The making of the citizen in Hellenistic poleis

Résumé En

This chapter analyses the making, poiēsis, of citizens and the way in which status groups were recomposed in the Hellenistic period. Inscriptions, whose number increased significantly in all regions of the Greek world, form the main material. There were several ways of making a citizen: recognition, adoption, granting of politeia, all of which allowed access to participation, metousia. The dēmopoiētoi, however, were sometimes considered apart from the native citizens, as in Kos. The denomination of the politēs in this period, even if it continued to be expressed through the name, patronymic and ethnic, underwent a real inflation in some places, as in Kalymnos in the second century BCE. The politeia could be granted, sometimes even sold, to individuals, including women, or to communities through politographies (Larissa under the influence of king Philip V), isopolities (as in Miletus), or sympolities, bilateral as between Latmos and Pidasa at the end of the fourth century BCE or federal as in Boeotia or in Achaia. But koina and cities kept control of status changes, as in Pergamon in 133 BCE: in a context of oliganthropy, the polis decided to promote several categories of individuals to higher status (politēs or paroikos). The beneficiaries of the grants could activate their potential politeia, which sometimes triggered situations of multi-citizenship (Miletus). Chronologically, beyond a certain relaxation of practices in the late Hellenistic period, it is difficult to propose a linear evolution shared throughout the Greek world. The specificities and changes were more of a regional nature, as in the present Dodecanese (Rhodes, Kos, Kalymnos) or in the poleis grouped in koina. However, the influence of wars and population displacements on oliganthropy, or that of the kings and then the Romans, should be stressed. With the latter, the Greeks had to adapt to the practices of the civitas Romana, which ended up being much more widespread than the politeia of any city.