VI CITIZENS AND FOREIGNERS 153
and slave-girls for fear of sexual competition, and many of
them must have been foreigners l The joke takes for granted
an unfriendly attitude of citizen towards non-citizen, but this
can hardly have arisen from general rivalry in business
The comedians, although they sometimes derided foreigners
who pushed their way into citizenship,2 generally favoured the
metics, at least the Greek metics, and supported their attempts,
which undoubtedly were very vigorous, to become as like
citizens as possible. The subject was taken up and developed
by Xenophon, although he objected to non-Greek soldiers,
many of them metics, in the ranks of the Athenian army 3
The presence of a large number of resident aliens naturally
caused difficulties and misgivings It was widely felt that it
was the duty of a metic to comply with the life of the city and
not to interfere with politics, though if necessary to fight and
even to die for the Polls 4 On the other hand, foreigners were
excluded from the distributions of corn.0 The comic poets
chiefly pleaded for equality of treatment and position between
citizens and metics. As flour and bran are needed to make
good bread, so citizens and metics are needed for the State.
Friendliness to foreigners as well as to fellow-citizens will be
rewarded even in Hades 6 Eupolis attacked Peisandros be-
cause he did not allow a foreign friend to share his meal.7
Peasants and traders, artists and craftsmen, metics and
foreigners, and the nesiotat, the allies from the islands, were
1 E 718ff 2 B 32, Kratinos 38 P, b 3 Xen Pom 2, zf
* Cf Eur Mcd 222, Htk 888fT, EeraUeid. so3ff ' W 7i6ff
6 A 5oyf — F 454-ff There seems to be here a reflection of the ethics taught
in the Eleusinian masteries into which also non-citizens were frequently initiated
(cf Eur Hik 173)'
7 Enpolis 40 P, I a Peisandros appears in comedy as a big and greedy fellow
(Hermipp 9, Eupolis 182, Phryn. 20, Plat 9 5), but that does not help very much
to explain the context However, I do not follow Mr Edmonds, Mnemosyne
VIII (1939), i, in altering the text of the papyrus. To make sense of it, we may
compare Lysias, frg i, 168 But the real meaning behind the words cannot be
determined, and I am not sure what the Łevoi ourou really are Jensen, Abh
Preuss Akad (1939), no 14, 41", thinks that the passage refers to Peisandros'
change of party He builds up his theory very mgemonsly, but it seems pressing
our incidental evidence too hard when he bases his view mainly on one inscrip-
tion (ByII3 92) in which a Peisandros (there were two according to Eupolis 182)
moves the irpo^evia for Lykon, an Achaean shipowner Why, in general, should
the oligarch be less friendly to foreigners than the radical democrat? The
opposite would be more hkel) There is, at any rate, insufficient evidence for
dating the performance of the Demot a year kter than usual (i e sprang 411)