Event

Speaker: Marc Domingo Gygax, Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics, Princeton University

Abstract: The epigraphic material from Hellenistic Asia Minor provides extensive information about the free inhabitants of the poleis who lacked full citizenship rights and are typically referred to by scholars as non-citizens. In my presentation, I will discuss the terminology of non-citizenship, the factors leading to the exclusion of certain individuals from citizen status, institutional manifestations of this exclusion—such as special taxes imposed on non-citizens—and the hierarchies existing within this sector of population. The focus, however, will be on the strategies pursued by cities to incorporate such individuals into the community, the efforts of non-citizens themselves at integration, as well as the evolution of these interactions over time.

Non-citizens participated in various civic activities—including festivals, processions, sacrifices, and banquets—alongside citizens, were assigned liturgies, featured in official dedicatory inscriptions, and benefited from the generosity of polis benefactors. We also find non-citizens issuing decrees of professional organizations and of subdivisions of the polis, such as demes, together with citizens. In some instances, their integration might have gone so far that they appear as co-authors of city decrees, although this is highly controversial.

The presentation will begin with an overview and then focus on a few case studies to illustrate these points in greater detail.