The Citizenship Debates, Lysias, and the Metics in Athens after the Restoration of Democracy
Abstract
After the restoration of democracy in Athens in 403 B.C. the question of who should be included in the citizen-body was fervently contested. Two of the speeches composed by Lysias for delivery at this period have been interpreted by Bakewell (1999) as constituting a covert proposal of adding an alternative to citizenship by birth: legal naturalization. This paper argues that Bakewell’s interpretation misunderstands the argument of the speech Against Philon which is only concerned with eligibility to serve in the Council, and not with citizenship. Furthermore, the paper questions the validity of what Bakewell (1999) considers as Athenian stereotypes of metics (resident aliens), and concludes that these are more stereotypes held by modern scholars, generated by misunderstandings of the actual composition of the metic community, rather than ancient Athenian views. As the paper is addressed not only to Classicists, but also to scholars of other disciplines who might be interested in the opinions held by host communities towards diasporic communities among them, care is taken to provide enough information to make the paper easily accessed by them too.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6667/interface.7.2018.74
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