The archetypical settlement in ancient Greece was the self-governing city state called the polis ( Greek: πόλις), but other types of settlement occurred.
A kome ( Greek: κώμη) was typically a village that was also a political unit. The translation is inexact, but according to Thucydides, Sparta, though it was a polis, resembled four unwalled villages. Similarly, a kome could be a neighbourhood within a larger polis or its own rural settlement. Thucydides mused that the polis had developed from the kome. [1]
A katoikia ( Greek: κατοικία) was similar to a polis, typically a military colony, [2] with some municipal institutions, but not those of a full polis. The word derives from the Ancient Greek: κατοικέω for "to inhabit" (a settlement) and is somewhat similar[ citation needed] to the Latin civitas. In the Classical era, there were few katoikiai; however, with the rise of large centralized empires following the conquests of Alexander the Great, they became the main type of Greek settlement, especially in the newly conquered east. [3] Sometimes these were fortresses, inside a city or in an open position. They were an equivalent of the English idea of a fort.
Many of the poleis in ancient Greece established colonies, of which many went on to be fully independent poleis of their own. These include:
Within the Greek world, several military establishments resembled civilian towns.