political communities either as “oligarchic” (still the majority position among scholars, see below) or “democratic” is to misrepresent the situation. To develop a deeper understanding of imperialGreek civic politics, as far as the fragmentary evidence allows, we should rather focus on relations between the various socio-political groupings within the poleis, and on the political … Surely, as we saw, the imperialGreekcities had oligarchic elites, supported, to some …
Abstract
Elements of oligarchy, democracy, and hierarchy coexisted in the polis of Roman times, and the survival of the democratic element may reflect the prospering of small businessmen with their own political interests.