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.
