A Metic was a Metic

In Classical Athens, an immigrant who stayed longer than about a month was required to register a citizen as prostates and to commence paying the metoikion. So were freed slaves. A recent study treats these freeborn and freedman metics as distinct legal types of resident alien. Athenian law did not

Endowed Eponymous Festivals on Delos

Second-century BC Delos saw the creation of more than two dozen endowments, by men and women, Delians and aliens, and, most famously, Hellenistic royalty or their agents. Scholars agree that these underwrote festivals (mostly eponymous: The Antigoneia, Eutycheia, Philonideia, Ptolemaieia, Stesileia, etc.), and have focused on the political motivation, purpose, and effects of the dozen or so royal specimens. This paper suggests that we have misconstrued the Greek of the Delian accounts; that the endowments did not fund eponymous festivals per se, but modest recurring ritual that was established on the occasion of significant family events, especially marriage and death; that this peculiar Delian phenomenon has more to say about authentic piety than grand politics, and more in common with Hellenistic family cult than festival culture

“Those who live apart” were Mercenaries

Since antiquity, scholars have thought that the phrase τοὺς χωρὶς οἰκοῦντας (Dem. 4.36) indicated a special class of slaves, or freedmen, or (Kazakévich) an unspecified form of free alien. The argument advanced in Dem. 4, this paper suggests, shows that the individuals who lived apart, were mercenaries

Accounting and Endowments

The following notes attempt to make sense of three Greek inscriptions that contain problems of accounting. All three texts concem perpetual endowments

Exempt from Tribute

A papyrus at U. Texas at Austin (late 3rd cent. B.C.) is published which helps establish that land described in the papyri as aphorologetos is not &ldquo;unproductive,&rdquo; an agricultural condition, but &ldquo;not (at present) taxed&rdquo; by the state, a fiscal status. </span

A Missing Woman: the Hellenistic Leases from Thespiae Revisited

In the leases, &pi;ὰ&rho; + name in the genitive indicates the original property owner, and in one text &pi;ὰ&rho; &Mu;&epsilon;&nu;ί&alpha;&sigmaf;, rather than &Pi;&alpha;&rho;&mu;&epsilon;&nu;ί&alpha;&sigmaf;, adds to the number of rich women attested in Hellenistic Boeotia.<!--EndFragment--

A Word for Woman?

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Tyrian stationarii at Puteoli

Since its publication in 1850 the inscription containing the letter from the Tyrianstationarii of Puteoli has eamed a degree of farne, figuring prominently in discussionsof the Roman economy, voluntary associations, ethnic groups in antiquity etc.