Although the treatment of the helots is an extreme ex-
ample, being an outsider in a Greek town could have disad-
vantages. People who were neither slaves nor citizens of the
towns in which they lived were called metics. Th e laws gov-
erning metics diff ered in each town, but metics oft en had to
perform some type of military service or pay additional fees
to live in a town or both. In Athens metics could not own
land. Th e disadvantages of being a metic in Athens may not
have been too oppressive, however, because many outsiders
resided there, such as the famous philosophers Aristotle and
Th eophrastus.
It was not just that Athenian metics faced certain restric-
tions; in 451 b.c.e. the Athenian statesman Pericles persuaded
his fellow citizens to approve a law limiting citizenship only
to those born to Athenian parents. Before Pericles’ law took
eff ect, a person with an Athenian father but a non-Athenian
mother could be a citizen. Ironically, later in his life Pericles
was a victim of his own law when he fathered a son by a non-
Athenian woman. An exception was made for this son, how-
ever, and the law was soon repealed.
When Pericles was Athens’s leading citizen, he also per-
suaded the Athenians to embark upon an ambitious building
program. Th e most famous product of this program was the
Parthenon, built between 447 and 432 b.c.e. Given Pericles’
law on citizenship, some of the sculpture on this temple is
noteworthy. Th e temple’s southern metopes (decorated pan-
els) show a battle between two mythical tribes, the Lapiths
and the centaurs (the western end of Zeus’s temple at Olympia
also depicts this subject); its northern metopes have scenes
from the Trojan War; the eastern and western metopes por-
tray, respectively, the Olympian gods battling a group of gi-
ants and the Greeks battling the Amazons, a tribe of warlike
women. Th us, each sculptural group portrays Greeks battling
against non-Greeks (Trojans, Amazons) or beings (centaurs,
giants) that threaten their civilization. According to mythol-
ogy, the Greeks or their gods had triumphed over these “for-
eign” enemies in each case.
Th e Athenian ideal of triumphing over barbarians or un-
civilized peoples suff ered a severe blow aft er Pericles’ death in
429 b.c.e. By 404 b.c.e. the Spartans had defeated the Athe-
nians in the Peloponnesian War. Ironically, Greek culture ex-
perienced its widest diff usion by a people that most Greeks
would have considered barbarians, even though they spoke a
dialect of Greek. By 323 b.c.e. the Macedonian Philip II and
his successor, his son Alexander, had conquered the whole of
Greece. Alexander went on to triumph over the Persians and
tribes as far away as India, and he spread Greek culture by
encouraging his soldiers to intermarry with these foreigners.
Aft er Alexander’s death and the gradual breakup of his
empire, both Macedonians and Greeks eventually came un-
der the control of the Romans in the second century b.c.e. Al-
though they were non-Greek speakers, the Romans became
captivated by the culture of their captives and incorporated
many Greek elements into their own society. In the fi rst cen-
tury c.e., however, Christianity began spreading through both
Greek and Roman cultures, and the apostle Paul, writing in
Greek, would declare to the Colossians that in the Christian
way of life distinctions no longer existed between Greeks and
Jews, slaves or free persons, or Scythians and barbarians.ROME
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
During the era of Rome’s fi rst kings (ca. 753–ca. 510 b.c.e.)
Romans apparently held fairly relaxed attitudes toward out-
siders. Foreigners were absorbed into the city and could even
achieve important positions in government. For instance,
the legendary king Ancus Marcius (r. 642–617 b.c.e.) was a
Sabine (a people of the Apennine Mountains) by ancestry.
Perhaps this accommodating attitude refl ected Rome’s small
size—at that time it was still a small town—as well as its not
yet having achieved a view of itself as diff erent from the other
towns in its part of Italy. Th ese circumstances changed in 510
b.c.e. when Tarquinius Superbus (r. 534–510 b.c.e.), a king
who had been exiled from Rome, returned with an Etruscan
army to reclaim his throne. Th ere was no question that Tar-
quinius Superbus’s army represented outsiders trying to im-
pose their will on Rome.
During the early years of the Roman Republic (ca. 509–
27 b.c.e.) almost everyone was a foreigner to the Romans, and
nearly every foreigner was a potential enemy. Italy was popu-
lated by several cultures, with Celts in the north, Greeks in
the south, and at least eight other distinct cultures, the Latin
culture of the Romans being the smallest in population. Yet
through conquest and diplomacy Rome managed to gain
control of central Italy by 290 b.c.e. Th ose under its rule who
were not Roman citizens were the “Italian allies.” Romans re-
garded them with disdain, but by about 200 b.c.e. the Italian
allies wished to be recognized as Roman citizens themselves.
By then the Roman government included the offi ce of
tribune, a person elected by the plebeians (lower-class Ro-
man citizens) to represent them in government aff airs. One
tribune, Gaius Gracchus, was a hero to the plebeians for ad-
vocating their rights until, in 121 b.c.e., he proposed extend-
ing Roman citizenship to the Italian allies. It was a serious
misjudgment of public opinion. Th e plebeians did not want
to share the benefi ts of Roman citizenship with outsiders,
and Gaius committed suicide just before an angry mob could
kill him. In 91 b.c.e. the tribune Marius Livius Drusus was
murdered because he advocated giving citizenship to every-
one in Italy, all of which Rome by then controlled. His en-
emies insisted that other Italians were barbarians and utterly
inferior to Romans. His death touched off the Social War of
91–89 b.c.e., during which the Italian allies tried to set up
their own independent state. Th ey lost the war but won Ro-
man citizenship.
In 146 b.c.e. Rome had conquered Macedonia and most
of Greece. To the Romans the Greeks were puzzling. For in-
stance, Greeks were comfortable with homosexuality, which
Romans regarded as degenerate behavior. Yet the Romans hadforeigners and barbarians: Rome 489