Ancient discussions of status privilege what we might call ‘‘political society,’’ categories of the person as defined by the state. In broadest perspective the various political statuses can be divided into two groups: natives (citizens, women, children) and aliens (metics, barbarians, slaves). Status categories were united by their shared subordination and dependence on the citizen. The point is illustrated by the Greek concept of the family, or oikos. The oikos included more than the modern idea of the ‘‘nuclear family.’’ In addition to parents and children, possessions - slaves, livestock, even farm tools - were members of the oikos. What all these members of the oikos have in common is their subjection to the father. The same dependence ideally prevailed in the more general political community. Resident aliens, for example, could not represent themselves in Athenian law courts, but had the protection of the law only on the condition that a citizen protector (in Greek, a prostates) was willing to stand up and speak on their behalf.
Ancient slaves did not comprise an economic class, but a political status. Athenian slaves had no specialized economic function: they are to be found in almost every capacity, often working side by side with free men. From the time of Solon it was illegal for Athenians to enslave Athenians. As a consequence freedom became a central political ideal and the inalienable characteristic of the citizen, while enslavement of aliens flourished. For this reason among others it appears that slaves were regarded in the first place as anti-citizens. They obviously had no civic rights, but were at the disposal of their masters - living tools, in Aristotle’s famous phrase. When, on rare occasions, they were manumitted, they assumed the status of metics. Seldom were freedmen or their descendants granted citizenship (the famous exception comes in the fourth century with the family of the freedman banker Pasion). Slaves did not sit at the bottom of some economic continuum, at the top of which sat citizens; they were of a different order entirely.
Resident aliens, metics, had no inherent political rights, and, at least until the latter part of the fifth century, almost no prospect of obtaining them. From the last quarter of the fifth century on, ‘‘naturalization’’ is more frequently attested, but it remains a rare privilege. We do not know the size of metic population or its ethnic make-up, though we hear on occasion of the activities of certain ethnic groups, apparently substantial; certain metics were wealthy and even politically influential; others were poor. They did not comprise, as some have thought, a ‘‘merchant class.’’ Plato’s Republic begins when Socrates goes down to the Piraeus to watch a procession of Thracians, who have been granted the exceptional privilege of observing a festival in honor of Bendis; the dialogue takes place in the house of one of the most famous metic families, that of Kephalos, a metic from Syracuse, who made his money from a shield ‘‘factory’’ staffed by numerous slaves.
Native children and women enjoyed a peculiar, ambivalent status. They were neither outsiders to the political community nor were they full participants. While they enjoyed the protections of the state, they shared only imperfectly in its management. Children in the ancient world, as in the modern, were excluded from full participation in the political order. Because they would someday become citizens, full participants, however, they do not belong in the same category as metics. Rather, as Aristotle says, they are to be regarded as ‘‘imperfect’’ citizens. Native women likewise were necessarily part of the civic order, though they did not enjoy full participatory political rights. The peculiar status of women was formally recognized with Pericles’ citizenship law of 451 BC. Up to this time citizens had only to be the offspring of an Athenian father. By the law of Pericles, henceforth both parents had to be Athenian, and subsequently it was necessary to establish women’s status.
Political status was conceived and arranged in relation to the central category of the citizen, whose qualities were implied in the imperfections of others. Nevertheless, as the Greeks well knew, groups are not articulated only in terms of political status. Other criteria play their part in the dynamics of group activity, notably wealth and birth. We expect too much if we ask that all social categories map onto one another precisely. An Athenian metic might have been wealthy, but he had no political rights. A native Athenian woman might have been well born, even in practical matters powerful and influential, but she still suffered the political disadvantages of her gender. A poor Athenian might have been able to vote, but had less political influence and access to luxury than a prominent metic courtesan, such as Diotima, who supposedly instructed Socrates about the nature of love (Symposium 201d). A child of the right family might, despite his immaturity, even have political influence through indulgent parents: so Themistocles could joke that his son indirectly controlled all of Greece, because he ruled his mother, who ruled Themistocles, who ruled Athens, which ruled Greece (Plutarch, Themistocles 18).
It may well be that ‘‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,’’ as Marx and Engels claimed at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto; certainly class differences loom large in the accounts of ancient Greek authors. It has nevertheless proved surprisingly difficult to describe with precision their operations within Athenian society. There is of course no question that the population of Athens was economically stratified. With his reforms Solon defined a class system toward the beginning of the sixth century, comprised in descending order of Penta-kosiomedminoi, Hippeis, Zeugitai, and Thetes. The system survived into the fifth century: in 458 BC the archonship was thrown open to the Zeugitai (AthenaiOn Politeia 26), which shows that the Thetes at this time still suffered from political discrimination. The Solonian classes continued to have relevance to certain religious activities, though they had lost their political significance by the latter part of the fifth century. All through the classical period, however, the wealthy continued to be politically conspicuous in their performance of liturgies: members of the economic elite were assigned to pay for certain expensive state-sponsored activities, such as the outfitting of a warship or the production of a drama. J. K. Davies (1971 and 1984) has argued that perhaps only 1,000 or 2,000 Athenians had fortunes sufficient to pay for such activities; the ‘‘liturgical class’’ therefore may have been as small as 2 or 3 percent of the total citizen population. Even so, in Thucydides’ Funeral Oration Pericles argues that in Athens class distinctions are irrelevant: ‘‘advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity; class considerations are not allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way: if a man is able to serve the state he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition’’ (2.37). The statement represents an ideal. The contempt of the wealthy for the poor is illustrated in authors from the Old Oligarch to Plato. The hostility of the poor toward the rich is abundantly illustrated in the speeches of the fourth-century orators.
Birth status was similarly important in ancient Athens, though it is even more difficult to define it or map its social effects. Ancient authors recognized a birth-elite, describing its members as eugenOs (‘‘well born’’) or kaloi kai agathoi (‘‘beautiful and good’’). Birth status did not necessarily coincide with other criteria of prestige, such as wealth: the ‘‘well born’’ are not necessarily the same as the wealthy, and many of the wealthy in Athens were not ‘‘well born.’’ The most obvious criterion of ‘‘good birth’’ was membership ingenos (a hereditary religious association: see below). In the archaic period birth-status was an index of political privilege; in the classical period the correlation had evaporated.
World History
