Doomed to Extinction: The Polis as an Evolutionary Dead-End

Abstract

Abstract This chapter is an exercise in comparative sociology, not in the history of classical Greece. I say this not merely to excuse the ignorance of detail which specialist readers are likely to detect, but also to emphasize that it is addressed not to the question (interesting as it is) ‘how did Macedon become the dominant power in Greece?’ but to the question ‘with or without the rise of Macedon, could the polis have survived?’. In arguing that it could not, I am (so far as I can discover) within the general consensus of specialists. But there does not appear to be a consensus about why not, and my own answer may well be regarded by some readers as sensible but obvious and by others as intriguing but misconceived.

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