Polis (pl.: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word polis had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (póli), "city", is located within a χώρα (chóra), "country", which is a πατρίδα (patrída) or "native land" for its citizens. In ancient Greece, the polis was the native land; there was no other. It had a constitution and demanded the supreme loyalty of its citizens. Χώρα was only the countryside, not a country. Ancient Greece was not a sovereign country, but was territory occupied by Hellenes, people who claimed as their native language some dialect of Ancient Greek.
Poleis did not only exist within the area of the modern Republic of Greece. A collaborative study carried by the Copenhagen Polis Centre from 1993 to 2003 classified about 1,500 settlements of the Archaic and Classical ancient-Greek-speaking population as poleis. These ranged from the Caucasus to Southern Spain, and from Southern Russia to Northern Egypt, spread over the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. They have been termed a network of micro-states. Many of the settlements still exist; e.g., Marseille, Syracuse, Alexandria, but they are no longer Greek or micro-states, belonging to other countries.
