POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS IN EARLY ITALY
Some formal political organization was essential. In a typical city-state, elite residences, political life, and communal religious activity were all concentrated in and about the center. Here, members of elite families displayed their status, com-peted with their peers, and exercised leadership over their own followers, even, on occasion, over the city as a whole. At first, aristocratic families and their retain¬ers dominated most emerging city-states. In the seventh and sixth centuries, kings reigned in some. By the early fifth century certain cities possessed formal offices and priesthoods, filled by a process of election, and held for terms of one year. Arrangements such as these would eventually become standard in communities with a city-state form of organization.
City-states emerged through a number of interrelated processes. First, an aristocracy, with its own distinctive way of life, developed. This process almost cer-tainly began before it becomes visible in the archeological remains. Over time, aristocratic families concentrated in the larger settlements, making them centers of wealth and power. The leaders of these more powerful communities began to con-struct larger and more elaborate buildings, and to set aside formal spaces where the population of the settlement and its surrounding countryside would gather for occasions deemed important to the city. Eventually, institutions regulating the community as a whole appeared and began to overshadow individual families and their leaders.
In central Italy, scholars divide the formative age of the city-state into two broad phases: the Orientalizing Period (c. 725–580) and the Archaic Period (c. 580–480). In its origins, this division has much to do with artistic styles and with clear, direct foreign influences: The Orientalizing Period earned its name because of the appearance in tombs and votive deposits of luxury goods imported from the “Orient”— Greece, Syria, and Egypt—or of locally made imitations of these imports. These two periods also mark, if only roughly, other developmental stages. In the earlier peri-od, monumental architecture commissioned by the elite becomes conspicuous, as does literacy. From around 600, the basic communal institutions of the city-state come into view, the governing elite broadens in some ways, and large-scale war-fare between cities begins. The course of these developments probably varied con-siderably from city to city, and the evidence rarely allows a full picture of the process to be reconstructed for any one place. The history of Rome in this period, however, is the best documented of all.