From the National Geographic online encyclopedia: A city-state, or polis, was the community structure of ancient Greece. Each city-state was organized with an urban center and the surrounding countryside. Characteristics of the city in a polis were outer walls for protection, as well as a public space that included temples and government buildings. The temples and government buildings were often built on the top of a hill, or acropolis. A surviving example of a structure central to an ancient acropolis is the famous Parthenon of Athens. The Parthenon was a temple built to honor the goddess Athena. The majority of a polis’s population lived in the city, as it was the center of trade, commerce, culture, and political activity.There grew to be over 1,000 city-states in ancient Greece, but the main poleis were Athína (Athens), Spárti (Sparta), Kórinthos (Corinth), Thíva (Thebes), Siracusa (Syracuse), Égina (Aegina), Ródos (Rhodes), Árgos, Erétria, and Elis. Each city-state ruled itself.
