Date of Thesis

Spring 2025

Description

Every civilization has contained foreign residents, and Ancient Athens was no exception. In Classical Athens (489-323 BCE), these foreign residents and freed slaves were known as metics. The “metic” label came from the tax they had to pay: the metoikion, or metic tax. While foreign resident status most likely existed throughout city-states across Greece, Athens is the location best documented. Many of these documents come from wills and court cases, giving glimpses of the daily life of Athens’ non-citizen residents. Metics commonly worked as craftsmen, bankers, and people of commerce. Those working class metics helped supplement the Athenian labor force, as many Athenian citizens became soldiers during war. A large number of philosophers also lived as metics, including Aristotle. Yet, although Athenians allowed metics to live and work in their city-state, metics faced numerous legal restrictions, limiting their rights and reinforcing their status as outsiders.

However, while the Athenians treated metics differently from their citizen counterparts, some metics were able to grow great wealth. Although these wealthy banking metics lived more luxurious lives than many Athenian citizens, they always knew that anything they did could lead them to slavery due to the rules against metics. The restrictions all metics faced led to an othering process in the city-state. Metics became excluded from political processes which in-turn separated them from a large social sphere of Athenian Society. Furthermore, all metics continued to be faced with doubt and exploitation by the citizen class, which remains mirrored in today’s society.

Keywords

metic, prostates, Thirty Tyrants, philosophers, craftsmen, bankers

Access Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Type

Bachelor of Arts

Major

Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Second Major

History

First Advisor

Stephanie Larson

Second Advisor

Kevin Daly

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