Polis and imperium: two ancient political ideas, and their echoes in some modern political reflections

Abstract

As is well known, polis and imperium are the two fundamental political models which were developed in classical times, by the Greeks and the Romans respectively. In principle, the two models are mutually exclusive, but from Cicero’s idea of (a sort of) ‘double – civic and imperial – citizenship’ (De legibus) on, efforts have been made towards envisaging the possibility of some compatibility between them. On the other hand, after Alexander’s conquest of the Persian realm, the Greek political thought had also apparently begun to accept the idea of a political structure capable of gathering together many different cities and peoples: a cosmopolis. This was probably the leading idea of the Politeia written by the Stoic philosopher Zeno; or, at least, this was the interpretation of that text proposed by Plutarch, who wrote at the beginning of the best period of the Roman Empire. And in the generation following Plutarch, in his Roman Oration the Smyrnean sophist Aelius Aristides went so far as to imagine the Roman Empire as a sort of federation of poleis under the supreme direction of the emperor. In this way, the ancient political thought tried to overcome the old dichotomy between the two fundamentally opposed political models of polis and imperium. During the Middle Ages, both in the Western and in the Eastern parts of the former Roman Empire the idea of empire remained the only accepted political idea, even though, with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new political structures at a civic level began to appear in Northern and Central Italy. Rediscovering the principles of self-government, in a way these political structures repeated the ancient polis-model. But for this model to gain theoretical legitimization, it needed to wait for the first decades of the sixteenth century, when Machiavelli, drawing on the ancient Latin and Greek authors, was able to propose a new republicanism, which was to become one of the leading political ideas of modern Europe. And now, we must once again face the ancient, Ciceronian, problem, seeking to reconcile the two different political principles of cosmopolitanism and civic citizenship at a global level.