388 Apart from members of egalitarian alliances and leagues, all the communities listed above, though explicitly called poleis in all our sources, would not be true poleis according to any definition which singles out autonomia as a defining characteristic of the polis. In the fourth century at least every third, and perhaps even every second of the Greek poleis would be deprived of the status of being a polis. Such a conclusion is obviously absurd, and the inference is that the link between the concept of polis and the concept of autonomia must be rejected, and that can safely be done since the link is a modern invention not warranted by sources of the archaic and early classical periods.389 (a) As stated above, neither Plato nor Aristotle has anything to say about autonomia, and to assert wi

390 For Aristotle it is the concept of autarkeia, not of autonomia, that is inseparably connected with the concept of the polis;391 and his concept of autarkeia has two aspects only: economic self-sufficiency (i.e. to be independent of import and export) and demographic self-sufficency (i.e. to have the right number of full citizens required to accomplish mans purpose in life: to live a politikos bios). There is no hint that political self-sufficiency (i.e. independence) was an element of the Aristotelian concept of autarkeia. (b) The opposite of autonomia is being hypekoos,392 If autonomia 82 HIM 76 had been an essential characteristic of the polis, the term hypekoos polis would have been either a nonsense or an oxymoron. But quite a few sources speak about hypekooi poleis in a straightforward manner.393 (c) The orthodox view of autonoma as a defining characteristic of the co

394 Moreover, the link between the concept of autonoma and the concept of polis was made for the first time in the treaty between Sparta and Argos in 418 (Thuc. 5.79.1), it figures prominently in the Kings Peace of 387/6 (Xen. Hell. 5.1.31) but it was not asserted as a universal principle until ca. 375 in the revisions of the Kings Peace of 386, both in paraphrases of the original peace (Xen. Hell. 6.3.12) and in paraphrases of the Peace of Kallias (Lycurg. 1.73), with which the Kings Peace is often contrasted. Thus for chronological reasons alone any discussion of the autnomos polis as a general principle should be restricted to the 4th century and later, and avoided in descriptions of the concept of polis in the archaic period and in the 5th century. The sources in which the concept of autonoma are indeed linked with the concept of polis

e. a common peace binding on all Greek poleis;393 and it is only in the Hellenistic age that the concept of autonoma spread and became closely linked to the concept of the polis. But then the concept of autonoma had changed its meaning from independence to self-government combined with subordination to a superior power;396 in the course of the Hellenistic period the concept was further eroded, and in the end autonoma came to imply little more than self-government in local affairs. In this sense it could easily be asserted by and predicated of almost any Greek polis?91 Thus, the history of the autnomos polis does not end in 338 with the battle of Chaironeia. That is where it begins, or rather, it begins with the Kings Peace of 387 and catches on in the course of the 4th century so that in the Hellenistic