Altogether there were over 1500 city-states in the Greek world, but some of these would barely qualify as towns in modern terms. Even Athens, by far the largest of all city-states, only contained an estimated population of about 200,000 people in the year 500 BC. Many of these people would have lived not in the city but in the surrounding countryside, and only about 35,000 men would have been full citizens.

In comparison, other important cities, like Corinth (with about 10,000 citizens), and Argos (with 15,000 citizens) were relatively small.

Sparta had even fewer citizens, but was in many ways an exceptional case. Its powerful military elite ruled over nearly four thousand square miles, almost all of the Peloponnesian peninsula. Yet the vast majority of these people were not citizens at all but slaves, tied to the land of their masters.