Quick questions on The Greek world and Persia c. 500 BC: HSC Ancient History

A polis was a self-governing community of citizens (politai) with a defined territory, an urban centre, and shared religious institutions. By 500 BC there were perhaps 1,000 poleis in the Greek world. They shared a common Greek identity (language, gods, panhellenic sanctuaries at Olympia and Delphi) but no political unity.

In 508/7 BC the aristocrat Cleisthenes had reformed the Athenian constitution after the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny in 510 BC.

Sparta was the leading military power on the mainland in 500 BC.

The Greek cities of Asia Minor (Ionia) had been founded in the migrations of the eleventh and tenth centuries BC. By 500 BC they were the most prosperous and culturally advanced part of the Greek world: home to the philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus), the historians (Hecataeus, later Herodotus from Halicarnassus), and the major poets. Miletus was the largest. The Ionian cities had been subjects of Lydia under Croesus, then of Persia after Cyrus's conquest of Lydia in 546 BC.

Persia was the largest empire the ancient world had seen. Founded by Cyrus the Great (559 to 530 BC), expanded by Cambyses (530 to 522 BC, who conquered Egypt), and organised by Darius I (522 to 486 BC), the empire ran from the Indus valley to the Aegean coast and from the Caucasus to Nubia.

Each citizen was assigned to one of ten new tribes (named after Attic heroes), made up of three trittyes (thirds) drawn from coast, plain, and city. This cut across the old regional and aristocratic loyalties.

The local village (deme) was the basic administrative unit. Around 139 demes registered the citizens of Attica. Citizenship was hereditary through the deme.

Fifty councillors from each tribe, chosen by lot annually from those over thirty, prepared business for the Assembly. The boule sat in the bouleuterion in the agora.

All adult male citizens could attend, debate, and vote. The Assembly met on the Pnyx hill.

A procedure by which the Assembly could exile a citizen for ten years without loss of property or status. Introduced around 508 BC and first used in 487 BC against Hipparchus son of Charmus, a relative of the Peisistratids.

Two hereditary kings, one from the Agiad house and one from the Eurypontid, commanded the army and held religious functions.

A council of 28 elders (over sixty) plus the two kings. Members served for life. The gerousia prepared business for the assembly.

Five magistrates elected annually by the assembly. The ephors had broad powers including supervision of the kings and the management of foreign policy.

Sparta's economy rested on an enslaved population of Messenians (conquered c. 715 to 668 BC) and Laconians. The helots farmed the land while the Spartiates trained for war.

A network of alliances binding most of the Peloponnese (except Argos and Achaea) to Sparta as hegemon. The League met when Sparta convened it.