States make war and war makes states. This chapter argues that the concept of state is perfectly compatible with polities in which legitimate force exists within an oligopolistic rather than a monopolistic system. Two kinds of violence producers were set apart. At one end stood the 'booty-chaser', represented by Homer's Odysseus and his historical successor, the Phocaean Dionysius. At the other end stood the fighting potential of an entire community, mustered and fielded by the central political authority. Thucydides also points to the circumstances that conditioned the emergence of the most pre-eminent classical Greek example of the monopolistic state and establishes the approximate date of this momentous event. The one Greek state to succeed where all others had failed is of course classical Athens. The chapter focuses on what ensured that success was partly possession of two major violence-related institutions, sea-power and hegemony, and partly a determined effort to achieve a high degree of financial independence.