Metics and Freedmen: Conflicts of Social and Juridical Status in the Classical and Hellenistic Greek World

Abstract

Abstract Ancient Greek city-states, or poleis, had a bewildering number of terms for people who lived in them. In Athens, freedmen seem to be assimilated juridically to the status of metics (resident aliens), although socially there were ways of both denigrating freedmen and obscuring the distinction between metic and freed. Elsewhere we can see that under some circumstances distinctions between metic and freed were made, but not in ways that point to strong juridical differences. By looking at the development of both statuses historically, I propose that the juridical assimilation occurred in Athens because metic status was created first, in an historical context in which distinctions between citizens and foreigners was crucial: an imperial power with a strong economy was attracting many foreigners to the mother city. This line drawn between citizens and foreigners was expressed through the law in both the fifth and fourth centuries bce. But the social perception of metics changed in the fourth century, for historical reasons deriving from the assimilation of metics and freed into one category. Other areas of the Greek world with both metics and freedmen may have assimilated the two statuses initially, but over time split them apart.