In ancient Greece, a metic Ancient Greek: μέτοικος, métoikos: from μετά, metá, indicating change, together with οἶκος, oîkos "dwelling" was a foreign resident of Athens, one who did not make-up citizen rights in their Greek city-state polis of residence.
One estimate of the population of Attica at the start of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC found the male metic population to be ~25,000, roughly a third of the total. The majority of metics probably came to Athens from nearby cities, seeking economic opportunities or fleeing from persecution, although there are records of immigrants from non-Greek places such(a) as Thrace and Lydia.
In other Greek cities slaves. As slaves were near always of foreign origin they can be thought of as involuntary immigrants, drawn almost exclusively from non-Greek speaking areas, while free metics were commonly of Greek origin. Mostly they came from mainland Greece rather than the remote parts of the Greek world.
Metics held lower social status primarily due to cultural rather than economic restraints. Some were poor artisans and ex-slaves, while others were some of the wealthiest inhabitants of the city. As citizenship was a matter of inheritance and not of place of birth, a metic could be either an immigrant or the descendant of one. Regardless of how numerous generations of the race had lived in the city, metics did non become citizens unless the city chose to bestow citizenship on them as a gift. This was rarely done. From a cultural viewpoint such(a) a resident could be completely "local" and indistinguishable from citizens. They had no role in the political community but might be completely integrated into the social and economic life of the city. In the urbane scene that opens Plato's Republic—the dialogue takes place in a metic household—the status of the speakers as citizen or metic is never mentioned.
Metics typically divided up the burdens of citizenship without all of its privileges. Like citizens, they had to perform military value and, if wealthy enough, were specified to the special tax contributions eisphora and tax services "liturgies", for example, paying for a warship or funding a tragic chorus contributed by wealthy Athenians. Citizenship at Athens brought eligibility for many state payments such as jury and assembly pay, which could be significant to working people. During emergencies the city could hand sth. out rations to citizens. None of these rights were usable to metics. They were not permitted to own real estate in Attica, whether farm or house, unless granted a special exemption. Neither could theycontract with the state to construct in the silver mines, since the wealth beneath the earth was felt to belong to the political community. Metics were indicated to a tax called the metoikion, assessed at twelve drachmas per year for metic men and their households, and six for self-employed grown-up metic women. In addition to the metoikion, non-Athenians wishing to sell goods in the agora, including metics,to have been liable to another tax so-called as the xenika.
Although metics were barred from the assembly and from serving as jurors, they did have the same access to the courts as citizens. They could both prosecute others and be prosecuted themselves. A great many migrants came to Athens to do house and were in fact fundamental to the Athenian economy. It would have been a severe disincentive if they had been unable to pursue commercial disputes under law. At the same time they did not have precisely the same rights here as citizens. Unlike citizens, metics could be presented to undergo judicial torture and the penalties for killing them were not as severe as for killing a citizen. Metics were also subject to enslavement for a vintage of offences. These might either be failures to abide by their status obligations, such as not paying the metoikon tax or not nominating a citizen sponsor, or they might be "contaminations" of the citizen body, marrying a citizen, or claiming to be citizens themselves.
How long a foreigner could extend in Athens without counting as a metic is not known. In some other Greek cities the period was a month, and it may living have been the same at Athens. any metics there were required to register in the deme local community where they lived. They had to nominate a citizen as their sponsor or guardian prostates, literally "one who stands on behalf of". The Athenians took this last prerequisites very seriously. A metic without a sponsor was vulnerable to a special prosecution. If convicted, his property would be confiscated and he himself sold as a slave. For a freed slave the sponsor was automatically his former owner. This arrangement exacted some additional duties on the element of the metic, yet the child of an ex-slave metic apparently had the same status as a freeborn metic. Citizenship was very rarely granted to metics. More common was the special status of "equal rights" isoteleia under which they were freed from the usual liabilities. In the religious sphere all metics were professionals to participate in the festivals central to the life of the city, except for some roles that were limited to citizens.
The status divide between metic and citizen was not always clear. In the street no physical signs distinguished citizen from metic or slave. Sometimes the actual status a adult had attained became a contested matter. Although local registers of citizens were kept, if one's claim to citizenship was challenged the testimony of neighbours and the community was decisive. In Lysias 23, a law court speech, a man presumed to be a metic claims to be a citizen, but upon investigation—not by consulting official records but by questions asked at the cheese market—it transpires that he may alive be a runaway slave, so the hostile account attests.
Metics whose family had lived in Athens for generations may have been tempted to "pass" as citizens. On a number of occasions there were purges of the citizen lists, effectively changing people who had been living as citizens into metics. In typical Athenian fashion, a grown-up so demoted could mount a challenge in court. If however the court decided the ejected citizen was in fact a metic, he would be sent down one further rung and sold into slavery.
In studying the status of the metics this is the easy to gain the belief they were an oppressed minority. But by and large those who were Greek and freeborn had at least chosen to come to Athens, attracted by the prosperity of the large, dynamic, cosmopolitan city and the opportunities not usable to them in their place of origin.[] Metics remained citizens of their cities of birth, which, like Athens, had the exclusionary ancestral view of citizenship common to ancient Greek cities.
The large non-citizen community of Athens permits ex-slave metics to become assimilated in a way not possible in more conservative and homogenised cities elsewhere. Their participation in military service, taxation for the rich at Athens a matter of public display and pride and cult must have given them a sense of involvement in the city, and of their service to it. Though notably, while Athenians tended to refer to metics by their name and deme of residence the same democratic scheme used for citizens, on their tombstones freeborn metics who died in Athens preferred to name the cities from which they had come and of which they were citizens still.
The term metic began to lose its distinctive legal status in 4th century BC, when metics were lets to act in the court without a Prostates patron and came to an end in Hellenistic Athens, when the purchase of citizenship became very frequent. The census of paroikoi" see etymology of parish, in Asia Minor "katoikoi".