1 a Metic Was a Metic in Classical Athens, an Immigrant Who Stayed
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A Metic was a Metic ABSTRACT: In Classical Athens, an immigrant who stayed longer than about a month was required to register a citizen as prostates and to commence paying the metoikion. So were freed slaves. A recent study treats these freeborn and freedman metics as distinct legal types of resident alien. Athenian law did not. In Classical Athens, an immigrant who stayed longer than about a month was required to register a citizen as prostates and to commence paying the metoikion.1 Likewise, freed slaves were to register prostatai and pay the metoikion.2 A recent study of Athenian status groups treats these freeborn and freedman metics as distinct legal “subcategories of resident alien.”3 Athenian law, I argue, did not. *** Harpokration defines metic with a pair of criteria (µὲν…δὲ); first, a metic is “one who changes residence from one city to another, and not briefly visiting as a foreigner but having established residence there.”4 This alone cannot have functioned as a prescriptive legal test.5 The second part is similarly descriptive: “And twelve drachmas each year used to be paid by them, which was called “metoikion.”” Aristophanes of Byzantium also focused on the twin criteria of domicile and taxation: “A metic is whenever a person, having come from a foreign (polis) takes up residence in the polis, paying a tax toward certain appointed uses of the city. Thus, for so many days he is called a visitor (παρεπίδηµος) and does not pay tax, but if he passes the fixed time, he becomes a metic thenceforth and liable to taxation (µέτοικος ἤδη γίνεται καὶ ὑποτελής).”6 The last clause 1 P. Gauthier, Symbola: Les étrangers et la justice dans les cités grecques (Nancy 1972) 122 (month); D. Whitehead, Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge 1977) 9, 76 (month), 75-77 (metoikion), 89-92 (prostates). 2 Whitehead, Ideology of the Athenian Metic 16-17. 3 D. Kamen, Status in Classical Athens (Princeton 2013) 43: “distinguished from each other not only legally but also (more significantly) socially.” 4 Harp. s.v. µετοίκιον: µέτοικος µέν ἐστιν ὁ ἐξ ἑτέρας πόλεως µετοικῶν ἐν ἑτέρᾳ καὶ µὴ πρὸς ὀλίγον ὡς ξένος ἐπιδηµῶν, ἀλλὰ τὴν οἴκησιν αὐτόθι καταστησάµενος. ἐδίδοντο δὲ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔτος δραχµαὶ ιβʹ, ὅπερ ὠνόµαστο µετοίκιον. 5 A. Dimopoulou-Piliouni, “Apeleutheroi: Metics or Foreigners?” Dike 11 (2008) 27–50, 29-30, suggests, “Such a definition could evidently not apply to a freedman residing in the city of his former master. A fundamental difference between a metic and a manumitted slave appears to be that the first was the citizen of another city, who chose to leave his natal city and move and live permanently into another. A metic was a willingly expatriated foreigner, a free man making his living permanently abroad, one who had never lost his civic status or rights in his natal city. If a metic chose to return to his homeland, he would be there a citizen of full rights.” But such a literal test would have excluded political exiles, whose departure was unwilling, or war refugees, who may not have had a homeland to return to, or countless others who may not have come from a polis in the first place—say, Aetolians. 6 Ar. Byz. 38 [Nauck]: Μέτοικος δέ ἐστιν ὁπόταν τις ἀπὸ ξένης ἐλθὼν ἐνοικῇ τῇ πόλει, τέλος τελῶν εἰς ἀποτεταγµένας τινὰς χρείας τῆς πόλεως· ἕως µὲν οὖν ποσῶν ἡµερῶν παρεπίδηµος καλεῖται καὶ ἀτελής ἐστιν, ἐὰν δὲ ὑπερβῇ τὸν ὡρισµένον χρόνον, µέτοικος ἤδη γίνεται καὶ ὑποτελής· παραπλησίως δὲ τούτῳ καὶ ὁ ἰσοτελής. 1 is telegraphic, sensible enough but legally imprecise. As Pollux put it, “a metic is one who pays the metoikion,”7 and according to the Suda one’s prostates assisted.8 Payment was a physical and bureaucratic act performed in the presence of others and written down.9 One could not “become” a metic automatically. We find the same imprecision elsewhere. Harpokration defines aprostasiou as “a type of action against metics who do not register / have a prostates.”10 If one paid the metoikion through a prostates then anyone lacking such could not have paid the metoikion; such a person was not legally a metic. Also Pollux.11 Similarly, the Suda notes that the poletai sold off the assets of metics who had no prostatai.12 The author of the Ath.Pol. states that the polemarch heard cases of aprostasiou for metics,13 by which he can only have meant that the polemarch heard cases of aprostasiou for those who appeared to be metics but, in fact, may or may not have taken the necessary steps to become so: a prosecutor might establish that a resident non-citizen was entirely 7 Pollux 3.55: µέτοικος ὁ τὸ µετοίκιον συντελῶν. 8 Suda s.v. Ἀποστασίου: Ἀπροστασίου δέ· τῶν µετοίκων ἕκαστος προστάτην ἔχουσι κατὰ νόµον ἕνα τῶν ἀστῶν, καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ τό τε µετοίκιον τίθεται κατὰ ἔτος καὶ τὰ ἄλλα διοικεῖται (Cf. aprostasiou: each of the metics has a prostates, one of the citizens by law, and through him he pays the metoikion each year and manages everything else). Also s.v. Νέµειν προστάτην: ἀντὶ τοῦ ἔχειν προστάτην· τῶν γὰρ µετοίκων ἕκαστος µετὰ προστάτου τῶν ἀστῶν τινος τὰ πράγµατα αὑτοῦ συνῴκει καὶ τὸ µετοίκιον κατετίθει. καὶ τὸ ἔχειν προστάτην καλεῖται νέµειν προστάτην (for “to have a prostates;” for, each of the metics, with a prostates, who is one of the astoi, used to jointly administer his own affairs and pay the metoikion. And to have a prostates is called “nemein prostaten”). Here, συνῴκει must be an error for συνῳκονόµει; Whitehead translates, “each of the metics [sc. in classical Athens] manages his own affairs in conjunction with a sponsor who is one of the citizens” (Suda Online, Adler nu,166: http://www.stoa.org/sol). A handful of passages in the orators (Lys. 31.9, Dem. 29.3, Dem. 57.55, texts quoted below) refer to a metic depositing (κατα/τίθηµι) metoikion, which may suggest payment in person (Whitehead, Ideology of the Athenian Metic 76), but none indicates active engagement by the prostates. 9 At Dem. 25.57 (quoted below) an alleged violator was hauled to the poleterion and found there to have paid the metoikion; this must have involved consultation of records kept by the tax collector(s) or the poletai themselves. 10 Harp. s.v. Ἀπροστασίου: εἶδος δίκης κατὰ τῶν προστάτην µὴ νεµόντων µετοίκων· ᾑρεῖτο γὰρ ἕκαστος ἑαυτῷ τῶν πολιτῶν τινὰ προστησόµενον περὶ πάντων τῶν ἰδίων καὶ τῶν κοινῶν. Ὑπερείδης ἐν τῷ κατ’ Ἀρισταγόρας ἀπροστασίου βʹ (… For each used to choose for himself one of the citizens to be his prostates concerning all his own and common affairs. [sc. An example is] Hypereides in his second speech against Aristagora for aprostasiou). 11 Pollux Onom. 8.35: ἀποστασίου δὲ δίκη κατὰ τῶν ἀφισταµένων ἀπελευθέρων, ἀπροστασίου δὲ κατὰ τῶν οὐ νεµόντων προστάτην µετοίκων (apostasiou is an action against freedmen who depart, and aprostasiou [sc. is an action] against metics who do not register / have a prostates). 12 Suda s.v. πωλητής: …ὑπέκειντο δὲ τοῖς Πωληταῖς καὶ ὅσοι τὸ διαγραφὲν ἀργύριον ἐν πολέµῳ µὴ εἰσέφερον, ἔτι καὶ οἱ ξενίας ἁλόντες καὶ ὁ µέτοικος καὶ προστάτην οὐκ ἔχων καὶ ὁ ἀποστασίου γραφείς· τούτων γὰρ τὰς οὐσίας πωλοῦντες παρεκατέβαλον εἰς τὸ δηµόσιον (also falling under the poletai were those who did not contribute the levied sum in wartime, and also those convicted of xenia, and the metic who did not have a prostates, and the one who was convicted of apostasiou). This last is an error for aprostasiou; see Suda Online, Adler pi,2159: http://www.stoa.org/sol, where Whitehead translates “metics who had failed to take a prostates and been convicted on that charge” and links (n3) to aprostasiou (Adler alpha,3703). 13 Ath.Pol. 58.3 αὐτὸς δ’ εἰσάγει δίκας τάς τε τοῦ ἀπο[σ]τασίου καὶ ἀπροστασ[ί]ου καὶ κλήρων καὶ ἐπικλήρων τοῖς µετοίκοις. 2 delinquent and had never been a legal metic in the first place.14 Elsewhere, the Suda draws the legal distinction carefully (s.v. aprostasiou): “whenever someone, though seeming to be a metic (δοκῶν εἶναι µέτοικος), does not have a prostates or does not pay the metoikion or claims to be a citizen though he has been wrongly enrolled in the politeia, he who wishes brings suit against him, which is called ‘aprostasiou.’”15 An alien whose stay passed the prescribed limit, but who lacked a prostates and had not paid the metoikion, was not a metic. He was liable to become one and may well have seemed to be so. But to be and to seem were different legal facts. If conversion to metic status was not automatic, becoming liable was. “[I]n the fourth century at least, foreigners arriving in Athens—whether intending to ‘immigrate’ or not—encountered an essentially pragmatic machinery: intentions apart, if they stayed for longer than a statutory (and fairly short) period the polis required them to become metics.”16 So shows the rider to the decree that honored Straton of Sidon, which added that Sidonians who were visiting Athens for the purpose of trade could not be made to pay metoikion, serve as choregos, or contribute eisphora, “provided that they reside in Sidon and are active citizens” there.17 Absent this protection, if these Sidonians stayed in Athens beyond the fixed time limit they would have had to become metics; presence beyond the time limit was otherwise sufficient to trigger liability, and claims of proper residence elsewhere would not have altered that fact. By freeing these Sidonians from having to pay the metoikion18 the decree accorded them “an artificially prolonged ‘life’ as xenoi, as parepidemountes free of financial obligation.”19 One who pays the metoikion is a metic; one who does not is not.