Politeia
concept in ancient Greek
Politeia (πολιτεία) is an Ancient Greek word used in Greek political thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle. Derived from the word polis ("city-state"), it has a range of meanings from "the rights of citizens" to a "form of government" to "commonwealth".
English translations of the Greek word
According to Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon a meaning of politeia is "the conditions and rights of the citizen, or citizenship", analogous to the Latin civitas.
Politeia, in Greek means the community of citizens in a city / state. It should not be confused with "regime" that is meant by politeuma or "Status quo" that is meant by kathestos. Politeuma is the word describing the political situation of the community of citizens in a city/state, and kathestos means also the general situation of an object, an agreement, or something else.
Politeia is derived from both the root word polis meaning "city" or "state", and from the verb politeuomai that means "I am living as an active citizen of the polis".
People living in a Greek city/state were not necessarily citizens. A person that was ostracized from the active matrix of the city was an example of such. Another example was people who lived in the city but were not active citizens who had a say in the political processes of the community.
“Politeia” enters the record as concept in ancient Greek. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Politeia, concept and ancient can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q547921. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Politeia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.