Metic

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In ancient Greece, the term metic meant resident alien, someone who did not have citizen rights in the Greek city-state where he resided.

Etymologically, the word comes from the Greek metoikos, where the second element is derived from oikos, "house; inhabit." The preceding element meta could here either carry the notion of "change" or of "among." The two possible senses that could be felt in the word will have been 'one who changes their place of dwelling' and 'one who lives among' (that is, who is 'among' but not 'of'). There is no need to decide between these senses. Both are part of the reality of the immigrant: they have moved from somewhere else and have come to live among strangers.

What follows largely pertains to Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In most Greek cities foreign residents were few, but at Athens, at that time the largest city in the Greek world, they amounted to something like half the free population. The status applied to two main groups of people, namely immigrants and former slaves. As slaves were almost always of foreign origin, they can be thought of a kind of involuntary immigrant. They were almost exclusively drawn from non-Greek speaking areas, while free metics on the other hand were usually of Greek origin. Mostly in fact they came from mainland Greece, rather than from the further parts of the Greek world.

Metics constituted a social order and not a class. Some were poor artisans and ex-slaves, while others were among the richest inhabitants of the city. As citizenship was a matter of inheritance and not simply place of birth, a metic could either be an actual immigrant or the descendant of one. No matter how many generations the family had lived in the city, they did not become citizens unless the city chose to bestow citizenship on them as a gift. This was rarely done. From a cultural point of view such a resident could be completely 'local' and indistinguishable from citizens. They had no role in the political community of the polis (city-state), but might be completely integrated into the social and economic life of the city. In the urbane scene that opens Plato's Republic — the dialogue takes place in a metic household — the status of the speakers as citizen or metic is never mentioned.

In general metics shared the burdens of citizenship without any of its privileges. Like citizens, they had to perform military service and, if rich enough, were subject to the special tax contributions (eisphora) and tax services ("liturgies", e.g. paying for a warship or funding a tragic chorus) that wealthy Athenians had to perform. Citizenship at Athens brought eligibility for numerous state payments such as jury and assembly pay, which could be significant to working people. During emergencies the city could distribute rations to citizens. None of these were available to metics. They were unable to own real estate in Attica, whether farm or house, unless granted a special exemption. Likewise they could not contract with the state to work the silver mines, since the wealth beneath the earth was felt to belong to the political community. Further, they had to pay a metic poll tax, the metoikon, of twelve drachmas a year for men and six for women, as well a special tax (xenikon telos) if they wanted to set up a stall in the market place (agora).

Although metics were barred from the assembly and from serving as jurors, they did have the same access to the courts as citizens. They could both prosecute others and be prosecuted themselves. A great many migrants came to Athens to do business and were in fact essential to the Athenian economy. It would have been a severe disincentive if they had been unable to pursue commercial disputes at law. At the same time they did not have exactly the same rights here as citizens. Unlike citizens, metics could be made to undergo judicial torture and the penalties for killing them were not as severe as for killing a citizen. Metics were also subject to enslavement for a variety of offences. These might either be failures to abide by their status obligations, such not paying the metoikon tax or not nominating a citizen sponsor, or they might be 'contaminations' of the citizen body, marrying a citizen or claiming to be citizens themselves.

How long a foreigner could be in Athens without counting as a metic is not known. In some other Greek cities the period was a month and it may well have been the same at Athens. All metics there were reqired to register in the deme (local community) were they lived. They had to nominate a citizen as their sponsor or guardian (prostates, literally "one who stands on behalf of"). The Athenians took this last requirement very seriously. A metic who did not have a sponsor was vulnerible to a special prosecution. If he was convicted, his property would be confiscated and he himself sold as a slave. For a former slave, the sponsor was automatically his former owner. This relation entailed some extra duties on the part of the metic. The child of an ex-slave metic, however, seems to have had the same status as a freeborn metic. Citizenship was only very rarely granted to metics. More common was the special status of "equal rights" (isoteleia) under which they were freed from the various liabilities metics were subject to. In the religious sphere, all metics were able to participate in the festivals that were central to the life of the city. Though here some roles were limited to citizens.

The status divide between metic and citizen was not always clear. In the street no physical signs distinguished citizen, metic or slave. And sometimes what status a person actually had became a contested matter. Although local registers of citizens were kept, if one's claim to citizenship came under challenge it was the testimony of neighbours and the community that was decisive. (In Lysias 16, a law court speech, a man presumed to be a metic claims to be a citizen, but upon investigation — done not by consulting official records but by hanging out asking questions at the cheese market — it turns out, so the hostile account goes, that he may well be a runaway slave.) Metics whose family had lived in Athens for generations may have been tempted to "pass" as citizens. On a number of occasions there were purges of the citizen lists, effectively changing people who had been living as citizens into metics. In typical Athenian fashion, a person so demoted could mount a challenge in court. If however the court decided the ejected citizen was in fact a metic, he would be sent down one further rung and sold into slavery.

In describing the Metic status it is easy to give the impression that they were an oppressed minority. But at least those of them that were Greek and freeborn had, by and large, chosen to come to Athens. This was because it was a large, cosmopolitan and dynamic city with opportunities not available to them in their own cities. They remained citizens of their cities of birth, cities which like Athens had the exclusionary, ancestral view of citizenship common to Greek cities in general. For ex-slave metics, the large non-citizen community at Athens allowed them to blend in a way not possible in narrower, more homogenised cities elsewhere. For all metics participation in military service, taxation (for the rich at Athens a matter of public display and pride) and cult must have given them a sense of involvement in, and of their value to, the city where they lived. Though notably, while Athenians tended to refer to metics by their name and deme of residence (the same democratic scheme used for citizens), on their tombstones freeborn metics who died in Athens preferred rather to name the cities from which they had come and of which they were citizens still.

References

• Hansen M.H. 1987, The Athenian Democracy in the age of Demosthenes. Oxford.
• Whitehead D. 1977, The ideology of the Athenian metic. Cambridge.
• Garlan, Y 1988, Slavery in Ancient Greek. Ithaca. (trans. Janet Lloyd)

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