have travelled from place to place and thus occupied a social
position outside the normal structureof the communitieswhere they resided,
had quite high status. It is significant that heralds, who were virtual aristo-
crats, are included among them;29and there is a parallel to the status of
goldsmiths, in particular,in Anglo-Saxon England, who are known some-
times to have been rewardedby their patronswith grants of land.30It is not
thereforeas puzzling as at first appearsthat the term should have come to be
applied to those whose "demiurgy" was an oligarchicalmagistracyin a polis
which was makingthe transitionfrom arbitrationby a council of elders to the
exercise of legal-cum-politicaloffice.
26
Finley, Worldof Odysseus, 70, does at one point speak of "taxes and other dues to lords
and kings" in the Homeric world; but he subsequentlyqualifies this by the observationthat "no
word immediatelydenoting compulsion, like 'taxes' or even feudal 'dues,' is to be found in the
poems for paymentsfrom people to ruler, apartfrom the context of the special prerogativein the
distributionof booty and the meat of sacrificial animals" (p. 105).
27
Meiggs and Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 2-3.
28
KentaroMurakawa, "Demiurgos," Historia, 6:4 (1957), 386.
29
Ibid., 399. D. J. Mosley, "Diplomacy in Classical Greece," AncientSociety, 3 (1972), 14,
cites R. Numelin, The Beginningsof Diplomacy (London, 1950), 132, on the heraldsof the Fijian
Mata-Ki, "whose functions correspond almost exactly with what we know of the Homeric
heralds." L. H. Jeffery, "Demiourgoi in the Archaic Period," Archeologica Classica, 25-26
(1973-74), 319, commentsthat "not only heraldsandjudges, but theoroi, proxenoi, presbeisand
the like might all be termed 'workers'of this sort;for before the rise of governmentby democracy
all such public duties needed a social backgroundof leisure, wealth and office-holding...."
30
Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English Society, 2d ed. (Harmondsworth,England,
1954), 105.
360 W. G. RUNCIMAN

On this point, too, Homer can be cited as evidence. In the arbitration

depicted on the shield of Achilles (Iliad XVIII.497-508), the disputantsare
seeking a resolutionof theirdisputeat the handsof a wise man (istor), and the
elders (gerontes) standup to speak in turnas the people (laoi) cheer on one or
other side. It is a scene which can be paralleled almost exactly from the
Nyakusa of what is now Tanzania, where arbitrationsare carried out by
appointed chiefs and "great commoners" chosen for their experience and
standing but where the hearing is public and the outcome is observably
swayed by public opinion as expressed in the shouts of disapprovalvoiced in
court.31The elders or chiefs in such semistates cannot yet be called the
incumbentsof judicial roles. They are, at most, experts in precedent or ac-
knowledged repositories of customary law, or what Plutarch(Theseus 25)
calls nom6n didaskaloi and hosion kai hier6n exegetai. Only when a perma-
nent centralauthoritycan count on the implementationof its decrees can law,
and statehoodwith it, be said to have been reached, and only then does there
follow the furtherdifferentiationand specializationof roles which turns thes-
mothetai from lawgivers into a body of junior archonsspecially chargedwith
collating and systematizingthe laws (Aristotle, ConstitutionofAthens III.4.).
Finally, the transitionis visible in the field of internationalrelations. In the
Homeric world, these are conducted, such as they are, through "guest-
friendship" (xenia) between one noble or chief and another acting in
semipublicroles: the practiceis partlya means of securingalliances but partly
also one of ensuringmarriagesfor childrenand a place of refuge in the event of
dispossession or exile (cf. Solon, Fr.13). Proxenia, on the other hand, is a
properly consular role which was a natural development in the context of
systematic and continuing relationshipsbetween emerging states. It can be
documentedfrom about the last quarterof the seventh century in an inscrip-
tion from Corcyra which, in the comment of Meiggs and Lewis, "has a
fascinating tension between its Homeric echoes and the political circum-
stances of a new age. "32 The inscriptioncommemoratesa certainMenecrates,
who had representedthe Corcyreansin West Locris, and it provides firm
evidence not only for trading relations but for the role of a damos as the
citizen body whose representativeand benefactorthe proxenos was.

FORMS OF POWER
But if the roles constitutiveof statehoodare a matterof the power attachingto
them, that power is a matterof the sanctions with which to enforce it. How-
ever many different "triggeringevents" may set the criticalprocess off, there

31 See Godfrey Wilson, "Introductionto Nyakusa Law," Africa, 10:1 (1937), 34.
32
Meiggs and Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 5. M. B. Wallace, "Early Greek Pro-
xenia," Phoenix, 24:3 (1970), 192, suggests that the "political precocity" implied by the
Meiggs and Lewis datingis a reasonfor loweringthe date. But the sociological point still stands.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 361

are only as many ways for states to originate as there are means for the
incumbents of specialized, permanent,nonkin governmentalroles to secure
the obedience of their subjects and/or fellow-citizens. The question raises
wider issues of sociological theory than can be accommodated within the
limits of this article. But it is central to my argumentabout the cumulative
accretion of power, and I accordingly propose to assume without further
discussion that there are three and only three forms of power, and therefore
varieties of sanction, on which the roles constitutive of statehood can be
based. These correspondto the familiardistinctionbetween the economic, the
social (in the sense of social status) and the political. That is to say, the
powers of any and all rulersderive from some combinationof (1) possession
of or control over the sources and distributionof wealth and therewith the
ability to offer or withhold the means of subsistence, (2) attributionby sub-
jects and/or fellow-citizens of superiorhonour or prestige, whether deriving
from sacred or secular personal or institutionalcharisma, and therewiththe
ability to attractand retaina following, and (3) commandof the technical and
organizationalmeans of physical coercion and therewiththe ability to impose
obedience by force.
Now there are, in the literatureon archaic Greece, rival accounts of the
emergence of states which deliberatelyassign priorityto one or the otheron a
priorigrounds. A distinctivelyMarxianaccountcan be found, for example, in
the work of George Thomson,33for whom the story is one of neolithic self-
sufficiency followed by the introductionof metal and thereforethe extraction
of surplus value placed in the hands of chiefs who, by waging wars of
conquest with superiorweapons and tilling their demesne lands with captured
slaves, arrive at the stage of a landed aristocracy engaged in commodity
exchange and productionfor profitratherthan use. A distinctivelyDurkheim-
ian account can be found in the work of Louis Gernet,34for whom it is a
story of Homeric priest- (or magician-) kings, aristocraticgene, and peasant
communitiesheld togetherby communalfestivities whose conscience collec-
tive evolves the legal and political institutionsof the polis in response to a
largely religious anomie. A distinctively Weberianaccount can be found in
the work of Weber himself,35 for whom it is a story of the evolution of
militaryorganizationand technique, the subordinationof the demiurgoito the
military needs of a warriorclass, and the consolidation of that class through
the process of synoecism as rulers of the emergentpoleis. No doubt all three

33 George Thomson, Studies in Ancient Greek Society: The Prehistoric Aegean (London,
1949), esp. 353-58.
34 Louis Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grece antique (Paris, 1968), esp. I, 2 ("Frairies an-
tiques") and IV, 1 ("Les Nobles dans la Grece antique"). See also S. C. Humphreys, "The
Work of Louis Gernet," History and Theory, 10:2 (1971), 172-96.
35 Max Weber, "Agrarverhaltnissein Altertum," in his Gesammelte
Aufsitze zur Sozial-und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte(Tiibingen, 1924), esp. 93-128.
362 W. G. RUNCIMAN

are valid in part. No doubt, too, they may apply with particularrelevance to
particularsocieties at particularstages in their history. But the cumulative
accretion of power can be nontrivially cited as critical to the transition to
statehoodbecause, among other things, the three varieties of sanctions rein-
force one another.Whatis more, no protostatewill survive into statehoodif it
rests on one form of power alone. It is the combination of economic pro-
ductivity, ideological legitimacy, and militaryorganizationwhich is decisive.
Once two negative preconditionsare fulfilled-the absence of fragmentation
on the one hand or conquest on the other-any trigger which augments the
economic or ideological or military power available to potential rulers will
also augment the other two.
The point is perhapsparticularlyworth making with regardto social-cum-
ideological sanctions. There is nothingnovel in the assertionthat increases in
disposable economic surplus and in the means of destruction,as opposed to
production,reinforceone another:in the dictum which Dio (XLII.49) attrib-
utes to Julius Caesar, it is the money obtained by soldiers and the soldiers
obtainedby money which between them create, preserve, and add to dynas-
teias. But legitimacy is no less importantthan money and/or soldiers to the
ability of a protostateto achieve the permanencewhich makes it a state. The
deliberatequest for supernaturalor dynasticprestigeby those who have taken
or come to economic and political power can be documentedacross an enor-
mous range of places and times. Although not all incumbentsof monarchical
roles claim divine descent (as the Spartankings did and Herodotusappearsto
accept at face value), a claim to more than ordinarydescent is commonplace;
and a long list could be put togetherof rulers each of whom, as Marc Bloch
put it in speakingof Pepin in 751, "eprouva le besoin de colorer son usurpa-
tion d'une sorte de prestige religieux. "36 Penelope's suitors in an Ithaca
already at the semistate stage had the means to murder Telemachus and
Laertesand then fight it out for the kingship among themselves, yet they not
only refrained from doing so but sought and acknowledged the legitimacy
which would accrue to the successful aspirant to the hand of Odysseus's
widow. This may be one of the points on which the Odyssey as a work of
fiction is a poor guide to the sociological realities of contemporaryGreece.
But the respect accorded to good birth-the agathon genos of Odyssey
XXI.335 or agathon haima of IV.611-is sufficiently well attested both in
Homer and elsewhere37that it cannot be discounted as a source of power
independentof but contributoryto the power attachingto ownershipor control
of land and the capacity to defend or add to it by force of arms. The pedigrees

36 Marc
Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges(Strasbourg, 1924), 68.
37 It
may be objected that the surviving literarysources, with the sole exception of Hesiod,
reflect an aristocraticbias. But complaints like those of Theognis (54-58) about the rise of
base-bornparvenusare nonetheless evidence of a time when greaterpower did accrue to birth.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 363

may have been short, as they were bound to be, and there is no way of
calculating the relative importanceof superiordescent in securing the obedi-
ence of nonkin followers or dependents. But there is a ready parallel in the
type of Anglo-Saxon king depicted by Bede, whose command over his fol-
lowers rests partlyon birthand partlyon personalprowess.38Statehoodis still
embryonic. But for that very reason, the economic and military resources
available to the incumbentof a protostaterole may be no more importantthan
his ability either to attach or to carry over to it a legitimacy deriving from
genealogical or charismaticprestige.
The threefold characterof the accretion of power sufficient for statehood
can be illustratedin some detail from two instructivecase studies in the recent
anthropologicalliteraturewhere the process can be much more directly ob-
servcd than anywhere in archaic Greece-Cohen's study of the Pabir of
northeasternNigeria39and Maurice Bloch's study of the Merinakingdom of
Madagascar.40The Pabir, as Cohen describes them, evolved in the direction
of statehoodunderpressurefrom a powerful neighbour.Previouslythey were
a semistatein which land was owned by village founders, lineage groupswere
stratifiedonly to a limited degree, and the highest-rankingrole was no more
powerful than that of an Homeric basileus: "The village chief who later
became king was not appreciablydifferentfrom others."41 The initial move to
protostatehoodwas triggeredby the awarenessof a need for defence against
Boro raiders, and thus the constructionof walled and moated settlements.
But as soon as this was done, not only was land use intensified(and segmenta-
tion thereby made less attractive), but the supernaturalpowers and priestly
role of the settlementheadmanbecame much more elaborate.The royal burial
groundbecame a national shrine, and queenship, which in the previous stage
had been a focus of local segmentation,came to symbolize the subordination
of subgroups to the central government. The roles of the heads of leading
lineages were transformedfrom thatof council elders to thatof titled nobles of
the realm, who then evolved into an endogamous class of governmental
officials. Not only did the king by that time fulfill all three of what Aristotle
(Politics, 1285b) defined as the traditionalfunctions of a basileus-military
leadership, performanceof collective rituals, and adjudicationof disputes-
but, although there was no system of taxation as such, he received regular
tributesufficient to enable him to organize raidingand/ortradingexpeditions

38 Ecclesiastical History III.14 on King Oswine of Northumbria;cf. both Thompson, Early

Germans, 58, and Wallace-Hadrill,Early GermanicKingship, 85-86.
39 Ronald
Cohen, "State Foundations:A Controlled Comparison," in Cohen and Service,
Origins, esp. 147-50.
40 Maurice Bloch, "The Disconnection between Power and Rank as a Process: An Outline of
the Development of Kingdoms in CentralMadagascar," Archives Europeennesde Sociologie,
18:1 (1977), esp. 110-20.
41
Cohen, "State Foundations," 157.
364 W. G. RUNCIMAN

on his own. Ultimately, by the mid-nineteenthcentury,the Pabirof Biu united

with other Pabir towns to drive out the Fulani; and a full-fledged expan-
sionist state was in the making when the British arrived.
In the Madagascarexample, the semistates(Bloch calls them "pre-take-off
states") of the earlier period were petty kingdoms based on fortified
mountaintopcamps from which the "kings" and their followers exercised
such dominationas they could over the peasants of the valleys, from whom
they exacted regular "gifts" in returnfor protection. Bloch comments that
"the multiplicity of these kingdoms is quite extraordinaryand it is matched
only by their impermanence."42The transition to protostatehoodcould be
made only when some of these petty kingdoms were able to achieve a military
superiorityover their rivals for long enough to involve themselves directly in
building dikes and drainingmarshes. The higher productivitythereby made
possible triggeredin its turna need both for increasedcorvee or slave labour
and for a permanentbureaucracylocated in a centralcapital. The rulersof the
resulting protostatessought at the same time to establish their legitimacy by
inventing a rule of succession to justify their title to the spiritual-cum-
traditionalauthority(hasina) held in the Malagasyideology to attachto ruler-
ship. Yet despite the dramaticincrease in their power and the creationof the
roles of administrativeofficers to implement it, the stability necessary for
statehood proved difficult if not impossible to achieve. Warring factions
within, and alliances between hostile neighbours without, checked the con-
tinual expansion which the rulers requiredto maintaintheir supremacy, and
many of them were driven back to their fortified mountaintops.It was not
until the Merinakingdom of Adrianampoinimerinaobtained preferentialac-
cess to Europeanfirearmsthat it was able to create a state which, by 1890,
embracedthe whole of Madagascar.
Both of these examples, accordingly,point the same threefoldmoral. First,
it is not the particulartriggeringevent which is decisive for the transitionfrom
semi- to protostatehood,but the process by which a sufficient accretion of
power is generated. Second, that accretion of power is a function of the
mutually reinforcing effect of sanctions of all three kinds-economic, mili-
tary, and ideological. Third, the process is as effective when triggeredby the
decision of a semistateto defend itself againstaggressionas by a decision that
it will become an aggressor itself.

FROM SEMISTATES TO PROTOSTATES: DARK AGE TO ARCHAIC

GREECE

But how was the critical transitioneffected in the case of Greece? It was not
only widespread, but rapid. It had still not occurredin the ratherbackward
Boeotia of Hesiod as depicted in the Worksand Days. "Polis" as used there

42 Bloch, "Disconnection," 113.

 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 365

cannot, any more than in Homer, be construedas designatinga city-state. The

local basileis have not been replaced by tyrantsor magistrates.There is, of
course; warfare between poleis (line 191), but nothing that could be called
conscriptionor taxation,or internationalrelations. Hesiod's word for the army
of a polis is still the Homeric stratos or "host" (line 246). Law, or rather
predroit, is still purely customary:there is no code or constitutionto which
Hesiod appealsin his denunciationof the judgmentsof the unjustbasileis, but
only the hope that supernaturalmisfortunemay befall them. There is a wide
disparity in power between basileis and smallholders, but the power is not
exercised throughthe incumbencyof central specialized governmentalroles:
"state" can only be used, if at all, in inverted commas.43Yet by 700 B.C.,
which is the approximatedate given to Hesiod, statehoodhad unmistakably
arrivedin some partsof Greece, and it spreadwithin a relatively shorttime to
dozens or even hundredsof separatecommunities.
One necessary condition was population growth. But to say this is not to
say very much. No reliable demographicstatistics can be reconstructed.The
evidence from datableburialssuggests that therehad been a remarkablysharp
increasein birthsbetween the second and fourthquartersof the eighth century
in the Argolid, Attica, and Athens itself.44 But there is no comparableevi-
dence for other parts of Greece where states also emerged at about the same
time, such as Corinth and Sparta, and there is no way of establishing that
populationgrowth causes states to emerge ratherthan being itself a common
effect of other causes.45All that can safely be said is that before the eighth
century Greece appears to have been relatively depopulated and that until
there was some substantial increase in numbers relative to land area the
possibility of statehoodcould hardly arise at all.
Much more significant is the relative stability which itself contributesto
populationgrowth. Whateverwere the causes of the Mycenaeancollapse, and
whoever may have been the "Dorian invaders," the migrations and distur-
bances which accompaniedit came to an end. No doubt there was continuing
dangerof brigandageor piracy (cf. Thucydides1.7). But conditions in which
the advent of an emerging protostatewould merely invite the fatal depreda-
tions of semi-nomadic neighboursno longer obtained. It is true that before,
during, and after the transitionto statehoodthe obstinateparticularismof the
multifariousseparatecommunities, both in the islands and on the mainland,
broke out time and again into war. But these wars were not on such a scale as
to result in depopulationor anarchyand a consequentregression from proto-
to semistatehood. The communities of archaic Greece remainedfor the most
part settled and autonomouswithin stable naturalboundaries. To say this is
43 As is done by W. G. Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy (London, 1966), 58.
44 Anthony M. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece (London, 1980), 23, fig. 4.
45 Cf.
Henry T. Wright and Gregory A. Johnson, "Population, Exchange and Early State
Formationin SouthwesternIran," AmericanAnthropologist, 77:2 (1975), 284.
366 W. G. RUNCIMAN

not to invoke geography as furnishingin itself the explanationof statehood.

The political frontierswhich emerged with statehood cannot be mapped di-
rectly onto the most obvious physical dividing lines: even in the Aegean, there
might emerge more separatestates in a small island (like Ceos) than a large
one (like Chios). But in the course of their emergence they were not merely
sparedthe irruptionof a furtherwave of "Dorians," "Sea People," or other
predators from outside. They also engaged in hostilities with one another
which were sufficiently frequentand serious to encouragea sense of political
identity without being so destructiveas to inhibit the emergence of states.
At the same time, and no less significantly, the geography of Greece
discouraged the dispersal of populations and consequent fragmentationof
power. Therewas not, as over most of Africa, the almost limitless availability
of free land which made dispersal the obvious response to the pressure of
numberson cultivable area.46Nor was there an insulargeographylike that of
Hawaii to tempt would-be heads of states into quasi-imperialcentralization
while at the same time helping to ensuretheirfailure. Nor were the inhabitants
of the semistate poleis nomadic pastoralistswhose economic resources con-
sisted of herds and tents which could be transportedelsewhere at will.47
Greece was an areaof sharp "ecotones"48-that is, boundariesbeyond which
migrantswill find their circumstancesless favourablethan if they stay where
they are, even at the cost of political subjection.
The one otheroption which the archaicGreeksdid have open to them, and
frequentlytook, was colonization;and indeed it is arguablethat, by imposing
a requirementfor conscious political organization, colonization reciprocally
influenced the institutionsof the communitiesfrom which the colonists were
sent out. But colonization proper-as opposed, that is, to mere unorganized
migrationor the settlementof tradingposts-presupposes that the transition
from semi- to protostatehoodhas alreadybeen made. The decision to appoint
an oecist, to recruitor conscripta suitablebody of citizens, and to allocate the
land of the chosen site in accordancewith a formulalaid down in advancecan
hardlybe takenby Homericor Hesiodic basileis who have not yet evolved the
institutionsnecessary for enforceable central decision making. Nor does the
mere fact of urbanizationin the sense of residential concentrationinside a
defensible perimetersuch as excavatedat Old Smyra or Ischia or Zagora(on
the island of Andros) either suggest or require permanentspecialized gov-

46
Cf. Jack Goody, Technology, Traditionand the State in Africa (London, 1971), 29.
47 Cf. P. C. Salzman, "The Proto-State in Iranian Baluchistan," in Cohen and Service,
Origins, 135: "Each baluchi sardar, therefore, led a population of nomadic tribesmen who
controlledtheirown capitalresourcesthe majorpartof which, the herds, was mobile. The sardar
had virtuallyno economic patronageto dispense and had little way of coercing mobile followers
with independentresources. Even if a sardar had managedsomehow to form a militaryarmloyal
to him alone the othertribesmencould have massed in opposition, or else could have loaded their
camels and disappeared."
48 See Marvin Harris, CulturalMaterialism (New York, 1979), 101-2.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 367

emmental roles. It may well be true that archaic Greek colonization, like
archaicGreek warfare,did somethingto help and nothingto hinderthe evolu-
tion towards statehood. But it was not, any more than warfare(or population
growth, or trade, or religion) "the" cause of it. The critical process, in
colonial and parentcommunities alike, was the accumulationof power avail-
able to the incumbents of the governmentalroles which were coming into
being.
Uncertainas the details of the chronology remain, there is clear evidence
that over roughly speaking the course of the eighth century B.C. there was
indeed a mutuallyreinforcingaccumulationof power of all three kinds. Eco-
nomically, it has plausiblybeen hypothesizedthatthere was a significantshift
from stock rearing to arable farming which could be expected not only to
supporta largerpopulationbut also to endow the more fortunatehouseholds
with a significantdisposable surplus.The model granariesalreadyto be found
in Athenian and other graves of the second half of the ninth century, or the
remains of a circular granaryexcavated at Old Smyrna, cannot be used to
make any quantitativeinference about land use, any more than can the refer-
ences to ploughingand harvestingin Hesiod or Homer, and thereis not (or not
yet) the kind of archaeologicalevidence which might prove conclusive.49But
as nomadismand pastoralismdeclined, which they evidently did, there was a
progressive shift to agriculture;and if populationwas simultaneouslyincreas-
ing, intensification of land use is the natural concomitant as well. Fur-
thermore,there is tangible evidence for a periousia chremat6nin the sudden
upsurge in metallic dedications. The table assembled by Anthony Snodgrass
to show the increasefrom the eleventh and tenthcenturiesthroughto the later
eighth and seventh must, with even the most sceptical allowance for possible
sources of distortion,be admittedas evidence for the "majorrise of wealth in
metals, both in toto and per capita" for which he argues.50
Ideologically, the transition is most readily visible in the appearanceof
temples associatedwith the worshipof a patrondeity of the communitywhich
constructsthem. A temple cannot by itself be taken as evidence of statehood:
a semistatemight house a cult statuein a buildingconstructedfor the purpose,
and a pan-Hellenic sanctuarysite might well be able to attractthe wealth
sufficient for the constructionof a monumentaltemple and adjoiningtreasury.
But by the time of, say, the temple of Apollo at Corinthearly in the seventh
century, the scale of construction is such as to testify to a qualitative dif-
ference not only in the community's capacity to organize the labour and
materialresources, but also in its sense of civic pride. The date of the earliest
temples remains uncertain, and recent preliminaryreportsof a long, apsidal
tenth-centurymonumentalbuilding at Lefkandimay requiresome revision of

49 See Coldstream, Geometric Greece, 313-14.

50
Snodgrass, Archaic Greece, 53.
368 W. G. RUNCIMAN

earlier assumptions. But by 700 B.C., at any rate, there are over seventy
known places of worship of which nearlyhalf have temples.51Moreover, the
late eighth century was also a period of sudden and substantialincrease in
dedicationsat tombs and sanctuaries.Explanationis complicatedby the coin-
cidence of their distributionwith the circulationof the Homeric poems. But
this does not underminethe inference from the rise of hero-cultsto the quest
for legitimacy in the occupation of a given locality-a quest which sub-
sequentlyreachedits extremein the literalimportationof the hero Melanippus
from Thebes into Sicyon by its tyrantCleisthenes in orderto transferto him
the honours previously paid to Adrastus (Herodotus V.67). Unfortunately,
there is no literaryevidence bearing directly on the transitionfrom personal
allegiance to civic patriotism:Tyrtaeus, who is generally accepted as having
written towards the end of the seventh century, clearly celebrated the new
civic virtues, but by then the transitionto a hoplite state was complete. It
would not, however, be warrantedto argue that the transitionwas simply a
function of increased population density in adjoining communities and the
rivalries therebygeneratedbetween them. It was a function also of religious
sentiments and practices already existing in Dark Age Greece which were
available to be fostered and in due course manipulatedby rulersmoving from
the personal or kin-based leadership of retainers and followers to the cen-
tralizedcommandof subjectsor fellow citizens themselvesawareof a patriotic
attachmentto their common institutions.
Finally, the improvementsin armourand tactics known to have taken place
towardsthe end of the eighth century furtheraugmentedthe power available
to the rulersof the emerging protostates.The "hoplite revolution," if such it
was, fell laterthanthe periodwithin which the transitionfrom the heroic style
of Homeric warfarebetween uncoordinatedleaders and their followings had
alreadytaken place. But the phalanxmay well have been devised before 675
B.C.,52 and the archaeologicalevidence leaves no doubtthatby the last quarter
of the eighth centurythe hoplite shield, the "Corinthian"helmet, and the new
type of body-armourhad all made theirappearance.It is also possible to see in
the fragmentaryevidence for the "Lelantine" war fought between Chalcis
and Eretriasome time before the turnof the centurythe signs of an incipient
evolution both in tactics and in internationalrelations. Thucydides (I.15),
althoughhe refersto this conflict in a context suggestive of a boundarydispute
between neighbours,at the same time remarkson its significance in bringing
allies in on both sides. Hesiod (Works and Days, lines 651-59), who went
over to Euboea to compete in the funeralgames for Amphidamas,a basileus
(as he is designated in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod) of Chalcis, makes
the occasion sound very Homeric. But the later reference by Archilochus

51
Coldstream, Geometric Greece, 317.
52 J. Salmon, "Political Hoplites?", Journal of Hellenic Studies, 97 (1977), 90.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 369

(Fr.3) to "spear-famouslords of Euboea" and their style of fighting perhaps

implies retrospectiveallusion to a change to what had become normal in his
own time. Euboeawas relatively advancedin metallurgy,and Chalcis had the
reputationfor bronzeworkingimplied by its name. Aristotle (Politics 1289b)
refers to the Chalcidians and Eretrians,along with some of the Ionians, as
using horses in battle, which is generally held to be evidence for mounted
aristocratswho descended from their horses to fight on foot ratherthan for
cavalry engagements as such, and is hardly compatible with hoplite tactics.
But it is not incompatiblewith a scale of warfaresuch as is suggested by an
inscription noted by Strabo (X.1) from a neighbouring shrine of Artemis,
which would call for a degree of organizationexceptional for the time. The
details evidently are, and are likely to remain, conjectural. But these years
unmistakablywitnessed a significant change in armour and tactics and the
emergence of a decisively augmentedcapacity for aggression and/ordefence
and/orthe subjectionof perioecic territories.
It is, perhaps, plausible to allow also for some exogenous influence from
the states which were alreadyin existence elsewhere and which could become
increasingly well known as trade with both Egypt and the Levant began to
expand after its virtualcessation in the eleventh and tenth centuries. But there
had still to have taken place the accumulationof power within the Greek
communities without which any imitation of alien examples of statehood
would have been impossible. The decisive difference from the previous cen-
tury is that, in the absence of conquest or fragmentation,sufficient power
could begin to accumulatein the mutuallyreinforcingways just summarized.
Only two possibilities were then open: either a single ambitiousor prominent
basileus could take the power into his hands and rule as monarch, dictator,
tyrant, or commander-in-chief,or the power could be sharedamong a group
of nobles througha division of labour among archontes, prytaneis, cosmoi,
demiurgoi, or some other form of collegiate magistracy. It is true that there
may be a division of political labourin semistatestoo: in New Guinea, "there
are shrine priests, hunt leaders, advisers to the headman, youth leaders,
war party leaders, often with special titles signifying their offices."53
But the magistrates who superseded the basileis of archaic Greece were
explicitly seen to have come to power sufficient for there to be a risk that
an overambitiousincumbentmight use his role as a steppingstoneto tyranny:
Aristotle's reference (Politics 1310b) to the danger inherent in the archaic
type of magistracywith long tenure is well illustratedby the Dreros inscrip-
tion forbidding a cosmos who has held annualoffice to hold it again for ten
years (which in turn is paralleled by the restrictions imposed by the North
Italian cities on reelection to the podesteria). Whichever the outcome, the

53 Ronald Cohen, "State Origins:A Reappraisal," in Claessen and Skalnik, The Early State,
53.
370 W. G. RUNCIMAN

governmentalrole, or set of roles, by now amountsto a headshipof state. In

Corinth, where in the mid-eighth century a hereditarybasileia was replaced
by an elective magistracy, the change may initially have been no more than
what E. Will calls "un amenagementde 1'exercicedu pouvoir au sein d'un
genos.' 54 But by that time the initial group of villages had coalesced into a
territorialentity, the potteryindustryhad begun to expand, the Gulf was being
regularly navigated, and the naval supremacy for which Corinth was later
celebrated was perhaps beginning to be achieved with the help of an im-
provement in naval architecture(Thucydides I.13).s5 It is not necessary to
resuscitatenow discreditedoverstatementsaboutnascent industrialism,rising
merchant classes, extensive foreign trade, and far-sighted colonial expan-
sionism in order to agree that, by about 700, the power being shared at
Corinthbetweenprytanis, basileus, andpolemarchos was enough to markthe
change from personalacknowledgmentof the authorityof a Homeric basileus
to "effective ties of an institutional nature which could operate the state
continuouslyas a political unity."56 When, half a centurylater, the oligarchy
of the Bacchiad clan was broken by Cypselus in a successful coup d'etat, it
was undeniablya state which he took over.
POLEIS AND ETHNE

Any analysis of the origins of states in archaic Greece must, however, take
some accountof the distinctionwhich the Greeksthemselves regardedas fun-
damentalbetweenthe mutuallyexclusive categoriesof "ethnos"'and "polis."57
It is not, althoughsometimestakento be, a distinctionbetween states without,
and states with, an urbancentre, as the single knock-downexample of Sparta
is enough to show. Nor is it a differencebetween centralizedand segmentary
states:Macedonwas both centralizedand an ethnos.58Thereis undoubtedlya
contrast to be drawn in their respective forms and degrees of permanent,
specialized, nonkin governmentalauthority.As J. A. O. Larsenpoints out, it
is significant that Greek usage classified all federal states as ethne,59and as

54 Ed. Will, Korinthiaka(Paris, 1955), 298.

55 W. G. Forrest, "Two ChronographicNotes. I. The Tenth Thalassocracyin Eusebius,"
Classical Quarterly, 19:1 (1969), 95-106, shows just how uncertainthe naval history of the
period remains, althoughhe accepts a Corinthiansupremacyin the Bacchiad period, which was
lost subsequently.
56 Roebuck, "Urbanizationin Corinth," 126.
57 The old Amphictionicoath quotedby Aeschines (III. 110) clearly shows the distinctionto be
exhaustive, since the only other category of possible offenders is that of individuals:J. A. O.
Larsen, "Representationand Democracy in Hellenistic Federalism," Classical Philology, 40:2
(1945) 78, n.72. Cf. also the later inscriptionfrom Epidauroscited by Larsenin GreekFederal
States (Oxford, 1968), 4, n.l.
58 Jean Baechler, "Les Origines de la democratie grecque," Archives Europeennes de
Sociologie, 21:2 (1980), 226-28, attemptsto get round this by preservingan emphasis on the
segmentarycharacterof ethne while classifying Macedon and Epirusseparatelyas "monarchies
tribales." But this only weakens the value of the distinction still further.
59 Larsen, Greek Federal States, 4.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 37I

Snodgrass points out, it is not coincidental that in due course democracy

should be found in poleis ratherthan ethne.60 But it is a distinction about
which even Thucydidesis biased,61and Aristotle inconsistent.62For purposes
of the argumenthere, the point is that no priority should be attachedto the
polis as a model of the transitionto statehood. The cumulative accretionof
economic, ideological, and military power within a defined territoryand the
consequent emergence of protostatefrom semistate roles can be documented
for ethne as well as for poleis.63
The most strikingexample is Thessaly and the role of what the Thessalians
called the tagos. Unfortunately, the fifth-century inscription which is au-
thoritativefor the Thessalianusage is ambiguousabout terms of tenure,64and
there is also the difficulty that, although the title was retained, Thessaly
regressedduringthe classical periodto a weak federal sympolity. But the role
seems to have been permanentexcept for the brief periods of atagia between
the deathof one incumbentand the election of the next; and the laterhistory is
irrelevantto the earliertransitionfrom a segmentarystructure(in which large
landed proprietorscontrolledtheir own penestai and levied their own contin-
gents of troops) to the recognition of a central governmentalauthorityem-
powered to wage war, contract alliances, and exact tribute. As so often
happens, the major constitutional change is attributedto a figure who is
probably legendary-the Aleuas the Red in whose historicity Aristotle was
readierto believe than modem scholarshave been. But there is no doubt that
the Cineas who appearsin Herodotus(III.63) leading a large troop of cavalry
to supportthe Peisistratidsagainst the Spartanswas "basileus" (i.e., tagos)
of all the Thessalians and that he led his expedition in response to a request
under a preexisting alliance between Thessaly and Athens. The original in-
vaders from the northwestwho drove out or subjugatedthe earlier Boeotian
inhabitantsof the Thessalian plain had established a "kingdom" which was
no more a state than, for example, the kingdom of Scotland created by

60
Snodgrass, Archaic Greece, 46.
61
Cf. Thucydides III. 94ff., on the Aetolians. For a parallel to the allegation by the Messe-
nians that the Eurytanians,the largest segment (meros) of the Aetolian ethnos, ate their meat
raw, cf., e.g., the legend of the Nyoro, Toro, and Nkole that the dynastyof kings who introduced
the arts of governmentinto the territoryof western Uganda likewise found the countryinhabited
by omophagoi cited by Lucy Mair, Primitive Government(London, 1962), 129.
62 The difficulties which his
fragmenton the constitutionof Thessaly has posed for successive
commentatorsare set out in detail by H. T. Wade-Gery, "Jason of Pheraeand Aleuas the Red,"
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 44 (1924), 55-64. But Larsen, Greek Federal States, 17, dismisses
attemptedemendationas only makingmattersworse, and prefersthe simple explanationthatthere
was a tendency in the fourthcentury, which Aristotlehere follows, to adoptpolis as the name for
every kind of state.
63 Analogously, the emergence of statehoodin pre-IncaPerutook the form both of the building

of substantialcities and synoecism of surroundingvillages in the south, and of the organizationof

the populationinto functionallyequivalentdispersedcommunitiesfocussed on ceremonialcentres
in the north.EdwardP. Lanning, Peru before the Incas (EnglewoodCliffs, N.J., 1967), 115-20.
64 Larsen, Greek Federal States, 14, n.6.
372 W. G. RUNCIMAN

KennethMacAlpin's conquest of the Picts in 843 A.D.65But they remaineda

single political entity;and out of the investible surplusgeneratedby the forced
labour of the penestai, the dynastic legitimacy of a restricted number of
aristocraticfamilies, and the militaryadvantageof a strongcavalryin a terrain
suitable for it, there came an accumulationof power sufficient for the role of
an elective head of state whose subordinatetetrarchai were authenticfederal
officials who were accordinglycalled "tetrarchs of the Thessalians."66
The transition can be documented equally well for the Locrians, who
although an ethnos appear to have arrived at statehood by a process inter-
mediate, so to speak, betweenthe Thessalianandthe Corinthian.The principal
evidence is a long inscription laying down the relationship to their com-
munities of origin of East Locrians who are going to settle in the town of
Naupactus in West Locris.67Much in the inscriptionremains obscure. But
althoughsovereignty was divided between the principaltown or city of Opus
and the differentlocal poleis from which the settlerscame, they were between
them in a position to adjudicate,legislate, and levy taxes in a mannerwhich
clearly indicates that the transitionto statehoodhas effectively taken place.
Whetherit came about througha sort of synoecisis in which Opus played the
same role as Athens did in Attica must be uncertain.But it is noticeable that
the inscription refers to the "Opuntians" (or alternatively "Hypocnemi-
dians") in the sense in which all the inhabitantsof Attica were "Athenians."'
Thereis an archos, whose role is evidently thatof highest-rankingmagistrate,
and an assembly, the "Thousand";and althoughthe numberis not to be taken
literally, this must be presumedto be a federal assembly of all the adult male
citizens of East Locris. Anomalous as the constitutionimplied by the inscrip-
tion may be, it affords a further demonstrationthat the evolution of gov-
ernmental roles did not have to follow the model of a single central city
dominatingits subordinateruralhinterland.
The Locrian inscription is, however, relatively late. Russell Meiggs and
David Lewis date it (?) 500-475 B.C. By that time, we are dealing with
secondary states whose constitutionalvariantsare the outcome of imitations
and experimentsmade after several generationsof statehoodin other partsof
Greece. By that time, too, literacy had been reestablishedand professional
codifiers of law were being commissioned to formulateand recordthe enact-
ments of the proliferatingmagistratesand councils. It is true that one of the
earliest of these, Philolaus of Corinth, became a nomothetes for Thebes
(Aristotle, Politics 1274b) at about the beginning of the last quarterof the
eighth century. But his introductionof a law on adoption to preserve the
numberof individualland allotmentsis a symptom, not a cause, of protostate-
65
Cf. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 (Glasgow, 1969), 20: "It
would be wrong to think of it [the Alban Kingdom] in any sense as a state...."
66 Larsen, Greek Federal States, 16.
67 See
Meiggs and Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 35-40.
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 373

hood: he could not have performedhis role if there were not already a gov-
ernmentalauthorityin Thebes which was, or at least wished to proclaimitself
as, capable of enforcing his proposal.The profusionof legislation, the variety
of oligarchic constitutions, the shifting patterns of interstate alliances and
federations, and the range of permutationson the continuumfrom ethnos to
polis cannot themselves explain the transition from semistatehood which
made them possible. Local basileis had first to have agreed on a transferor
pooling of their augmentedpower and thus transformedthe roles of one or
more among them from that of individual landlords-cum-employers,
arbitrators-cum-priests,and generals-cum-policemento that of rulersholding
offices in which they could wield economic, ideological, and military sanc-
tions on behalf of their ethnos or polis as a whole.

OFFENSIVE VS. DEFENSIVE PROTOSTATEHOOD: SPARTA VS. ATHENS

Once, therefore,neitherfragmentationnor conquest was any longer a danger,
and the accumulationof economic, ideological, and military power within
stable communities had begun, the transitionfrom semi- to protostatehood
could take place whetherthe communitywas an ethnos or a polis and whether
the permanent, specialized, nonkin governmentalroles of its ruler or rulers
were monarchicalor collegiate. Furthermore,the transitioncould take place,
as in the contrastingexamples of the Pabirand Merina, whetherthe commu-
nity's relations with its neighbourswere defensive or aggressive-a contrast
which, as it happens, can best be illustratedby reference to the two Greek
states which are the most famous and the best documentedof all, Athens and
Sparta. It is impossible to reconstructin any reliable detail their transition
from semistatesto protostates;here, ironically, the task is made harderrather
thaneasier by the literarytraditionand its insistence on the heroic constitution
making of an undoubtedlymythical Theseus in Athens and a very probably
mythical Lycurgus in Sparta. But it is clear that in the course of the eighth
centuryboth Athens and Spartadid make the transitionand thatthey did so in
equally successful but almost diametricallycontrastingways.
In Athens, continuousoccupationthroughoutthe post-Mycenaeanperiod is
archaeologicallyattested, and some scholarshave seen in this the continuation
of a Mycenaean synoecisis of Attica. But there is no evidence of a kingship
constitutive of more than semistatehood at best. There is no tomb of an
Athenian Childeric; a tomb of the kind which has been described as the
"princess's tomb"68on the north side of the Acropolis should only be de-
scribed, as J. N. Coldstream does a similar one, as "the grave of a rich
Athenian lady. "69 The literarytraditionattributesto the legendaryKing Cec-
68
Oscar Broneer, "Athens in the Late Bronze Age," Antiquity, 30:117 (1956), 14.
69
Coldstream, GeometricGreece, 57, fig. 13. No doubt it is possible to be over-scepticalof
the inferences about roles which can be drawn from archaeological finds. The contents of
Childeric's tomb, for example, surely licence the conclusion that "this was no leader of a small
374 W. G. RUNCIMAN

rops a first synoecisis by which Attica was divided into twelve town districts
(StraboIX. 1), before which its inhabitantslived merely nomades and spora-
den.70 But even if anything remotely so specific ever took place, it did not
amountto statehood.No doubtAthens dominatedthe Attic peninsulathrough-
out the disturbancesin which the legendary Codrus, son of Melanthus, was
supposedto have died fightingthe Dorians(PausaniasI. 19), and it is plausible
to suppose that the adjacentvillages and settlementsshould look to an Athe-
nian basileus as their Heerfuhrer. But Thucydides's description of them
(11.15) as poleis with their own council-houses (prytaneia) and magistrates
(archontes) is palpably anachronistic.There is nothing to warranta supposi-
tion that they were "little states"71 rather than agriculturalcommunities
dominatedby their own local aristocraciesin the mannerof Hesiod's Boeotia,
whetheror not in continuationof Mycenaeansettlement. All that can be said
is that if these local aristocracies were to accept formal subordinationto
Athens, this would both imply and indeed necessitate a transitionfrom semi-
to protostatehood,and thatif Athens were thereafterto hold together, it would
become a state both large and powerful by the standardsof eighth-century
Greece.
This, of course, is just what happened.It is not necessary to believe either
in Theseus or in a literal synoecism to accept the tradition of a political
unificationwhich, whateverlocal battlesmay have been fought in Attica, was
not brought about by Athenian conquest (and which, if it had been, would
surely have left tracesin the literatureto thateffect). Geographically,the East
Attic nobility had an unmistakableinterest in a defensive alliance with the
rulers of the Acropolis, and it is they whose economic, social, and military
role would most be changed by a unification.72Moreover, the Acropolis was
importantas a ritualcentre as well as a stronghold,and the suspicion that the
transition was not as abrupt as Thucydides and Plutarch (borrowing from
Aristotle) believed is further strengthenedby the oddity of a simultaneous
creationof the role of "the" eponymousarchonshiptogetherwith two others:
it may be more plausible to suppose that the archonshipwas createdfirst and
the polemarchy second, with life-tenure of a by then ritual kingship being

war-band, but an established federate king...." (Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship,

18; cf. H. Ament, "The Germanic Tribes in Europe," in The Northern World, David M.
Wilson, ed. (London, 1980), 64: "Even if the signet-ringhad not been found, one would have to
speakof a 'king's' ratherthan a 'noble's' tomb. ") But there is no such traceof a GreekChilderic
in Dark Age Athens or anywhere else.
70 See F. Jacoby, Atthis (Oxford, 1949), 126.
71 As
they are describedby C. Hignett, History of the AthenianConstitution(Oxford, 1952),
30.
72
Cf. G. Alfoldy, "Der attische Synoikismos und die Entstehungder athenischenAdels",
Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, 47:1 (1969), 14, who is preparedto speak of an
"Umwandlungderpolitischen, wirtschaftlichen,sozialen undzweifellos auch militarischenRolle
des attischen Adels, die durch eine Art von Zentralisierungdieses Adels erfolgte. "
 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 375

abolished thereafter.73In any event, however long or short the intermediate

stage of protostatehood,the transitiondid take place from what was at the
very most a segmentary Attic semistate to a centralized oligarchy whose
office-holders were drawn from the Attic nobility as a whole-the so-called
eupatrides. Nor can there be any doubt thatthe power attachingto their roles
was by then jointly sufficient for statehood. The attemptedcoup d'etat by
Cylon in the second half of the seventh century raises the difficulty that the
accounts of it given by Thucydides and Herodotuscannot readily be recon-
ciled in detail. But that does not affect the conclusion that if Cylon had
succeeded, he would have secured for himself just as much of a headshipof
state as Cypselus did at Corinth. It was a peaceable and (for the time being)
inward-lookingstate whose aristocracyappearsfrom the archaeologicalevi-
dence to have "decentralized" out into the Attic countryside.7 But its con-
tinuance up to and after the time of Cylon's abortive coup presupposes a
permanentcentralauthorityto be wielded eitherby a collegiate magistracyor
a tyrant.
In Sparta, by contrast, the only continuity of occupation was at Amyclae,
which survivedfrom Late Helladic IIIB. But far from constitutingthe nucleus
of a subsequentpolitical unification, it was conquered and absorbedby an
expanding Spartain the mid-eighthcentury. Whateverthe reasons of the first
"Spartans" for settling when and where they did, by 800 B.C. at the latest,
they constitutedan identifiablesemistateformed by the amalgamationof four
(and perhapsmore) villages underthe joint rule of two basileis. The details of
their early campaigns against their neighbours and their relations with the
local populationsafter defeating them remain obscure. It is impossible to be
certaineither why Pharisand Geronthraishould have been left with perioecic
statuswhereasAmyclae was absorbed,or why the inhabitantsof Helos should
have been enslaved. Nor can much reliance be placed on the traditionspre-
served by Strabo (VIII.4) and Pausanias(11.6) that Teleclus, having planted
settlementsin southeastMessenia, was subsequentlyassassinatedby the Mes-
senians. But it is certainthat Spartaexpandedby conquest, that in the process
it made the critical transitionfrom semi- to protostatehood,that its struggles
against Messenia were decisive in that transition, and that the distinctive
governmentalrole in which the transitionis clearly visible is the ephorate.
It may or may not be that "the so-called FirstMessenianWar (c. 735-715)
was triggeredby relative overpopulationin the Eurotasvalley."75 But in any
case, the war, whatever triggered it, itself triggered Sparta's transition to
statehood. Messenia was exceptionally fertile by the standardsof Greece. Its
conquest, therefore, made possible a cumulativecycle of economic exploita-

73 As is argued by Hignett, History, 41-43.

74 Coldstream, Geometric Greece, 133.
75 Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia (London, 1979), 115.
376 W. G. RUNCIMAN

tion, the ideological legitimation of a nonproductivewarriorelite, and more

effective repressionand/orconquest. With this mutuallyreinforcingaccumu-
lation of power, both the possibility and the need arose for some specialized,
centralgovernmentalrole going beyond the ritual-cum-militaryleadershipof
a semitribal warriorhost by hereditarydyarchic chiefs. Aristotle (Politics
1313a) thoughtthatthe ephoratewas a conscious device to preservethe power
of the basileis while appearingto diminishit. Plutarchin one place (Lycurgus
7) echoes Aristotle, but in another (Cleomenes 10) says that because the
basileis went on long campaigns, it was necessaryfor them to leave friendsof
theirsbehind to govern in their absence, althoughthis is difficult to reconcile
with the tradition of a preexisting religious function. Other authors, both
ancient and moder, have had other ideas (including Xenephon in his Con-
stitutionof the LacedaimoniansVIII, who at least admitsthathe is guessing).
But however it was first instituted, the ephorate was used as a means of
professionalizing,as it were, the governmentof a protostatewhose expansion
by conquest could not but carrya risk of fragmentationor anarchy.Conceiva-
bly, an exceptionally able and ambitious basileus might have succeeded in
subordinatinghis counterpartand becoming, like Pheidon at Argos, a tyrant:
Cleomenes, in particular,virtuallydid. But dyarchymust in itself have made
this more difficult, and, once the ephoratehad been instituted, it performed
the doublefunctionof enforcinglaws approvedby the damos and ensuringthat
the basileis did not oversteptheir constitutionalpowers-to the point, in due
course, that they had the authorityeven to arrestand imprisonPausanias, the
victor of Plataea (Thucydides I.131). The dating offered by Apollodorus
which would put its institutionin the middle of the eighth centuryis evidently
an attemptto relateit to the lifetime of Theopompus:76 it cannothave preceded
the First Messenian War. On the other hand, its apparentomission from the
"GreatRhetra"preservedby Plutarch(Lycurgus6) does not prove thatit was
only developed after a formal division of governmentalauthoritybetween
basileis, council, and damos. Eitherway, the Spartanconstitutionin its final
form reflects an apportionmentof the power which had been built up through
conquest and made some stable combinationof permanent,specialized, non-
kin governmentalroles imperative.
The significance of the parallelwith the Merinaand Pabiris thus apparent.
The sequence by which semistatesevolve into states is boundto be differentif
it is triggered, as in Spartaand Madagascar,by success in a series of expan-
sions by force of arms ratherthan, as in the case of the Athenians and the
Pabir, by a defensive consolidationwhich at the initial stage-whatever may
happen later-is unmotivated by desire for conquest. But the cumulative
accretionof power which follows in the absence of internalfragmentationor
external invasion is equally decisive to the transition. The processes which

76 G. L. Huxley, Early Sparta (London, 1962), 38.

 ORIGINS OF STATES: THE CASE OF ARCHAIC GREECE 377

can be documentedin detail for the Merinaand Pabirare not, of course, to be

projected back into the conditions of archaic Greece. But the functional
equivalents are there: in all four cases, there is a combinationof intensified
land use, improvedmilitaryorganization,and enhanced ideological legitima-
tion, however different the forms which they take. In none of them is the
explanation to be found by isolating trade, warfare, religion, population
growth, or anythingelse as the cause of the transitionto statehood.It is to be
found by ascertaininghow there came to be built up a sufficient accumulation
of power of all its three separatebut mutuallyreinforcingkinds.

CONCLUSION

The abandonmentof attempts to ground "the" origin of "the" state in a

single monocausal theory does not mean that there is nothing left to be
explained. But the example of archaic Greece offers strong supportfor the
view that statehoodis bound to emerge once defined communitiesoccupying
a territorywhich they are able to hold against invaders, and from which their
populations have no incentive to disperse on any large scale, accumulate a
reserve of economic, ideological, and military power large enough for gov-
ernmentalroles constitutiveof proto-ratherthan semistatehoodto be virtually
forced upon them. In the circumstancesof post-MycenaeanGreece, it was
only a matter of time before protostates began to appear in such various
constitutionalforms as might follow from local differences in the process by
which power had accumulatedin the hands of the nobilities of increasingly
prosperous,well-armed, and legitimatedsemistates. To this extent, therefore,
it is true to say that there would be more left to be explained if they had not
made the transitionwhich in fact they did.