Greece

In today’s society we all consider ourselves citizens or a native or naturalized member of a state or other political community. However at different points of our history this was not always so there were different classes and different ways that we thought of the people around us. There have been many terms for these classes depending on culture as well as many different ways these classes were treated. On top of all of this there was different ways one carried himself or herself with different values of excellence and price. This scholar is going to explain the difference between a citizen and subject as well as what arÐ"Єte and hubris stand for.

In many different cultures a citizen is considered to be something you are born into. However if we look back into history we see that being a citizen was a high honor and not something that could be entered into easily. In Greek history it is shown in many different situations as being something most can attain and in others is rather unattainable. Such as in Sparta unless you were in the political arena, of royal blood, or served in the military, you were a slave. In the Athenian way of life they pressed their way of life on other societies such as in the Melian Dialogue, it states “Under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously: and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hindered colonists and inhabited the place themselves.” (page 54) This shows that citizenship is the ideal; they have hubris and try to destroy others who were different from them. They were either to be slaves or slaves who are raped, slaughtered, and murdered. There was no option here for them to be considered citizens.

There is however a difference between a subject and a citizen, a citizen has rights, a subject has privileges. There is no monarchy, even a constitutional monarchy, where the people are truly free. It comes down to the difference between a citizen, and a subject. It is as citizens, participating in a free state, where we are subject to none but ourselves, but where we are citizens bound by justifiable laws, that we are most free as a people. Taking as an example Britain; as a subject of the queen, technically speaking you don't have any rights; you have whatever privileges the queen allows you. As states in the Melian Dialogue “Well then, if you would risk so much to retain your empire, and your subjects to get rid of it, it would surely be cowardly of us who are still free not to try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke.”(Page 54) This explains that the Melians are citizens of their island and if taken over by the Athenians they would therefore become subjects. However in Thucydides: The Funeral Oration of Pericles and the Changing Political Identity you see it states, “ We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality: trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens: while in education, where our rivals from there very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please.” (Page 42) One sees here that Athens sees itself as letting others enjoy what their citizens enjoy, and states they understand the risk, yet want to be seen as sharing their greatness.

This scholar however is not a subject, he is a citizens. He does not have privileges granted to him by the government, he has rights inherent from nature. In ancient Greece it was very common that to be a citizen you must be a man. In most texts written from this time one notices the lack of any mention of women or the female as a citizen. As shown in Aristotle’s Politics “One man or a few may excel in virtue, though they may in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence the constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who posses arms are the citizens.”(Page 50) The use of the word man appears over and over in many ancient Greek texts, which shows us the lack for women’s rights or for the ideal that women can be a citizen. In text of Aristotle’s Politics, “On the other hand, the government of a wife and children and of a household, which we have called household management.”(Page 49), One sees here that they are labeling the women, child and household together as if there all property and not a citizen in any means.

In Athens by the 5th century had embraced isonomy, which is that all citizens are equal before the law and have equal access to public office. Here the duties of government where done by everyday citizens and all of these citizens who however were only free adult males, participated in decision making through the Assembly. As seen

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