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Metics and Identity in Democratic Athens

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Metics and Identity in Democratic Athens METICS AND IDENTITY IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS By MATTHEW JOHN KEARS A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham March 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the metics, or resident aliens, in democratic Athens and how they affected ideas of identity, with a particular focus on the fourth century BC. It looks at definitions of the metics and how the restrictions and obligations which marked their status operated; how these affected their lives and their image, in their own eyes and those of the Athenians; how the Athenians erected and maintained a boundary of status and identity between themselves and the metics, in theory and in practice; and how individuals who crossed this boundary could present themselves and be characterised, especially in the public context of the lawcourts. The argument is that the metics served as a contradiction of and challenge to Athenian ideas about who they were and what made them different from others. This challenge was met with responses which demonstrate the flexibility of identity in Athens, and its capacity for variety, reinvention and contradiction. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I returned to University in 2008, after six years away, I had the intention only of doing a Master’s degree and seeing where it might take me; it is a testament to the people and ethos of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, then, that I have ended up producing this work. First I would like to thank my supervisor, Niall Livingstone, for all the academic help and support he has given me, and, perhaps above all, for the assistance he has given me in learning the Greek language. I must also thank Niall McKeown, who encouraged me to take up doctoral studies and gave me invaluable help in applying for funding. Without the bursary I received from the University’s College of Arts and Law I do not think I could have taken up my studies, so I must thank that body and whoever selected me for funding. Thanks must also go to the postgraduates of the IAA, past and present, who have been my friends and colleagues for a number of years, and made my time here both intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. I would especially like to thank Dave Newsome, who welcomed me into the postgraduate community at a time when I barely knew such a thing existed. I have made many friends at the University outside of our department as well, and they too have made the PhD process far more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for the moral (and indeed financial) support which they have given me, even if they have never been quite sure what a metic actually was. CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. Summary and Argument 1 2. Scope and Evidence 4 3. Theoretical Background – Identity and the Past 10 Chapter One: Definitions Ancient and Modern 18 1.1 Metics as Immigrants, and the ‘Ideal Metic’ 20 1.2 Metics as Non-Citizens 27 1.3 Legal Definitions and the Lexicographers 34 1.4 Metoikoi, Astoi and Xenoi – Redefinition in Cohen’s Athenian Nation 39 1.5 Other Categories – Isoteleis and Freedmen 43 Chapter Two: Living as a Metic 49 2.1 The Metic’s Defining Features 49 2.1 (a) Registration 49 2.1 (b) The Prostatês 51 2.1 (c) The Metoikion 57 2.2 Restrictions 71 2.2 (a) Landowning Rights 71 2.2 (b) Marriage 72 2.2 (c) Religious Activities 76 2.2 (d) Metics in Court 81 2.3 Social and Economic Integration 94 2.4 Conclusions 101 Chapter Three: The Boundary in Theory – Autochthony 104 3.1 Autochthony as Myth and Theory 105 3.2 (a) Performing Autochthony – the Funeral Oration and its Context 108 3.2 (b) Autochthony in the Funeral Orations 120 3.3 (a) Exploring Autochthony – Euripides’ Ion 124 3.3 (b) Alternatives, Doubts and Dissent 130 3.3 (c) Autochthony and Plato’s Menexenus 134 3.4 Conclusions 153 Chapter Four: The Boundary in Practice 155 4.1 (a) Athenian Citizenship Law 155 4.1 (b) Relaxation and Re-enactment – the Peloponnesian War and Nicomenes’ Decree of 403/2 157 4.2 Mass Enfranchisements 162 4.2 (a) Foreign Fighters in the Civil War 163 4.2 (b) The Plataeans 166 4.2 (c) The Fighters at Arginusae 172 4.3 (a) The Scrutiny of 346/5 181 4.3 (b) The Aftermath of Chaeronea 185 4.4 Setting Athenians Apart 187 4.4 (a) The Athenian Tribes 188 4.4 (b) The Lycurgan Era and the Reformed Ephêbeia 193 4.5 Conclusions 204 Chapter Five: Crossing the Boundary 206 5.1 From Slaves to Citizens – Apollodorus and his Family 206 5.1 (a) Background and Chronological Issues 207 5.1 (b) Phormion and his Presentation in Demosthenes 36 210 5.1 (c) Apollodorus and his Arguments in Demosthenes 45 and 59 223 5.2 Crossing the Other Way – Unworthy, Dubious and Doubtful Citizens 250 5.2 (a) Athenian Citizens as Metics Elsewhere – Shorter Absences in Lysias 3 and Lysias 31 251 5.2 (b) A Citizen in Word but not in Deed – Lycurgus Against Leocrates 258 5.2 (c) Attempting to Cross Back – Demosthenes 57 271 5.3 Conclusions 281 Conclusion 284 Bibliography 286 INTRODUCTION 1. Summary and Argument This thesis investigates the metics, or resident aliens, in democratic Athens and how they affected ideas of identity. Due to the nature of the evidence the focus is particularly on the fourth century BC, though the fifth is also covered. As non-citizens of many different backgrounds and ethnicities, who were nevertheless free and in some cases citizens of other states, the metics offered a challenge to what might otherwise be relatively straightforward oppositions between Athenian and foreigner, Greek and barbarian, and, in the case of freedmen, free and slave. My aim is not to produce simple, definitive summaries of ‘what the Athenians thought’, but rather to look at and explore the varied, sometimes contradictory ways in which they thought about and made use of identity. In the first chapter I look at definitions of the metics – the conception of them as immigrants and non-citizens, descriptions of their legal status, what modern scholars have made of them and their relation to the rest of Athenian society, and what marked them out as metics. In the second chapter, the focus is on how these marks of status operated, and what special restrictions the metics lived under: the effects, both practical and ideological, which these had on the metics; what they meant to the Athenians; why they were put in place; and how they related to areas of life in which metics were more integrated into Athenian society. I argue that the overriding concerns were establishing difference, a boundary, between Athenians and metics, and putting in place a framework in which those metics who attempted to avoid the 1 restrictions, and thus blur the boundary, were severely punished. The importance of these concerns far outweighed any practical negative impact that was involved, but nevertheless carried with them considerable disadvantages, and prejudice against metic groups could be and was exploited by Athenians when it was to their benefit. They also tended to deny male metics access to traditional ways of expressing masculine identity. None of this, however, stopped Athenians and metics from forming close relationships and networks of support, and outside of official Athenian structures and institutions there was considerable scope for metics to compensate for their denial of agency (and potential isolation) in private and among their own communities. In chapter three, I look at how the Athenians theorised, explained and justified their privileged position through the myth of autochthony and the extreme boundary of status and identity which it represented, through its public proclamation and enactment via the ritual of the funeral oration. I consider the effects and importance it had not only for Athenians, but also for the metics who witnessed it. I also examine doubts about and dissent against this model and its effects. My conclusion is that its ritual context privileged it and protected it from rational analysis, allowing what would otherwise seem to be obvious falsehoods to both unify the Athenians and divide them from the other residents of the polis, at least for the duration of the ritual; there is evidence, however, that it was not entirely effective or genuinely believed in. The fourth chapter examines how (and how successfully) this boundary was enacted and policed in practice, and the efforts of the Athenians to keep themselves pure by preventing metics from crossing the boundary and infiltrating the citizen body. The evidence indicates 2 that the measures they took to keep infiltrators out were ineffective, and often acknowledged as such, but that this did not lead the Athenians to abandon their ideology of difference and superiority. As a group they were prepared, when required for pragmatic reasons, to allow non-Athenians into the citizen body, either tacitly or overtly, but when this was no longer necessary they reverted to type.
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