Non-hoplites as Citizens
Most men in the new city-states were too poor to qualify as hoplites. It is usually
assumed that poor men most likely could contribute little to military defense because
they lacked hoplite armor and metal weapons and Greek armies at this date made scant use
of
light-armed troops1 like skirmishers, slingers, and
archers2. Nor had the Greeks developed navies yet, the military service for which poor
men would provide the manpower in later times when a fleet was a city-state's most
effective weapon. If being able to make a contribution to the city-state's defense as a
hoplite3 was the only grounds for meriting the political rights of citizenship, the
aristocrats along with the old and new hoplites had no obvious reason to grant poor men
the right to vote on important matters. Yet poor men did become politically empowered
citizens in many city-states, with some variations on whether a man had to own a certain
amount of land to have full political rights or whether eligibility for higher public
offices required a certain level of income. In general, however, all male citizens,
regardless of their level of wealth, eventually were entitled to attend, speak in, and
cast a vote in the
communal assemblies4 in which policy decisions for the city-states were made. That poor men gradually
came to participate in the assemblies of the city-states means they were citizens
possessing the basic component of
political equality5. The hoplite revolution fails as a complete explanation of the
development of the city-state above all because it cannot account for the extension of
this right to the poor. Furthermore, the emergence of large numbers of men wealthy
enough to afford hoplite armor seems to belong to the middle of the seventh century
B.C., well after the period when the city-state as an innovative form of political
organization was first coming into existence.
