The ideology of the Athenian metic: some pendants and a reappraisal

David Whitehead

doi:10.1017/S0068673500004867

The ideology of the Athenian metic: some pendants and a reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013

David Whitehead

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David Whitehead: Affiliation:
University of Manchester

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Nine years being nobody's idea of a significant anniversary, it will be understood that there is no celebratory intent in my returning here – with the kind permission of the Editors – to The Ideology of the Athenian Metic. Nor does it represent an author's peevish response to reviewers' nit-pickings, just or unjust. Rather, two purposes are to be served. The first is simply to bring together some of the less inconsequential addenda and corrigenda which any scholarly work (good or bad) generates, on the basis that the result might be a Nachtrag of some service to users of the book, and others; Section I comprises a series of twenty such points, listed in the order in which they arise in IAM and referred to by its pagination. Section II then re-opens a much broader issue – the Athenian metoikia in the third century – on which IAM could, and arguably should, have said more.

Type: Research Article
Information: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 32 , 1986 , pp. 145 - 158

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068673500004867 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

NOTES

1. PCPS suppl. vol. 4 (1977)Google Scholar; cited hereinafter as IAM.

2. On that score I observe only that, of the dozen known to me, there would seem most profit for the reader in the following four: Austin, M. M., Phoenix 33 (1979) 170–3CrossRef Google Scholar; Fisher, N. R. E., CR n.s.29 (1979) 266–8Google Scholar; Moggi, M., Gnomon 52 (1980) 340–3Google Scholar; and Pleket, H. W., Mnemosyne 4th ser. 34 (1981) 189–92Google Scholar.

3. This and all other ancient dates are B.C.

4. de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981). My criticism of course detracts little from what is, taken at large, a brilliantly stimulating and rigorous bookGoogle Scholar.

5. Rectified on the slip of ‘Corrigenda’.

6. ibidem 95, cf. 289.

7. For de Ste. Croix's own perception of this, ibidem 92 – an important passage for anyone seeking common ground between him and Finley.

8. ‘Immigrant communities in the classical polis: some principles for a synoptic treatment’, AC 53 (1984) 47–59Google Scholar.

9. I notice, incidentally, that this notion has become a fact in the glossary (p. 367) of the J.A.C.T. World of Athens volume (1984).

10. Cohen, E. E., Ancient Athenian Maritime Courts (1973) 9–59Google Scholar.

11. e.g. MacDowell, D. M., CR n.s.26 (1976) 85Google Scholar (and The Law in Classical Athens (1978) 231–2)Google Scholar; Rhodes, P. J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981) 583Google Scholar.

12. e.g. Gauthier, P., REG 87 (1974) 424Google Scholar (and Un Commentaire Historique des Poroi de Xénophon (1976) 225)Google Scholar; more fully Hansen, M. H., ‘Two notes on the Athenian dikai emporikai’, Panteios: Scientific Yearbook of the [Athenian] Graduate School of Political Sciences 1981 (= AGR 4, 1983) 169–75Google Scholar.

13. ‘Pour la petite histoire, je vous raconterai la mésaventure qui m'est arrivée il y a une dizaine d'années. Lisant des lexiques tardifs, j'etais tombé (à la rubrique embolimos, je crois, mais je n'en suis pas certain) sur une définition du métoikion, qui mentionnait le chiffre de 12 drachmes, mais qui précisait: “…lorsqu'il y avait 13 mois dans l'année, les métèques versaient 13 drachmes”. Je n'ai pas rêvé cela, j'ai copié le texte grec sur une fiche – que j'ai perdu. Et j'ai été incapable ensuite de retrouver la référence' (P. Gauthier, letter to the present writer, 1977). I too have failed to locate this passage. Can any reader supply it?

14. Henry, A. S., Honours and privileges in Attic decrees (1983) 246Google Scholar, cf. 249. I have also restated this myself in LCM 9.1 (January 1984) 9Google Scholar.

15. Rhodes (n.ll) 653-4; Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens II (1982) 33Google Scholar n.91.

16. For the important join recently made between this stone and IG ii ² 65 see Walbank, M. B., ZPE 51 (1983) 183–4Google Scholar.

17. ZPE 57 (1984) 145–6Google Scholar (which the arguments of Henry – ref. below, n.18 – would have modified).

18. Thus Henry (n.14) 252 n.15, citing another scholar who has construed the clause in this way (Walbank, M. B., Athenian Proxenies of the Fifth Century B.C. (1978) 267)Google Scholar, and raising two terminological doubts against my restoration per se. There is less to be said for Henry's suggestion (ibidem 257 n.62) that isoteleia in IG ii ² 288 could be taken in the same way: as he notes himself, isoteleia – unlike ateleia – was presumably self-explanatory; and in fact he expresses cautious agreement (248) with my proposition that isoteleia for proxenoi was ‘a matter of course by the mid fourth century’.

19. See Walbank, M. B., Hesperia 52 (1983) 108Google Scholar, fr.c, lines 2-4 (with commentary at p.132): ‘.

20. Baba, K., ABSA 79 (1984) 1–5Google Scholar, establishing also that the true reading in line 3 is . My assertion, incidentally, that ‘who put up the stone we are not told’ is untrue: see the third couplet (Timomachos).

21. Whitehead, D., ZPE 21 (1976) 251–9Google Scholar; Smart, J. D., ZPE 24 (1977) 231–2Google Scholar; Slings, S. R., ZPE 25 (1977) 277–9Google Scholar; Fornara, C. W., CSCA 10 (1977) 277–9Google Scholar; Fornara, C. W., CSCA 10 (1977) [1978] 39–55Google Scholar; Dover, K. J., ZPE 30 (1978) 94Google Scholar; Henry, A. S., ZPE 35 (1979) 287–91Google Scholar. The older view oddly lingers on, however, in Balcer, J. M., Historia Einzelschrift 33 (1978) 65–71Google Scholar, at 68.

22. The Demes of Attica, 508/7-ca. 250 B.C.: a political and social study (1986) 81-5 and passim.

23. ‘Xenocrates the Metic’, RhM 124 (1981) 223–44Google Scholar. See also Parente, M. I., ‘Per la biografia di Senocrate’, RFIC 109 (1981) 129–62Google Scholar.

24. Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., C&M 14 (1953) 32Google Scholar n.5.

25. Moggi, M. (n.2) 343, citing Patmos schol. Demosth. 23.71 (= BCH 1 [1877] 138)Google Scholar. (Cf. his article, involving use of this scholion, in ASNP 3rd. ser. 8 [1978] 1301–12.Google Scholar) Making explicit what the scholiast merely appears to imply, Moggi views aidesis as one of the two penalties, with exile, at the court's disposal; this is surely wrong (see Demosth.23.72, etc.), but does not impair his central point.

26. Duncan-Jones, R. P., ‘Metic numbers in Periclean Athens’, Chiron 10 (1980) 101–9Google Scholar; accepted by Hansen, M. H., ‘The number of Athenian hoplites in 431 B.C.’, SO 56 (1981) 19–32, at 23CrossRef Google Scholar.

27. Gauthier (n.12) 63-4.

28. Gauthier (n. 12) 56-74.

29. Patterson, C., Pericles' Citizenship Law of 451-50 B.C. (1981)Google Scholar. See also (e.g.) Rhodes (n.ll) 331-5; Walters, K. R., Cl. Ant 2. (1983) 314–36Google Scholar.

30. See Rhodes, P. J., The Athenian Boule (1972) 103 n.7Google Scholar; Henry, A. S., Chiron 12 (1982) 102 and 108–9Google Scholar.

31. Moysey, R. A., AJAH 1 (1976) 182–9Google Scholar.

32. ‘Sparta and the Thirty Tyrants’, AncSoc 13/14 (1982/1983) 105–30Google Scholar; Krentz, P., The Thirty at Athens (1982) 63–8Google Scholar.

33. Krentz, P., Phoenix 34 (1980) 298–306CrossRef Google Scholar (summarised in The Thirty at Athens 110-2); Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens I (1981) 37–41 and (esp.) II (1982) 26-43Google Scholar. On the nationality of the honorands see Middleton, D. F., ‘Thrasyboulos' Thracian support’, CQ n.s.32 (1982) 298–303CrossRef Google Scholar.

34. ‘Isoteleia, a metaphor in Xenophon’, Eirene 16 (1978) 19–22Google Scholar.

35. ‘A thousand new Athenians’, LCM 9.1 (January 1984) 8–10Google Scholar. Krentz has now replied, to both Osborne and myself, in ZPE 62 (1986) 201–4Google Scholar; he is insistent that none of the honorands received citizenship.

36. On the 346/5 diapsephiseis in general see now Whitehead (n.22) 106-9 and passim.

37. Much the best discussion of Demetrius' ‘census’ – its date, its purpose, and the various figures which may or may not have emerged from it – is now to be found in Hansen, M. H., Demography and Democracy: the number of Athenian citizens in the fourth century B.C. (1985 [1986]) 28–36Google Scholar.

38. That is, in a sense, to revert to something more like what seems to have been the case in the fifth century: see IAM 9-10 and 153.

39. Fisher (n.2) 268; Pleket (n.2) 192.

40. See Gauthier, Ph., ‘Epigraphie et institutions grecques’, Annuaire Éc. Prat. Hautes Études, IV^e section (Hist. Phil.) 1978–1979 [1982] 321–8Google Scholar, at 321-3 (cf. SEG xxxii 1696). As there is no means, in the report, of identifying the contributions of the various participants (listed on p. 328), I cite this hereinafter as Gauthier.

41. It is necessary, plainly, to recognise a distinction between (a) and (b), though in practice to do so raises more questions than it solves, given the absence of general agreement about any effects which (b) may have been having on (a) during the fourth century. Specifically, it is by no means certain whether the 10,000 metoikoi of Demetrius' ‘census’ represent a metic population in numerical decline, which might then be seen as continuing into and through the third century, or whether, as Mossé has suggested, the figure may actually have been on the increase (Mossé, C., ‘Métèques et étrangers à Athènes aux IV^e-III^e siècles avant notre ère’, in SYMPOSIUM 1971: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschicte (AGR 1, 1975) 205-13, at 206)Google Scholar. Duncan-Jones' high estimate for the fifth-century figure (above, at n.26) could be seen as strengthening the orthodox view (followed in IAM 97-8 and 163), but once we get into the third century it is guesswork all the way, as regards both any actual figures and also circumstances more generally; contrast, for example, the view of Pleket (n.2) 192 about diminishing economic attractions in third-century Athens with that of Mossé loc. cit.

42. And should have been in IAM, as Fisher (n.2) 268 remarks.

43. Most conveniently available in Pfister, F., Die Reisebilder des Herakleides (SAAW 227.2, 1951)Google Scholar.

44. This is the translation of Ferguson, W. S., Hellenistic Athens (1911) 262Google Scholar, which (a) faithfully conveys the difficulty of deciding whether the is (i) between themselves or (ii) between themselves and the citizens (for the latter see Pfister ad loc., and Austin, M. M., The Hellenistic World (1981) 151Google Scholar) and (b) retain the reading (so also Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius III (1979) 72)Google Scholar, where Pfister 113-4 would now advocate – a conjecture which virtually compels the preference of (ii) over (i).

45. Notice Ferguson's paraphrased translation at (n.44) 219: ‘they [sc. thiasoi, etc.] emphasized the pleasant features of their life, and by supplying to each what he most craved, caused him to forget that he had none of the rights of a freeman’.

46. On the dating issue, often discussed, it will be enough to cite Ferguson (n. 44) 464-7 and Pfister (n.43) 44-5 (rejecting Ferguson's case for a date of c.205); see also Walbank (n.44) 72.

47. Pleket (n.2) 192.

48. Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens III–IV (1983) 204-9, esp. 207Google Scholar: ‘all in all, it is a reasonable conclusion that naturalization (honorific or otherwise) was never very common in Athens prior to the second century…’.

49. Vatin, C., Recherches sur le mariage et la condition de la femme mariée à l'époque hellénistique (1970) 125–6Google Scholar; cf. Mossé (n.41) 210.

50. Gauthier 322; cf. Fisher (n.2) 268.

51. Gauthier 322-3.

52. Gauthier 322.

53. SEG xxxii 118 (IG ii ² 791 +). For the date, and all other matters, see Habicht, C., Studien zur Geschichte Athens in hellenistischer Zeit (1982) 26–33CrossRef Google Scholar.

54. Fisher (n.2) 268.

55. See IAM 9-10 on IG ii²141 (and Isoc. 17.41).

56. Thus Pečírka, J., The Formula for the Grant of Enktesis in Attic Inscriptions (1966) 114Google Scholar. (In either event Apollas was doubtless resident in Attica, but that is not really the issue.)

57. Fisher (n.2) 268; Gauthier 322.

58. See IAM 11-3.

59. See IAM 13, cf. 33 and 34.

60. i.e. IG ii ² 715. In IG ii ² 768 + 802, from (?)233/2 (Antimachos), the word is wholly restored in line 22. Note that one of the non-citizen contributors to the 244/3 epidoseis (above, at n.53) is listed as (col. II, line 52).

61. See Pouilloux, J., La Forteresse de Rhamnonte (1954) 118–20Google Scholar (no. 7).

62. Rhamnous: Pouilloux (n.61) nos. 18 and 19; SEG xxii 130; cf. SEG xxxi 119. Sounion: IG ii ² 1309b, line 6.

63. Gauthier 323.

64. Gauthier 327-8.

65. As claimed by Pleket (n.2) 192.

66. pace Fisher (n.2) 268.

67. For the invitation-formula see above, at n.53. There are five identifiably non-citizen contributors, besides Sosibios the isoteles (above, n. 60): I 48, [, i.e. the Macedonian commander in Peiraieus, subsequently naturalised (see Habicht [n.53] 79ff; Osborne [n.48] 91-3); I 59 ; I 65, ; I 71, , i.e. head of the Peripatos; I 73, ‘ (I 70) might also be non-Athenian.