Non-Citizen Commemoration in Fifth and Fourth Century BC Attica

The present thesis is an iconographic study of funerary monuments that memorialise, votive reliefs that include and decree reliefs that honour non-citizens resident in Attica or involved with Athens in the course of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Non-citizens here include metics (free resident foreigners), slaves, and foreigners. Collected together in this thesis are 173 funerary monuments, 34 epigraphic attestations of non-citizens dedicating, 65 votive reliefs that include non-citizens, and 60 decree reliefs.
While non-citizens were marginalised legally and politically, they contributed to Athenian society and Athens’ position in the wider Greek world and their presence in the commemorative landscape was part of their contribution. This thesis employs and expands the ‘free spaces’ paradigm adapted by Kostas Vlassopoulos (2007), which envisions certain spaces in Athens as facilitating shared experiences between citizens and non-citizens that created shared identities. It argues that the cemeteries and sanctuaries of Attica were, when it came to commemoration, ‘free spaces’ traversed by both citizens and non-citizens, and that a shared iconography was created and used by citizens and non-citizens alike that both reflected their shared experiences and identities and contributed to those shared experiences and identities.