Wandering Greeks (25 page)

At least from the classical period onward an Athenian slave who was harshly treated could take refuge in the Theseum, or sanctuary of Theseus, which was situated close to the heart of the city. The runaway could then request to be sold to another master. In other words, she or he did not seek refuge in the hope of gaining freedom but of acquiring a
more humane owner. The choice of the Theseum derived from the fact that the legendary founder of Athens was deemed sympathetic toward exiles and fugitives. This at least was the view of Plutarch (
Thes
. 36.2), who states, “[Theseus's tomb] is a
phuximon
[place of refuge] for slaves and all those wretches who fear people who are stronger, since Theseus himself was both their champion and supporter and responded in kindly fashion to the needs of the downtrodden.” The decision to establish a slave refuge in Athens, whenever it was taken, is likely to have been a response to an essentially economic problem. It was probably intended to encourage disgruntled slaves to seek redress by a change of ownership—a clearly preferable option from the state's point of view to that of their deserting Athens altogether.

Similar sanctuaries for runaway slaves existed elsewhere in the Greek world and may have been more common than the few references in our sources suggest (Plu.
Mor
. 166e). An inscription dated ca. 92 BCE, which describes cult regulations relating to the Andanian Mysteries of Messene, includes the following provision for the welfare of runaways (
IG
V.1 1390.80–84; Meyer 1987, 51–59):

There is to be a
phugimon
[place of refuge] for slaves. Let the sacred area be the refuge, according to wherever the priests designate it. Let no one harbor
drapetai
[runaways] or give them food or provide them with goods…. The priest shall sit in judgment over cases involving runaway slaves, specifically those who sit there from our city-state. If he does not hand one over, the runaway is to be permitted to leave the master who is in charge of him.

It is revealing that the decree forbade providing runaways slaves with nourishment, evidently to prevent them from becoming long-term residents. It also excluded runaway slaves from elsewhere being granted
asulia
. Other popular refuges were the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Ithome and that of Poseidon at Taenarum, though it may be that only the latter was an acknowledged place of asylum (Thuc. 1.128.1 and 133; Schumacher 1993, 72).

For the most part a
phugimon
or
phuximon
can only have been a temporary solution, though occasionally we hear of runaways being
granted permanent refuge inside a sanctuary. Those who were granted this privilege inside the Egyptian sanctuary of Heracles at Canopus were branded with
hiera stigmata
(sacred markings) to signify that they were under the god's protection (Hdt. 2.113.2). Perhaps in Athens, too, slaves who had been granted asylum in the Theseum and not been sold were permitted to reside there indefinitely. We never hear of any equivalent to the maroon societies in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, viz autonomous and self-sufficient communities that comprised runaway slaves. The nearest equivalent is Naupactus, in which the Messenian helots settled after ca. 460, but since it had a mixed population of free and former slaves it is hardly a particularly apt parallel (Cartledge 1985, 46).

The disorder of wartime presented the most favorable conditions for flight, not least because slaves formerly belonging to the enemy now became a valuable asset. Sometime before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians established a watch post consisting of three archers at the entrance to the Acropolis to prevent
drapetai
and other undesirables from gaining access to the sanctuaries within (
IG
I
³
45; Wernicke 1891, 51–57). The fate of those who did manage to enter the sanctuaries is not known. Around the same time the Athenians accused the Megarians of harboring runaway slaves (Thuc. 1.139.2). When civil war broke out on Corcyra in 427, both the democrats and the oligarchs scoured the countryside for slaves, promising freedom to those who joined their ranks (3.73). The majority of their recruits would have been runaways. With the resumption of hostilities in 413 more than 20,000 Athenian slaves deserted to Decelea, which the Spartans occupied as a forward base inside Attica (7.27.5; cf. 6.91.6). This figure may represent as much as one-fifth of the entire slave population. A year or so later some Chian slaves fled to Athens, when the Athenians began besieging their island (Thuc. 8.40.2). Slaves who accompanied their masters on campaign were also likely to desert, particularly if they suspected that they were facing defeat (7.13.2 and 75.5).

Occasionally prisoners of war managed to escape as a group. Many of the Athenians who were taken prisoner in 413 after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition gained their freedom by fleeing from Syracuse
to Catania, approximately 100 miles to the north (Thuc. 7.85.4). Being a powerful body, they no doubt terrorized the locals along the way. They presumably managed to board ships, which took them back to Athens. Likewise Syracusan prisoners working in the stone quarries in the Piraeus managed to escape to Decelea and Megara in 409 (Xen.
Hell.
1.2.14).

9
THE ECONOMIC MIGRANT

Reasons for Becoming an Economic Migrant

In the modern world economic migrants tend to be both entrepreneurial and dynamic, having demonstrated their willingness to take risks and leave their homes in order to create opportunities for themselves and their families. They tend to plan their departure well in advance and are likely to have a well-established network in their new place of residence, whereas other migrants are forced to leave their homes suddenly and without any advance planning. There is every reason to suppose that economic migrants in the ancient world would have been equally entrepreneurial and dynamic. The first economic migrant in the western canon is the patriarch Abraham, the archetypal upwardly mobile wanderer. Abraham left his homeland in order to achieve a higher standard of living, even though the very considerable fortune that he acquired en route after departing from Ur of the Chaldees in southern Mesopotamia was incidental to the purpose of his journey, which was to demonstrate evidence of the Lord's favor.

A primary motivation for the movement of people in the modern world, too, is the desire to escape financial destitution and starvation, though distress caused by political upheavals runs a close second. In a world like ours, where cheap labor is at a premium, economic migrants at the bottom of the ladder can easily be lured abroad by the promise of prosperity. In the ancient world by contrast, where servile labor was readily available, merchants and craftsmen were the ones most likely to better their economic circumstances by migration.

Economic survival often depends on a willingness to migrate. It was no doubt under duress that Hesiod's father abandoned his unprofitable life as a trader in Cyme, a town on the Anatolian coast south of Lesbos, and moved to the remote inland village of Ascra in Boeotia, “fleeing evil poverty, which Zeus gives to men” (
Op.
638). Why he chose Ascra, which he describes as “a miserable village,” is anyone's guess. Perhaps he had heard that land was easy to come by. He then turned his hand to farming, though with what success is unknown. Hesiod unflatteringly describes the region as “bad in winter, stifling in summer, and unpleasant at all times” (
Op
. 640). He reminds us that the decision to better oneself economically often comes at a high price, not least for the offspring, and perhaps, too, for the spouse, of immigrants. I can't help wondering how Hesiod's mother dealt with the change in their circumstances, assuming she was alive when they migrated. Did she, like her son, perpetually complain about the weather?

Of the tens of thousands of economic migrants who populated the Greek landscape hardly any have left us any indication as to why they chose to settle abroad. Even the most basic question—did they leave home out of necessity or in order to seek new opportunities?—cannot be addressed. Nor do we know what percentage of economic migrants settled abroad with their families. Did some of them occasionally find ways to send remittances back home, as is frequently the case today? Did others arrive singly and then summon their families to join them? We are equally poorly informed about the social networks that must have facilitated and encouraged migration in ancient Greece, as they do in the modern world, providing migrants with a temporary place to stay and assisting them while they struggle to get on their feet. We do not know how many migrants remained abroad and how many returned to their place of birth at the end of their working lives. Did Hesiod make it back to Cyme in later life? Did he actually want to? Or did he eventually adjust to the dreadful weather?

In the ancient world as in the modern, economic migration had benefits for both parties. Indeed the migration of artisans and professionals from one
polis
to another was an essential factor in Greece's cultural,
economic, and political development. As Aristotle observed, “It is necessarily the case that city-states contain a large number of slaves, metics, and foreigners” (
Pol.
7.1326a 18–20). This state of affairs is likely to have been true of “even the smallest, most isolated, most ‘backward', most agriculturally-oriented
polis
,” as Whitehead (1984, 50) notes. Certainly the quality of life in Athens, as well as its culture, depended to a large degree on a continual influx of migrants. The citizen body understood this, for it certainly would not have permitted this influx unless it judged it to be in its best interests, even though it is unlikely to have understood the relationship between migration and economic growth. And although Athens is a special case, it was by no means unique.

The size of the immigrant population obviously varied from one city-state to another. Some
poleis
were highly restrictive, others less so. At the high end of the scale was Athens; at the low end, Sparta. Herodotus claims that until his day only two foreigners had been awarded Spartan citizenship, and this was because one of them was a highly valued seer (9.35.1). (The other was his brother.) Likewise the Megarians proudly maintained that they had granted citizenship only to two non-Megarians (Plu.
Mor.
826c). Sparta had a reputation for being extremely xenophobic, a circumstance that drew disparaging comments from other Greeks, the Athenians especially (Thuc. 1.144.2; 2.39.1; Plu.
Mor.
238e). No doubt foreigners stuck out like a sore thumb in a Spartan street. Another
polis
that exhibited xenophobic tendencies “in accordance with Spartan law” was Apollonia in northwest Greece, and there may well have been others (Ael.
VH
13.16). Xenophobia, after all, operates along a sliding scale.

It goes without saying that no Greek state had anything resembling an “official” immigration policy or imposed a quota, and the extent to which it accommodated permanent settlers from abroad has to be understood in terms of its relationship with Greeks of different ethnicity in general. The fact that Athens was more receptive to foreigners than any other state was due largely to its imperial role in both the fifth and fourth centuries. In the modern world societies that absorb migrants successfully become more dynamic, even though the frequent consequence of that dynamism is social inequality and deep cultural
divides (Scheffer 2011, 319). We are in no position to judge whether this was the case, too, in Athens, and in fact we can hardly begin to estimate the contribution that metics made to its culture and economy, other than to acknowledge the self-evident fact that foreigners would have been evident in all aspects of Athenian society (Cohen 2000, 18). Part of Athens's appeal for foreigners lay in the fact that it would have scored higher than any other
polis
on the Human Development Index, which ranks countries according to the criteria of income, health, and education. Athens, in other words, was the prototype of the modern cosmopolitan urban center like London, New York, and Hong Kong, whose vitality and dynamism depend largely on their sizable immigrant population.

A state's outlook toward the foreigners living in its midst is hardly likely to have been constant and unchanging. In wartime latent tensions and hostilities between citizens and foreigners are likely to have resulted in persecution, as happened in Syracuse when its ruler Dionysius I declared war against Carthage in 396. The Sicilian Greeks responded by persecuting many wealthy Carthaginians who dwelt among them, “not only by plundering their property but also by seizing them and subjecting their bodies to all manner of torture and insult” (D.S. 14.46.3). Though we hear of such occurrences only rarely, there may well have been many such instances that have gone unrecorded.

Immigration scholars identify two related phenomena as the catalyst for migration: a “push” from the country of origin due to its unfavorable internal conditions and how those conditions impact upon specific individuals and groups; and a “pull” to another country or region that holds out the expectation, promise, or hope of a better existence. As noted already, the evidence rarely permits us to determine what drove tens of thousands of Greeks to exchange one city-state for another. In fact it is often impossible to differentiate economic migrants from refugees. We have no means of knowing what percentage of Athens's metic population was motivated to leave its place of origin because of economic considerations and what percentage left, whether voluntarily or under compulsion, because of political discontent or persecution. Scholars tend (tacitly for the most part) to assume that economic
improvement was the primary incentive and that most economic migrants were free to return at will. However, this hardly permits us to conclude that a “push” from one's place of origin played no part at all in the decision to emigrate.

The Origins of Economic Migration

We have evidence that city-states were permitting economic migrants to settle permanently within their borders from the sixth century onward, though the legal status of these migrants in the archaic period is obscure. While some of the professional
dêmiourgoi
(literally “those who work for the people”) whom Homer identified as itinerants probably became permanent settlers abroad (see
chapter 10
), we do not know in what way that might have affected their legal status in their country of adoption—assuming they were accorded any status whatsoever. Most itinerants are likely to have settled abroad on a purely informal basis, perhaps at the invitation of an appreciative employer.