How to Survive in Ancient Greece by Robert Garland;

Author:Robert Garland;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY/Europe/Great Britain/General
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2020-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Athens’ diversity

Athens and particularly its port city, the Piraeus, provide a home to thousands of resident aliens known as metics. This, of course, will be you status.

Very important: You’ll need to register as a metic with the eponymous archon, the magistrate who gives his name to the official year, within a month of your arrival. If you fail to do so, you’ll either be deported or, worse, enslaved.

The largest number of metics are domiciled in the port city, so you might feel more comfortable living in the Piraeus than you would in Athens. The most famous metic is, or rather will be, Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the Great, born in Stagira in northern Greece. Metics come from all parts of the Greek-speaking world: Pontus (Black Sea coast), Ionia (west coast of modern-day Turkey and its offshore islands), Thrace (split today between Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey), many islands in the Aegean, Egypt, Phoenicia (split today between Lebanon and northern Israel), southern Italy and Sicily. They can’t own property but they can apply to establish a cult in honour of some special deity whom they worship. They have to pay the metic tax, one drachma per month for a man, half a drachma for a woman, but are permitted to reside in Athens as long as they like. Many metics are engaged in manufacturing and commerce. Female metics often hire themselves out as hetairai. They are regarded as exotic by their clients and paid accordingly.

Athens couldn’t function the way it does without its large metic population. The building accounts for the Erechtheum, the temple of Poseidon-Erechtheus on the Acropolis, list all the sums paid to individual craftsmen, approximately half of whom are metics. The Athenians aren’t stupid. They fully realise that their prosperity depends on the energy and enterprise of their metic population, which is why they haven’t tried to limit their number (or build a wall to keep them out).

Other than at a very bleak period of Athenian history, when Athens will be ruled by the so-called Thirty Tyrants, who suspend the democracy following its defeat in the Peloponnesian War, there is little evidence that metics experience any prejudice. Indeed, they enjoy special protection under the law. If a metic gets into difficulty, he or she can seek the services of a proxenos, an Athenian citizen who acts as their patron and protector. Each community of foreigners has its own proxenos. Unfortunately none has yet been assigned to twenty-first century ex-pats. You’ll just have to keep your nose clean!

Marriage between metics and Athenians is discouraged. The offspring of the union between an Athenian and a metic cannot claim citizenship. However, cohabitation between Athenians and metics is commonplace. Pericles cohabited with a prominent and highly respected hetaira from Miletus called Aspasia. She’s actually the only woman who lived in Athens in the fifth-century whose personality, to some small degree, is known to us. No Athenian woman is even a vague blur.

Athens isn’t the only polis which hosts metics, though it does so in by far the largest numbers.

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