This chapter compares stasis to the modern conceptual category with which it is most commonly associated: bellum civile, or civil war. It focuses primarily on the “original” civil wars of the first century BCE but also considers subsequent cases that are similar in scale, duration, and the types of violence involved. Against existing scholarship, which tends to conflate stasis with modern conceptual categories, including but not limited to civil war, it argues that stasis was a historically distinctive phenomenon that differs fundamentally from its analogues in both ancient and modern societies.

This chapter presents a set of stasis-narratives that flesh out the abstract discussion provided in Chapter 1. The narratives focus on the poleis of Plataia, Elis, Rhodos, Thebes, Tegea, Argos, and Telos, and are based primarily on the following sources: Thucydides (Plataia), the Oxyrhynchus Historian (Rhodos), Xenophon (Elis, Thebes, and Tegea), Aineias the Tactician (Argos), and IG XII.4.132 (Telos).

This chapter uses the results obtained in Chapter 7 to develop a hypothesis regarding the frequency of staseis in poleis other than Thebes: namely, that most poleis experienced stasis at a similar rate of once every 6–12 years. It then subjects this hypothesis to a series of tests using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis at both the macro and the micro level. It shows that the working hypothesis does not hold for Athens, Sparta, or Syracuse, all of which are genuine outliers with respect to stasis; that it almost certainly holds for a small subset of prominent poleis, such as Argos and Miletos, whose political histories can be studied in detail; that it very likely holds for a larger set of 50 prominent poleis, such as Herakleia Pontike and Mytilene, whose political histories are relatively well documented; and that it probably holds for most of the other thousand or so poleis under consideration.

It is now time to offer an explanation for the results obtained in Parts II–III, regarding the frequency and intensity of stasis. Before I proceed, however, it is important to emphasize that I am not seeking to explain why the Greeks engaged in stasis or resolve the longstanding controversy regarding the true or root causes of the phenomenon; as indicated in Chapter 1, I believe that attempts to isolate a true cause – or even a limited set of root causes – for stasis are misguided. Rather, I seek to address two related questions that emerge directly from the analysis conducted in this book: Why did the Greeks participate in stasis so frequently? And why did staseis tend to involve such low levels of (lethal) violence?

This chapter introduces a database of fifth- and fourth-century staseis that have been recognized by existing scholarship, as well as a set of proxies for what I call “prominence” in the evidentiary record: the amount of evidence concerning the history of a given polis that is available to modern historians. It then uses the database to reveal four striking trends in the frequency and distribution of attested staseis. Next, it uses the proxies to show that both the apparent trends exhibited by recognized staseis and existing scholarship on the frequency of stasis – most of which takes one or more of these trends to be historical – are products of evidentiary scarcity and bias. Finally, it identifies two other methodological issues that compromise attempts to study stasis on a macro scale and argues that new approaches are necessary.

This chapter surveys existing scholarship on the violence of stasis and outlines my approach to examining the types and (especially) the amounts of violence that stasis typically involved. Next, it introduces 14 types of violence that are characteristic of stasis: for example, surprise attacks, betrayals (prodosiai), and mass executions. Finally, it divides staseis into three broad categories vis-à-vis the types of violence they involved, elucidates these categories, and discusses their relation to each other.

This chapter discusses the frequency of stasis at Thebes. In contrast to existing scholarship, which focuses exclusively on cases that can be diagnosed with (near) certainty, it estimates the total number of staseis that occurred. This approach frees me to think probabilistically and thus factor into my analysis events that probably involved stasis, contextual factors that increased the likelihood of stasis, and – most significantly – the knowledge, acquired in Chapters 5 and 6, that the absence of evidence for stasis cannot be interpreted as evidence of absence except in a tiny minority of the polis-years under consideration. Through comprehensive analysis of the relevant evidence, it argues that Thebes experienced between 17 and 23 staseis during the fifth and fourth centuries; and thus that the Thebans experienced stasis at an average rate of between once every 8 and once every 11 years.

Armed conflict and the proximity of soldiers and other combatants shaped late ancient monastic communities in diverse ways that reflected not only the vulnerability of victims but also the resourcefulness of innovators. Monks were wounded, captured, and killed, and some became the objects of veneration as martyrs; monastic communities built walls and towers for protection and offered help to victims of violence; monks interacted with barbarians peacefully and violently and integrated their fears of barbarians into their spiritual lives; monks formed new and often beneficial relationships with military men, some of whom chose to become monks themselves; and the military may have provided one of the models for the organization of monastic communities. Monks saw themselves as soldiers of the heavenly king, not entirely different from the nearby soldiers of the earthly king.