Metics and the Athenian "Phialai"-Inscriptions

Beneath the shining world of the citizen of Classical Athens was the perilous shadow-realm of the resident foreigner, the metic. Emblematic of the status of metic was the requirement to pay a special metic tax, the metoikion. And if a metic failed to pay this tax, he or she would be sold into slavery, a fate that threatened no citizen of the classical Athenian polis. In the late fourth century BC the Athenians, in the face of widespread departure of metics in the face of economic recession and legal harassment, moved to improve metics' legal situation in order to entice metics back to Athens.