Legal standing and civic identity of Athenian mercenaries: A case study

Abstract

The author examines different issues considering legal and social standing of mercenaries, mostly being focused upon the fourth court speech (On the Estate of Nicostratus) of the Athenian speech-writer Isaeus, teacher of Demosthenes. On the one hand, he reveals a number of neglected data about mercenaries in terms of their legal activities in and out of their native polis. On the other hand, based on those findings and on other sources, the author studies the issue of Athenian civic identity in the case of mercenaries who spent years or decades out of their city-state without participating in the political life of the polis. In that context he examines the question of whether a mercenary was regarded as politikos or idiotes. As civic identity was mostly based on the citizenship, the author claims that mercenaries enjoyed a kind of sub-identity or frozen civic identity.