A person without citizen status, other than a slave.
In the Archaic Period, liberated slaves and resident aliens are metics in all states, and the children of metic fathers are metics. In some, the children of a metic woman by a citizen husband are citizens, in others they are metics. Metics are not liable to service in the militia, may not hold public office, and are usually subject to a small tax in lieu of state service.
When all citizens of all states were made citizens of Gehennum (before the Classical Period), such metics as had lost citizen status because of migration got left out, as did the children of citizens of different states, and the descendants of such people. This left a substantial proportion of non-citizens in the population who were neither foreigners nor freedmen. In the Classical Period, then, the metic class includes freed slaves, status-less foreigners, and a large group of free but non-citizen Gehennese. Because of intermarriage between these groups, the metic class includes many people of mixed racial origin, and paler coloration is a sign of non-citizen status.
Arrangements in the Decadent Period are much the same, except that the episkopoi have the power to shift people between the citizen and metic classes on judicial grounds, and exercise it for political and financial reasons as well as those for which it was intended.
See social mobility.
Copyright © 1991 by Brett Evill. All rights reserved.
