CITIZENS AND FOREIGNERS \i

called on to unite in the common task of bringing in the
peace.1 No conspirators or place-hunters might share in the
citizenship (it was the year of the oligarchic revolution), but
metics, well-disposed foreigners and citizens who had lost
their rights because of debts to the State, were to be admitted.2
The chorus of the Frogs demanded that citizens should not be
done out of their rights, while slaves who had fought in the
naval battle of Arginusae were made ' masters'; all who fought
together should be made 'kinsmen and citizens with full
rights', and this included metics and foreigners J

We see that the comedians opposed the policy of restricting
the conferment of citizenship, a policy which democracy up^-
held though it did not strictly enforce it.1 We may suppose
that this attitude towards metics and other foreigners was
shared by many people At any rate, the importance of
4 Athena's foster-children' to the State and m life in general is
confirmed, and there is no doubt that most of these foreigners,
who had settled down m Attica for good, felt entirely Athenian
Some of them received citizenship, for instance Chairephilos,
a big merchant in salted fish, who lived about 350 B c 5 This
was not a frequent practice, although in Athens immigration
was never made difficult by 'seal and signet' (in modern terms
passport and visa), as was the case in the city of the birds 6 It
is, however, important to note that such a possibility existed,
though it was not common Athenian practice, and, we may
think, this is true of Cloudcuckooborough also; for, as the
song of the chorus goes on to say, no other place is so pleasant
for metics to live in 7 To become a metic was in itself a goal to
be coveted, and a reason for foreign traders to bring corn to
Athens.8 It is a mistake to picture the majority of metics and
foreigners who earned their living by trade and craft as men

1 P 296^"

2 L 576ff Cf Schulthess, P -W XVIII, 627 ff, Wilanuwitz, ^if

3 F.693f, yooff * Cf Andokides II, 23
5 See Kirchner, Prosopogr Attica, 15187

6B.i2i2fF The two Greek words are oxppocyis and aOppoAov, and the

meaning of both seems more or less the same Certainly oupi(3oAcv is here not a

written document, since the bird-official is supposed to 'affix' it, it has to be fixed

to such a document like a oxppocyis (cf. also B 5590 Cf also ATL II, 50 to

1 164, D 7, 15

7

8 Lysias VI, 49