Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical
scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there
were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens,
slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive
account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the
evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one
that has important implications for understanding Greek social and
cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise
masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of
Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology
and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship
between citizenship and democracy. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten
distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel
slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves,
resident
foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised
citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens.
Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as
well as factors not generally considered together, such as property
ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book
demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn
between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it
reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and
more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book
concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains
the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.
