THE RISE OF THE ITALIAN CITIES
Beginning in the middle of the eighth century and continuing over the next three centuries, Etruria, Latium, and Campania witnessed a series of political, social, and cultural innovations that would result in the formation of the first central Italian city-states. The appearance of this new form of social and political life was a broad phenomenon that characterized many regions and ethnic groups. In Italy, city-states became the dominant form of organization in Etruria, Latium, Campania,and the Greek regions of Sicily and southern Italy.
Outside the peninsula, city-states would cover Greece and the western and southwestern coasts of Asia Minor and many of the areas in which Phoenicians settled. Broad similarities in form, however, should not mask the great diversity in detail and the many local variations that could be found in important aspects of urban life. Cities, in other words, could share many of the ways they organized government, war, and reli-gion without really being very much alike. A city-state was both a kind of settlement and a form of political, military, and social organization. Fully developed city-states usually possessed a clearly defined urban core, with special areas designated for elite and for communal ends, and cemeteries encircling it.
Beyond, its surrounding territory contained scattered shrines, hamlets, and farmsteads, along with a few settlements, smaller than the central city and without a fully developed communal life. The scale of these city-states varied greatly. In the contemporary Greek world, a “typical” one may have had approximately one thousand inhabitants and perhaps a territory of around forty square miles (100 sq km); its army would have numbered no more than a few hundred men. In central Italy, many of the emerging city-states would have been somewhat larger—many certainly controlled more territory than was the case in Greece—and, by the end of the sixth century, some had populations of several tens of thousands.