Hali McMillan
In Trying Neaira, historian Debra Hamel delivers a detailed account of the ancient Athenian justice system through the trial of the eponymous Neaira, a former prostitute. Using Neaira’s story, Hamel gives readers insight into Athenian society and the definition of Athenian citizenship at the time Nearia lived. According to Orlando Patterson’s “The Meaning of Freedom”, the definition of freedom is trifold; one may have personal freedom, or the ability for “one to do as one pleases within the limits of other person’s desire to do the same” (Patterson, 3) or without being restrained by another; sovereignal freedom, or the freedom to do what one wants regardless of others- in other words, the ability for one to control the freedom of others underneath oneself; and civic freedom, or the freedom of one to participate in politics and the government of their community. By this definition, and based on Hamel’s account, Athens was, for the adult male citizen, a free place in all of these regards, though the same cannot be said for non-citizens.
A notable aspect of Athenian society was the ability- or rather, expectation- of male citizens to actively participate in matters of the state. For example, public trials (of which, in Athens, there were many) were heard by a jury composed of anywhere between 501 and 2,501 people, all citizen males over the age of thirty. According to Hamel, “ Six thousand Athenian males… who had volunteered for the task were sworn in annually to serve as jurors for the duration of the year.” (Hamel, 142). It should be noted that not all of these six thousand men showed up to participate in the jury every day, though they certainly had the option to if they wanted. These juries were of utmost importance in Athenian society, as there was no judge to preside over trials. Decisions (and punishments, in cases where a punishment was not specified in the law code) were handed down by the jury without the guidance of a judge. There were also no lawyers in Athens. Arguments in court were typically given by the litigants themselves, and it was illegal for one to hire someone else for payment to give an argument in court. It was, however, legal for a litigant to ask a friend or relative to speak in his place without payment, but the litigant was still required to speak for some of the time. That is to say that any male citizen could bring charges against another person and act as prosecutor in the Athenian court of law. In short, Athenian males were granted by law the freedom to participate in the Athenian justice system if they pleased. This means that Athenian male citizens had civic freedom, the freedom to be involved in the affairs of the state.
It was not so, however, for all who lived in Athens. Non-citizens, for one, could not participate in Athenian government. The six thousand people selected each year to serve in the jury were all citizens. Women, regardless of citizenship status, were also not allowed the degree of political freedom that citizen males were. Women were also not permitted to join juries. They were not even permitted to defend themselves in court! Instead, their kyrioi, or the man in charge of them (usually a husband or father), represented them. For example, though a lawsuit was brought up against Neaira, Stephanos, the man with whom she lived and raised children, was the one who spoke in her defense. Neaira was not an Athenian citizen, but the same was rule was in effect for citizen women as well. Slaves, of course, could also participate in none of these regards. Furthermore, they were not entitled to give evidence or speak as witnesses under normal circumstances, either. However, if both the prosecution and the defense agreed to it, slaves could give testimony if it was taken from them by means of torture; information extracted in this way was thought to be the most accurate testimony. Indeed, not all residents of Athens were allowed the same civic freedoms as citizen males.
Regardless of gender or citizenship status, however, anyone in Athens could evidently own slaves. Hamel first makes this evident when, upon buying her out of slavery in Corinth, the Athenian citizen Phyrnion treats Neaira as his own slave, and after she fled from him and returned to Athens with Stephanos, he attempted to claim that Neaira had been his. It is debatable whether or not Neaira actually legally belonged to Phyrnion; as Hamel writes, “We do not know precisely what arrangement was made between them at [the time at which Phyrnion bought Neaira out of slavery in Corinth], but it is possible that Neaira’s failure to repay the loan had rendered her vulnerable to reenslavement.” (Hamel, 73). Still, the important detail to take away here is the fact that it was possibly legal for Phyrnion to lay claim over Neaira as his slave; to rephrase, slave-ownership was legal for citizen males. It is suggested that non-citizen women such as Neaira could own slaves as well. Apollodoros, who gave most of the arguments against Neaira at her trial, mentions that Neaira had taken with her slaves that had belonged to her when she fled from Phyrnion. Hamel mentions again that Neaira still had these slaves at the time of her trial and that she had purchased two more in the time between (Apollodoros had made an attempt to convince Stephanos to give these slaves up to be tortured for their testimony, but the latter refused). This goes to show that, in Athens, even non-citizen women were permitted to own and purchase slaves. To summarize, both citizens and non-citizens in Athens had a sort of sovereignal freedom in that they were entitled to own and limit the freedom of slaves.
It goes without saying that slaves in Athens did not have personal freedoms. It would, of course, defeat the very definition of being a slave. Slaves are owned by others and as such must bend to their owners’ will. Their freedoms are restricted and, as a result, they cannot be considered to have personal freedoms. As for others, the degrees of personal freedom they experienced were relative. Even women and non-citizens experienced a degree of personal freedom; after all, they were not enslaved and therefore were not entirely restricted. However, Athenian law and societal expectations were less lenient in regards to women and non-citizens than they were to citizen men.
For example, Hamel informs readers in the first chapter of Trying Neaira that it was not seen as a shameful thing for a free man to hire a prostitute in Athens. Hamel describes the presence and legality of prostitution in Athens as “a necessary service” (Hamel, 13). This is, of course, due in part to the fact that Athenian women were mostly expected to stay home. Indeed, though the freedoms of women were not as restricted as those of slaves, upper-class women in Athens spent most of their time doing work around the house. They were also expected to stray away from interacting with men outside of their families. Even when an unrelated man was visiting another’s home, the women were to keep to themselves in the “women’s quarters” of the house until the visitor left. These standards applied to both married and unmarried women, the former of whom were under the control of their fathers. In other words, men were allowed to freely roam, and men who hired prostitutes were not seen in a negative light. Upper class women, meanwhile, were hardly even allowed to leave their homes.
Laws and societal standards were also in place that limited the personal freedoms of non-citizen residents of Athena. For example, Neaira, a non-citizen, is on trial because she is presumed to be living with Stephanos in a marriage relationship. In Athens, it was illegal for citizens and non-citizens to be legally wed. Furthermore, Stephanos and Neaira were raising three children as citizens. Their two boys were presented to Stephanos’s phatry, or kinship group, and their daughter married off twice to Athenian citizens. These are both actions that can only be performed with children who are Athenian citizens. In order for children to be considered citizens, both parents must be citizens as well. Neaira, of course, was not a citizen, though it is possible that the children were birthed to Stephanos from an exterminated marriage with an Athenian citizen; this is uncertain, however, and because of the doubt that the children are not hers, Neaira is on trial for behaving like a citizen and raising her non-citizen children as citizens.
Freedom is tricky to define; it is even trickier to determine whether a complex society like Athens could be considered free. For Athenian male citizens, Athens was, according to Patterson’s trifold definition of freedom, indeed free. They were granted political freedom, had the power to restrict the freedom of slaves, and, in comparison to women, non-citizens, and slaves, had a great deal of personal freedom. However, Athenian society was very different for those who weren’t free citizen men, and, when considering other groups of people who lived in Athens, this society appears to be less “free”. Slaves experienced none of the forms of freedom; women and non-citizens experienced sovereginal freedoms but not civic freedom; and free citizen men, women, and non-citizens all experienced varying degrees of personal freedom.