Athenians jealously guarded admission to citizen status. It is true that Aristotle relates that, at the time of his political reforms at Athens after the overthrow of the Pisistratid tyranny, Cleisthenes ‘‘enrolled in his tribes many resident aliens who had been foreigners or slaves’’ (Pol. 1275b35-7). But this passage may well reflect exaggerated accounts on the part of Cleisthenes’ political enemies. Aristotle states that in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Pisistratids, many of the common people whom the tyranny had supported were disenfranchised in a revision of the citizenship rolls at Athens (Ath. Pol. 13.5). Cleisthenes, therefore, may have simply restored citizenship rights to some of those who had been dispossessed (cf. Ober 1996: 32-52). In any event, at the height of Athenian imperial power in the mid-fifth century bce, the Athenian statesman Pericles had a law passed restricting citizenship to those who were born of Athenian citizen parents (Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.4; Plut. Per. 37.3; Ael. VH 6.10; Suda, s. v. ‘‘demopoietoC). Some five years after Pericles’ law, the Athenians purged their citizen rolls, if we can trust a scholiast’s note on Aristophanes Wasps 718 (Philoch. FGrH 328 F 119; cf. Plut. Per. 37.3-4).
By the time of Pericles’ restrictive citizenship law in 451/50 bce, Athens had built an extensive naval empire, and the city itself had become a cosmopolitan, imperial center of commerce and culture (Meiggs 1972: 273-90). Athenian ideological justification for empire largely rested on Athens’ role in the Persian Wars (cf. Thuc.
5.89). In 477 bce, Athens formed an alliance of Greek states, whose ostensible purpose was to continue the fight against the Persians. In the following decades the Persian threat evaporated and this alliance, which modern historians often call the ‘‘Delian League,’’ became essentially an Athenian empire. Athenian cultural productions, most famously Aeschylus’ Persians (produced in 472 bce), celebrated the city as the savior of Greece from Persian subjection (cf. Hdt. 7.139), and invented the barbarian as the perennial, common enemy, which served to justify the Athenian empire’s existence (see Pollitt 1972; E. Hall 1989; M. Miller 1997).
Along with Persian War heroics, Athenians also used myth in legitimating their empire. The Athenian mythological character Ion served as eponymous ancestor of all Ionian Greeks. According to its self-representation, Athens was the metropolis, or ‘‘mother city,’’ of Ionia. With this view, Athens posed as the liberator of Ionian Greek states along the coast of Asia Minor, which had previously been subjected to the Persians (cf. Aesch. Pers. 584-97). The foundation of the ‘‘Delian League’’ took place in a ceremony pregnant with politico-cultural symbolism on the island of Delos, mythological birthplace of the god Apollo, Ion’s father and protector of the Ionians (Arist. Ath. Pol. 23.5; Plut. Arist. 25.1). Even Thucydides (1.2.5-6), ever eager to debunk commonplace assumptions, confirms that Athens had provided a haven for refugees, some of whom ultimately would colonize Ionia, in the aftermath of the collapse of what modern scholars call the Bronze Age (cf. Hdt. 7.94; 8.44). Yet the tradition of an Ionian migration may simply represent an Athenian legitimizing fiction of inchoate Athenian imperialism around the time of the Persian Wars (Osborne 1996: 32-7).
Euripides’ Ion (produced in 410 bce) celebrates the city’s imperial destiny and provides evidence for the myth of Athens as ‘‘mother city’’ of the Ionian Greeks. Near the play’s end, Euripides has the goddess Athena proclaim its imperial future:
When the appointed time comes children born of these shall come to dwell in the island cities of the cyclades and the coastal cities of the mainland, which will give strength to my land. They shall dwell in the plains in two continents on either side of the dividing sea, Asia and Europe. They shall be called Ionians after this boy and win glory. (Eur. Ion, lines 1581-8, trans. Kovacs 1999, cf. 74, 1356)
This is cultural imperialism indeed, as in this passage Euripides modifies the earlier mythological tradition, going on to state that the Athenian Creusa, Ion’s long-lost mother, and her husband, the foreign-born Xuthus, will produce two children, Dorus and Achaeus, who will establish cities in the Peloponnesus (cf. Bickermann 1952; Momigliano 1987: 9-23; J. Hall 1997, 2001; C. Jones 1999). The play also repeatedly invokes the myth of Athenian autochthony; that is, the notion that Athenians were ‘‘born from the earth,’’ a pure and unadulterated people of Attica (see lines 29, 267, 543, 589-90, 737, 1000, 1057-60, 1466).
Certainly Euripides introduces a good deal of irony into his representation of the autochthony myth (Saxonhouse 1986), by stressing that Ion’s stepfather, Xuthus, is an alien (lines 63, 290, 293), playing on etymological derivation of the name Ion from the Greek verb for coming and going (lines 661-3, 802, 830-1), and, through a series of misrecognitions, referring in turns to Ion (lines 673-5, 721-4) and Creusa (lines 514, 607, 654) as ‘‘foreigners.’’ Euripides’ well-known iconoclasm can account for these aspects of Ion. In the long run, he only strengthened a myth already embedded in Athenian culture (Loraux 2000). The popular stress on Athens as leader of Ionian Greeks seems to have been particularly salient during the Peloponnesian War (Alty 1982).
Plato’s Menexenus mocks the state funeral eulogies given at Athens for those who fell in battle in service of the polis (Loraux 1986). The most famous example of these eulogies at Athens is of course Pericles’ Funeral Oration, as represented by Thucydides (2.35-46). In this speech Pericles touched upon the autochthony theme, stating that ‘‘in this land of ours there have always been the same people living from generation to generation up till now’’ (Thuc. 2.36.1, trans. Warner 1971). In Menexenus, Plato carries the notion to absurd length:
For there cohabit with us none of the type of Pelops, or Cadmus, or Aegyptus or Danaus, and numerous others of the kind, who are naturally barbarians though nominally Greeks; but our people are pure Greeks and not a barbarian blend; and so it happens that our city is imbued with a whole-hearted hatred of aliens. (245d, trans. Bury 2005; cf. 237b-c)
The ironic treatment of the Athenian autochthony myth in Euripides’ Ion and its exaggeration in Plato’s Menexenus notwithstanding, the notion that Athenians were ‘‘born of the earth’’ pervades much of Athenian literature. For example, it is represented in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1071-8), and in Athenian orators: Lysias (Funeral Oration, 17), Hyperides (Funeral Oration, 7), and Demosthenes (Funeral Oration, 4; On the Embassy, 261). We also find the theme in Herodotus (7.161). The myth gave ideological support to Athens’ restrictive and exclusionary citizenship practices. It hardly needs to be said that the notion of Athenian autochthony provided a mythological/ideological foundation for a gendered political discourse that subordinated citizen women in Athenian society (see Sissa, this volume, chapter 7).
In contrast, Romans prided themselves on their open citizenship policies. From the time of its foundation, Rome - at a crossroads of the Tiber river and in the agriculturally rich plain of Latium, with valuable salt marshes and iron deposits nearby - attracted would-be usurpers. Incessant conflict with Latins, Etruscans, Sabines, Aequi, Volsci, Hernici, Gauls, and Samnites characterized the city’s early centuries. However, by roughly 300 bce, Rome emerged triumphant, leading a military and political alliance nearly coextensive with peninsular Italy (Cornell 1995: 345-68). This system incorporated in varying degrees subjected peoples throughout Italy into an extended Roman state, with a range of political statuses, from allies (socii) to fully fledged Roman citizens, cives optimo iure - unparalleled among ancient Mediterranean states (Sherwin-White 1973).
As did Athens, Rome too devised mythological justifications for empire. According to Roman foundation myths, divine signs marked out the city’s imperial destiny. Romulus himself foretold that Rome would become the imperial world capital (Liv. 1.16.6-8). Livy (1.55.1-6; cf. 5.54.7) relates that when King Tarquinius Superbus was building the temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, the god Terminus refused to have his shrine moved, indicating the permanence of Roman power. This was followed by another omen: builders discovered a human head, ordaining the spot as the future seat of a vast empire (cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.61.2; Plut. Cam. 31.4; Flor. 1.7.9; [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 8.4; Brunt 2004: 164-7 on divinely mandated Roman imperial might).
If Roman foundation legends found parallels with those of Athens as imperial charters, Roman citizenship myths differed markedly from Athenian notions of autochthony. They presented the city as a hybrid, multiethnic political community. In the first place, the legendary founders, Aeneas and Romulus, were wanderers and exiles. The senator Q. Fabius Pictor recorded (in Greek) Rome’s earliest history (Frier 1999), apparently revealing a composite of Greek, native Italian, and Trojan influences on its foundation: Herakles, Lanoios, Aeneas, Ascanius, Romulus and Remus (SEG 26.1123, fr. III, col. A, lines 5-14). Livy (1.33.1-2; cf. 1.30.1-3, Alba Longa) preserved an ancient tradition that the legendary king Ancus Marcius transferred the entire population of Politorium to Rome, ‘‘adopting the plan of former kings, who had enlarged the state by making its enemies citizens.’’ He stressed the inclusive, incorporative nature of the polity in the stories of the rape of the Sabine women (1.13.4-8; cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.46.2-3; Plut. Rom. 19.7), a story already known to Fabius Pictor (FGrH 805 F-5), and the rise of Attus Clausus in the early Roman senate (2.16.4-6). The myth of the rape of the Sabine women, it must be said, along with the story of the rape of Lucretia (Liv. 1.57.6-58.12; cf. Ov. Fast. 2.720-58), authorizes the political subordination of women, much like the myth of Athenian autochthony: Roman women, even at their most heroic moments, ultimately display their virtue in the domestic sphere and must submit to the political authority of men. Tacitus later echoed the idea of Roman political (male) inclusiveness in his representation of the speech of the emperor Claudius, who endorsed admission of Gallic nobility to the Curia (Ann. 11.24; cf. ILS 212). Juxtaposition of passages from Livy and Sallust highlights this theme in Roman citizenship myths:
Aeneas, that he might win the goodwill of the Aborigines to confront such a formidable prospect ofwar, and that all might possess not only the same rights but the same name, called both peoples Latins; and from that time on the Aborigines were no less ready and faithful than the Trojans to King Aeneas. (Liv. 1.2.4-5, trans. Foster 2002)
The city of Rome, according to my understanding, was at the outset founded and inhabited by Trojans, who were wandering about in exile under the leadership of Aeneas and had no fixed abode; they were joined by the Aborigines, a rustic folk, without laws or government, free and unrestrained. After these two peoples, different in race, unlike in speech and mode of life, were united within the same walls, they were merged into one with incredible facility, so quickly did harmony change a heterogeneous and roving band into a commonwealth. (Sall. Cat. 6.1-3, trans. Rolfe 2005)
Next, so that his large city should not be empty, Romulus turned to a plan for increasing the population which had long been used by founders of cities, who gather about them an obscure and lowly multitude and pretend that the earth has raised up sons to them. In the place which is now enclosed, between the two groves as you go up the Capitoline hill, he opened a sanctuary. A miscellaneous rabble, without distinction of bond or free, but eager for a new start, fled to this place from the surrounding peoples. These constituted the first advance in power towards that greatness at which Romulus aimed. (Liv. 1.8.5-7, trans. Foster 2002, with slight modifications)
While Roman foundation narratives were clearly influenced by Greek ktiseis legends, or legends of eponymous founders (Wiseman 1995: 43-62), it is nevertheless significant that mythological traditions - though sometimes acknowledging autochthony themes, as in the case of Livy (1.8.5) - unabashedly announced the city’s heterogeneous, lowly peasant origins. As Nicholas Horsfall has observed, Rome was ‘‘a society which preserved vigorously and unconcealed its peasant origins in language, in proverbs, in riddles, in superstitions, in folk-medicine, in animal-fables’’ (Bremmer and Horsfall 1987: 2). Legend even had it that Servius Tullius, penultimate king of Rome, was an outsider, since his mother - though admittedly of noble lineage - had been an enslaved war-captive from Corniculum (Liv. 1.39.6; Thomsen 1980: 57-67).
Myths of Roman heterogeneous origins afforded a politico-cultural flexibility in international relations, by which Romans could include or exclude non-Roman peoples as immediate political circumstances required (Gruen 1992: 6-51; Dench 1995). Athenian autochthony myths, on the other hand, would seem to have been inimical to such politico-cultural/diplomatic flexibility. What is most important for the question of imperial citizenship is the fact that the polarized ideologies of Athenian autochthony and Roman heterogeneity corresponded in general terms to state policies regarding admission to imperial citizenship - exclusive and restrictive in the case of Athens; relatively inclusive and incorporative in the case of Rome.
World History
