Limit vs. Center – sub specie aeternitatis: The city between mythology, philosophy and ideology

Abstract

The parallel of Pre-Socratic thought were ancient Greek poleis - colonies in Ionia and Ionian colonies in Sicily, often characterized by determined planning in which one can recognize the same conceptual division between infinity and finiteness. The Ionian dodecapoleis included Miletus, Samos, Ephesus, Colophon, Teos, Chios, Smyrna, the nearby two towns of Clazomenae and Erytrae, Phocaea,Priene and Pergamon. In these poleis, according to Herodotus, that have flourished in the 6th century BC, we are facing the first regular city planning strategies ever known, which are conducted by the principle of limitation, demarcation and subdivision - the same we could experience in the Pre-Socratic thought. It is such rational speculations that not only conducted the development of orthogonal geometry - as the case of Pythagoreans clearly demonstrates, but also the urban identity of the first Greek cities.