Growing numbers of omnipresent farmers wanted empty land wherever they could, whether on the mountains near the city state of through external colonization in pristine territory overseas. Just as Greek city states and their surrounding satellite villages grew to service the burgeoning agricultural community and to facilitate expanding trade, so too the hills outside the polis were gradually reclaimed and terraced. The Greek countryside itself was no longer a pasture for sheep, goats, and horses, but now more often a patchwork of small 10-arre farms of trees, vines, and grain, often with an isolated homestead to house its ever vigilant and independent owner, a citizen who alone in the Mediterranean had clear legal rights to land tenure, property inheritance-and his own arms. Written constitutions appeared in the great majority of the city states and their colonies, ensuring the spread of government by consensus of landed peers.

Writing re-emerged, but was now based on an improved Phoenician alphabet, far more useful and accessible to the population at large then the arcane record-keeping Linear B script of the Mycenaean palaces. Maritime commerce with Phoenicia and Egypt was renewed on an increased scale.

Colonies and trading posts were founded throughout the Mediterranean. Population growth may have reached 2 to 3 percent per annum in some years. Nearly 1000 small, autonomous communities now dotted the Greek-speaking world from southern Italy to the Black Sea. of 2 Part 1 - Rise of the City Stateīy 700 B.C., Greek recovery from more than 4 Centuries of cultural obscurity was well under. History of the Phalanx Hoplite By MaximusDecimus

Rome total war 2 battle