it; they had not even the disposition of their own bodies, being wholly the property of other men.  They were thought of only as objects of property; they were often referred to as “a body” ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}).  There was no other law for them than the will of their master, and he had all power over them—­to make them work, to imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance, to beat them.  When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to require that the former’s slaves should be put to the torture to tell what they knew.  Many Athenian orators commend this usage as an ingenious means for obtaining true testimony.  “Torture,” says the orator Isaeus, “is the surest means of proof; and so when you wish to clear up a contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but, placing the slaves to the torture, you seek to discover the truth.”

=Foreigners.=—­The name Metics was applied to people of foreign origin who were established in Athens.  To become a citizen of Athens it was not enough, as with us, to be born in the country; one must be the son of a citizen.  It might be that some aliens had resided in Attica for several generations and yet their family not become Athenian.  The metics could take no part in the government, could not marry a citizen, nor acquire land.  But they were personally free, they had the right of commerce by sea, of banking and of trade on condition that they take a patron to represent them in the courts.  There were in Athens more than ten thousand families of metics, the majority of them bankers or merchants.

=The Citizens.=—­To be a citizen of Athens it was necessary that both parents should be citizens.  The young Athenian, come to maturity at about eighteen years of age, appeared before the popular assembly, received the arms which he was to bear and took the following oath:  “I swear never to dishonor these sacred arms, not to quit my post, to obey the magistrates and the laws, to honor the religion of my country.”  He became simultaneously citizen and soldier.  Thereafter he owed military service until he was sixty years of age.  With this he had the right to sit in the assembly and to fulfil the functions of the state.

Once in a while the Athenians consented to receive into the citizenship a man who was not the son of a citizen, but this was rare and a sign of great favor.  The assembly had to vote the stranger into its membership, and then nine days after six thousand citizens had to vote for him on a secret ballot.  The Athenian people was like a closed circle; no new members were admitted except those pleasing to the old members, and they admitted few beside their sons.

THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS