Birth of Territory

The division between patrician and plebeian stems from this division: a social and not racial divide.3 noted how the Greek demos, in its sense of the people, could mean both the citizenry or the many, the poor. The Latin populus equally had this dual sense

The reward of soldiers at the end of their military service was central here. Money alone was not acceptable, and since land was often seen as the key source of wealth, this became a much more common source of remuneration

The city or town was known as an urbs or sometimes a civitas; the surrounding areas as ager, fields, or pagus, countryside.12 These cities were the root of the politics, but citizenship was tied to descent and legal status, not place of birth or residence.

The reward of soldiers at the end of their military service was central here. Money alone was not acceptable, and since land was often seen as the key source of wealth, this became a much more common source of remuneration

The most important element of De re publica, from the perspective of this study, is the way Cicero defines the subject. De re publica literally means “on public things,” “the public affair,” or “the public property.” The most important definition is the following:

res publica is the property of a people [res populi], but a populus is not any collection of humans brought together in any sort of way, but an assemblage of people in large numbers [coetus multitudinis] associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a community of interest [iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus]. The first cause of such an association is not so much the weakness of the individual as a certain social spirit which nature has implanted in man. For man is not a solitary or unsocial creature, but born with such a nature that not even under conditions of great prosperity of every sort {is he willing to be isolated from his fellow men. In a short time a scattered and wandering multitude had become a body of citizens [civitas] by mutual agreement [concordia

Nonetheless, the Senate massively outweighed the people in votes

Aristotle suggests that people join together in associations or communities, the first of which is the family (oikos), in order to improve life, and that these associations are the foundation of the larger political community (politikes), the polis, which too is an association of some kind.214 It is when the congregation of village-size associations reaches a limit of self-sufficiency (autarkeia) that the association can be called a polis

What is interesting in this instance is that this is not land that is likely to be claimed by another polis nearby, for Kleinias informs the Athenian that there is none. The idea of modern territory as a politically and geographically bounded space belonging to, or under the control of, a state would seem to be alien to the discussion

Issues of number and calculation might appear to be alien to the determination of the Greek polis