From antiquity until the nineteenth century, there have been two types of state: macro-states, each dotted with a number of cities, and regions broken up into city-states, each consisting of an urban center and its hinterland. A region settled with interacting city-states constituted a city-state culture and Polis opens with a description of the concepts of city, state, city-state, and city-state culture, and a survey of the 37 city-state cultures so far identified. Mogens Herman Hansen provides a thoroughly accessible introduction to the polis (plural: poleis), or ancient Greek city-state, which represents by far the largest of all city-state cultures. He addresses such topics as the emergence of the polis, its size and population, and its political organization, ranging from famous poleis such as Athens and Sparta through more than 1,000 known examples.

从古代到19世纪，有两种类型的国家：宏观国家，每个国家都点缀着一些城市，以及分成城邦的地区，每个城邦由一个城市中心及其腹地组成。一个由相互影响的城邦定居的地区构成了城邦文化。《波利斯》一开始就描述了城市、国家、城邦和城邦文化的概念，并对迄今为止确定的37种城邦文化进行了调查。莫根斯-赫尔曼-汉森对polis（复数：poleis）或古希腊城邦进行了深入浅出的介绍，它是迄今为止所有城邦文化中最大的一个。他讨论了诸如政体的出现、其规模和人口以及其政治组织等话题，从雅典和斯巴达等著名的政体到1000多个已知的例子。