Political thought was invented by the Greeks. Several factors contributed to this fact. In the first place, the typical political organization of the Greeks, the polis, was the community of the politai, the citizens, who determined all political issues in organized and open debates. Whether democratic or oligarchic, the full citizens were equal before the law and had an equal right to voice their opinion and influence the policy of their state. This right, when implemented, perforce generated reflections upon important political issues, as well as upon the relations between the individual citizen and his fellow-citizens, upon the concepts embodied in the idea of the polis and upon the nature of the polis itself. Moreover, albeit the close relation between the citizen and his polis, the Greek thought of himself as an independent entity, separated from the polis, and thus able to criticize it.

The polis was a very different political organization from the absolute monarchies of the ancient Near East. Moreover, although religion played a decisive and important role in the life of the polis and its citizens, the Greeks did not see this world through the eyes of faith. There was neither a priestly order nor any binding and dogmatic sacred text, and human life was not conceived as leading to a better plight after death. What mattered was this world, and although life upon Earth was hard and gloomy, it could be improved. How, and to what extent, were other issues of reflection. Thus, Greek philosophers dared ask questions about the nature of the gods and the principles of the universe.

The polis was not static; it had its cycle of growth and changes. Among the many Greek poleis (plural for polis) only Sparta maintained its traditional constitution for hundreds of years, and its unique and stable construction became a legend. Other Greek poleis went through a stage of monarchy, which gave up its place to aristocracy; many poleis experienced tyranny in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and some gave birth to democracy, the best example of which was Athens. Furthermore, the age of Greek colonization (the 8th to the 6th centuries B.C.) encountered the Greeks with different societies and cultures. The different constitutions they encountered, both Greek and non-Greek, provided a great amount of data for comparison and research, and further gave scope to reflecting on man's relations with the gods and on the nature of relations between the individual citizen and the polis.

The poleis differed in the degree and the number of their full citizens, a fact which in its own right contributed to reflection upon the best constitution and upon arête, the qualities and abilities required of the citizen for the successful running of the polis. When democratic constitutions emerged, the old aristocratic ideology, according to which only the wellborn and the rich possessed arête, and thus the right to govern, became problematic and had to defend itself. Democracy, in turn, had to maintain itself against the claims of noble descent and wealth. Hence the fervent debates on the best constitution and on the question, which became paramount in the second half of the fifth century B.C.: Is arête an inherited quality, or can it be taught? This question is the main concern of the Platonic dialogue Protagoras, where the sophist claims that all citizens have the necessary expertise to decide in all political matters.

Greek systematic political thought is primarily the writings of Plato and Aristotle. But crude reflections on, and criticism of, the political reality and its remedies can be found much earlier, as in Hesiod's description of the Iron Age, that is, the present times. The fragments of the poems of Solon, the Athenian legislator and reformer of the beginning of the 6th century B.C., reveal his concern with the reasons for the instability of the state in general, as well as for the political and social crisis in his polis. Attic tragedy of the 5th century touched upon political issues, such as the nature of justice and the relation between the individual citizen and his fellow-citizens, and thus presented the audience (which consisted of the voters in the Assembly) with characters who seek to understand their everyday experience. The main contribution to the development of political thought, however, were the sophists, teachers of 'political expertise' and rhetoric, who were active in the second half of the 5th century B.C.

The sophists sought to understand the polis as an abstract, and not only as specific political issues. They suggested theories about concepts embodied in the polis, by defining and analyzing the common and different elements of the various poleis. By doing that, they exposed contradictions and incongruities, developed a relative and subversive approach to justice, the laws and the gods, and thus aroused resentment. Socrates, whose concern, like that of the sophists, was the polis and the concepts embodied in it, also aroused resentment by undermining conventional views about the nature of justice and political competence. His theories, for which Plato is our primary source, diverged from the dominant democratic ideology. As his pupil, Plato, and after him Aristotle, sought to understand the reasons for the instability of contemporary constitutions and offered models for a better and stable one.

Long before the first expression of systematic political thought, however, and side by side with its development, myths and fantasies were told about lost, and hopefully regained, Paradises. These myths and legends sprang from reality and were a comment on it, but were always no more than escapist fantasies. Harsh political reality and travelers' tales generated stories like the Phaeacian kingdom in Homer's Oddysey and myths like the Golden Age of Hesiod and Ovid. This last myth, also known by the Greeks as 'life under Kronos', was told as an explanation and a negative definition of the present evil plight of man under the Iron Age. Under Kronos (Zeus' father) Earth abounded with food of its own accord, men lived until the age of 150 without toil and passed away in sleep, and there were no wars and no illness. This myth persisted even in the 5th century and after, and was the subject matter of Attic comedians, who provided their audience with escapist dreams of Nowhere lands.

These fantasies, though springing from political and social reality and criticizing it, cannot be strictly defined as utopian. They lacked that element of serious criticism and were neither a paradigm nor a goal. And yet, elements of the fabulous and magical are found even in serious political thought, as can be seen in Plato, and in later utopian writers. Furthermore, alongside primitivistic theories of the deterioration of mankind, as expressed in the myth of the Golden Age, there were opposing myths which emphasized the progress of mankind, like the myth of Prometheus. Such myths even penetrated political thought, for example, in Plato's Protagoras. On the other hand, serious criticism, and especially the idea that the world cannot be cured as long as the two primary roots of evil, the strife over wealth and property and the struggle arising from sexual drives, are not removed, is expressed not only in Plato's Republic, but also in Aristophanes' comedy, the Ecclesiazousae, where the Athenian women introduce the cancellation of private property and of the marital institution. Aristophanes' comedy, of course, was not reconstructive as Plato's model of the ideal state. Models of ideal states, whether achievable or not, were meant to provide a goal, and they can be found even in writers earlier than Plato. The remarkable thing about Greek political Thought was the unique mixture of fable, utopia and analysis, and the continuance of the Golden Age myths long after systematic political thought gave its first expression.