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Apollodoros' Mother: The Wives of Enfranchised Aliens in Athens*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. Carey
C. Carey
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
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Extract

The banker Pasion, father of the notorious fourth-century litigant and politician Apollodoros, some of whose speeches have survived under the name of Demosthenes, was originally a slave; freed by his owners, he made a substantial fortune from banking and subsequently received Athenian citizenship for his generous gifts to the city. At [Dem.] 59.2 we are given a paraphrase of the decree which enfranchised him: 'Aθηναον εἶναι Πασωνα κα κγνους τοὺς κενου ‘[the Athenian people voted] that Pasion and his descendants should be Athenian’. In common with inscriptions recording grants of citizenship, and unlike Roman military diplomata, the decree appears to have ignored Pasion's wife Archippe. The silence of the decrees of enfranchisement is echoed in the literary sources, with the result that we have no explicit testimony to the legal status of the wife of an alien who was granted Athenian citizenship. M. J. Osborne assumes that the status of the wife was in no way affected by the grant; she remained an alien. D. Whitehead has argued that in such cases the wife's status was indeterminate; in the event of the death of her first husband she might find herself married either to an Athenian citizen or to an alien, whereupon her status would be defined according to that of her husband. This article will argue that Archippe's status was unaffected by Pasion's receipt of citizenship, that is, that she remained a metic. I shall then proceed to consider the question of the implications of the difference in status of Pasion and Archippe subsequent to his enfranchisement for the legal basis of the relationship between them, and finally draw a tentative conclusion about the date of Pasion's receipt of citizenship.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 84 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 For Pasion and his family see Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, 1971), pp. 427ff.Google Scholar

2 Cf., e.g., IG ii2.405.8–12 εἶ[ναι… 'Aθηναον α]ὑτx1F78;ν κα κ[γνς αὑτο].

3 Cf., e.g., CIL xvi.1.10–13 ‘ipsis liberis posterisque eorum civitatem dedit et conubium cum uxoribus quas tune habuissent cum est civitas iis data’.

4 Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens, iii-iv (Brussels, 1983), p. 150Google Scholar; cf. ABSA 67 (1972), 147 n. 5.Google Scholar

5 D, D., CQ 36 (1986), 109–14.Google Scholar

6 A, A., Demosthenes und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1858), iii, 2, 176Google Scholar, Sandys, J. E. and Paley, F. A., Select Private Orations of Demosthenes (Cambridge, 1875), ii. xxxvGoogle Scholar and 126, L, L., Démosthène, plaidoyers civils, ii (Paris, 1957), p. 184 n. 1.Google Scholar

7 Davies (op. cit. n. 1), p. 429 leaves the question of Archippe's status open.

8 See Davies (op. cit. n. 1), pp. 429f.

9 Dem. 36.22.

10 The law is not quoted before 343–340 ([Dem.] 59). Gernet, , Plaidoyers civils, iv (Paris, 1960), 67Google Scholar n. 3 suggests a date c. 350. This would bring the law into close proximity with the decree of Demophilos. Perikles' restrictive citizenship/marriage decree of 451/0 was followed in 445/4 by a scrutiny held in all the demes to test the qualifications for citizenship of all existing members (Philochoros F 119 Jacoby, Plut, Per. 37). Although the scrutiny was not directly connected with the decree, which was not retrospective, both reflect the same jealousy by the demos of the privileges of citizenship. In 346/5 another general scrutiny was carried out at the instigation of Demophilos (Aischin. 1.82, Harpokration s.v. διαψήøισις). It would not be surprising if a law punishing marriages between citizens and foreigners belonged to the same period as the Demophilos decree, for both alike were intended to check the dilution of citizen rights.

11 Dem. 36.8.

12 [Dem.] 50.60, Archippe's death; Dem. 36.32, 45.4, her children to Phormion.

13 [Dem.] 46.13.

14 Cf. Glover, T. R., From Pericles to Philip (London, 1917), p. 324.Google Scholar

15 Whitehead (op. cit. n. 5), 112.

16 Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens, i (Oxford, 1968), p. 11.Google Scholar

17 [Dem.] 43.54.

18 [Dem.] 57.41.

19 In Pasion's will cited at 45.28 (see however next note) Archippe is referred to as Pasion's wife; cf. 36.8, 30, 51, 45.35, 46.13, 17.

20 Libanios in the ancient hypothesis to Dem. 36 describes Archippe as Pasion's pallake. If he had any objective support for this remarkable statement, it may have come from Pasion's will, cited in 36.8 and 45.28. In the latter case there is a piece of Greek in our texts which claims to be a citation from the will. But a comparison with Apollodoros' subsequent comment suggests that the document may have been cobbled together from the speaker's paraphrase; especially suspicious is the item θεραπαας (‘maidservants’), which reproduces the vagueness of Apollodoros' paraphrase, and where we expect either a global (‘the maidservants’, ‘all the maidservants’) or a particular (‘maidservants x and y and z’) specification. Libanios appears to have had a text of Demosthenes which contained original documents now lost, for he is able to give the names of the litigants in [Dem.] 56, 57 and 58, though these are not supplied by the surviving speech. However, it is also conceivable that Libanios reached his statement by a logic such as that used in this paper.

21 Davies (op. cit. n. 1), p. 430.

22 For the problem see Davies (op. cit. n. 1), pp. 123ff.

23 Davies (op. cit. n. 1), p. 430.

24 For the delay cf. IG ii2.398.

25 For Pythodoros see Isok. 17.33.

26 Apollodoros was the exception, and he was induced to drop his objections, Dem. 45.4. It was nearly two decades later before he objected again.