Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City by Rebecca Futo Kennedy (review)

Immigrant (“metic”) women in Athens occupied a difficult position. Female metics were required to register with city officials and had to pay a special tax (metoikion); they were also vulnerable when it came to legal protection, easy targets of invective, and readily assimilated to sexual objects in ancient and modern sources. With clear and punchy prose, Kennedy provides a helpful overview of the experiences of immigrant women and the structures that emerged to classify them. Her key concerns are to demystify the idea that they were all prostitutes, and to unpack Athenian social prejudices affecting female metics and our (mis) perceptions of these women.

After a brief introduction outlining what it meant legally and discursively to be a metic in Athens, chapter 1 covers familiar ground: the origin of the metoikia, the legal institution overseeing metics, and changes in laws concerning metics. Kennedy dates the “formal status” (14) of the metoikia to the 460s (rather than to the Kleisthenic period). Pericles’ citizenship law of 451 bce restricting citizenship to those born of two Athenian parents rendered the status of female metics more vulnerable; but between 430 and 403 bce, war and plague necessitated exceptions, allowing metic women to bear citizen children. Following the reinstatement of the citizenship law in 403 bce, citizen–metic marriages were banned (between 390 and 371 bce; [Dem.] 59.16); but marriage “alternatives” were still possible (for example, domestic partnerships with male citizens).

Chapter 2 tackles “mythic representations” of metic women in tragedy and uncovers an “ideology of the female metic” (27) that shifts after Pericles’ citizenship law. Aeschylus’ Suppliants and Eumenides stage foreign women as external threats requiring incorporation into the city. In plays produced after 450 bce, female metics are represented as threatening the citizenry (Euripides’ Hippolytus), much like Amazons (44–49), or as benefiting the city as long as they are contained within a separate (noncitizen) sphere (Sophocles’ Antigone; Euripides’ Medea, Heraklidae). As also suggested by funerary iconography, the proper management of immigrant women is essential. Chapter 3 addresses the “real-life effects” (59) of these representations. Arguing that in the fifth century hetaira could refer to an independent (perhaps foreign) woman who participates in sympotic/luxury culture (74, 114) rather than a prostitute, Kennedy critiques the traditional narrative of elite women of public renown. As a foreign woman perceived to be influencing public policy, Aspasia was targeted as Pericles’ concubine for transgressing the boundaries between citizen and metic spheres.

Chapter 4 focuses on the daily prejudices faced by metic women in the fourth century. Kennedy draws on examples from oratory (more evidence from Middle and New Comedy should be included) to sketch the precarious lives of immigrant women. Lacking family connections and support, female metics were subjected to abuses without recourse in law (Dem. 25, 47). A brief analysis of Apollodorus’ attacks on Neaira, a former slave turned independent female metic, exemplifies how prejudices shaped public perceptions (Dem. 59). Kennedy suggests that living as hetairai, as “party girls” (86), or “independent women without families” (114), or as pallakai, domestic partners (117) or maids (139), served as possible but unenviable survival strategies for metic women. Many poor and/or independent female metics worked outside of the home, and in chapter 5 Kennedy discusses the ideological framing of female metics at work. She suggests that prejudices against wage-labor contributed to the notion that immigrant women worked as prostitutes: “working with one’s body” slid easily between denoting metic labor (for example, as musicians, wool-workers, or vendors) and connoting prostitution. The contributions of immigrant women to the economy far exceeded their stereotypical assessment as prostitutes.

This book is a welcome contribution to the study of foreign women in Athens—a truly subaltern group. However, some of its arguments would benefit from additional engagement with the available evidence and secondary sources. For example...