Citizenship, Land Tenure, and Community: A View from Oropos

“The land” (chōra) and the “people” (anthrōpoi) are, according to Aristotle’s Politics, the primary elements a polis consists of. The aim of this paper is to focus on the interplay between land and citizenship by analysing the case of the Athenian administration of Oropos in the 330s–320s BCE, a period of time, following the return of Oropos under Athenian control, for which the literary and especially epigraphic evidence is remarkably abundant. Three documents regulating land-use in distinct areas of the chōra of Oropos (the territory sacred to Amphiaraos, the hill district and the Nea) are analysed in detail. As a result, the community aspect in the management of the new territory, in which the ten Athenian tribes appear to act as the framework of collective participation, is underlined. In this context, a decree in honour of Amphiaraos uniquely granting the god a crown of 1000 drachmas “for the health and safety of the Athenian dēmos” and all that pertained to the citizens as individuals, including their families and possibly their possessions, is brought into connection with Aristotle’s definition of the polis and its “parts” in Book 1 of Politics.