Note 244 — Chapter XXXI · GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. — REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.

Aristot. Polit. iii, 1, 10; vi, 2, 11. Κλεισθένης,—πολλοῖς ἐφυλέτευσε ξένους καὶ δούλους μετοίκους.

Several able critics, and Dr. Thirlwall among the number, consider this passage as affording no sense, and assume some conjectural emendation to be indispensable; though there is no particular emendation which suggests itself as preëminently plausible. Under these circumstances, I rather prefer to make the best of the words as they stand; which, though unusual, seem to me not absolutely inadmissible. The expression ξένος μέτοικος (which is a perfectly good one, as we find in Aristoph. Equit. 347,—εἴπου δικιδίον εἶπας εὖ κατὰ ξένου μετοίκου) may be considered as the correlative to δούλους μετοίκους,—the last word being construed both with δούλους and with ξένους. I apprehend that there always must have been in Attica a certain number of intelligent slaves living apart from their masters (χωρὶς οἰκοῦντες), in a state between slavery and freedom, working partly on condition of a fixed payment to him, partly for themselves, and perhaps continuing to pass nominally as slaves after they had bought their liberty by instalments. Such men would be δοῦλοι μέτοικοι: indeed, there are cases in which δοῦλοι signifies freedmen (Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, p. 6): they must have been industrious and pushing men, valuable partisans to a political revolution. See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth. ch. 111, not. 15.