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.
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