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Class of Metoeci Subsisting by the Side of the Community At first, therefore, the burgesses were in reality the protectors, the non-burgesses were the protected; but in Rome as in all communities which freely admit settlement but do not throw open the rights of citizenship, it soon became a matter of increasing difficulty to harmonize this relation -de jure- with the actual state of things.
Hitherto the metoeci had been politically nothing, the old burgesses had been everything; now that the former were embraced in the community, the old burgesses were overcome; for, however much might still be wanting to full civil equality, it is the first breach, not the occupation of the last post, that decides the fall of the fortress.
Although, however, the organization of the centuries was introduced merely to enlarge the military resources of the burgesses by the inclusion of the metoeci and, in so far, there is no greater error than to exhibit the Servian organization as the introduction of a timocracy in Rome yet the new obligation imposed upon the inhabitants to bear arms exercised in its consequences a material influence on their political position.
In reality this probably amounted to the concession to the Latins of one vote in the Roman -comitia tributa-. As a place in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate suffrage, if the metoeci shared in the voting in the assembly of the centuries-which we do not know-a similar allotment must have been fixed for the latter.
The exclusion of this multitude from the public assembly, although it bore part of the public burdens, might be tolerated as long as that public assembly itself had no very material share in the working of the state machine, and as long as the royal power by the very fact of its high and free position remained almost equally formidable to the burgesses and to the metoeci and thereby maintained equality of legal redress in the nation.
While a complete legal equality therefore had subsisted within the old burgess-body, the new burgess-body or former metoeci came to be in this way divided from the first into a number of privileged families and a multitude kept in a position of inferiority.
His decrees granted independence to the townships which turned to him, citizenship to the -metoeci-, full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none, freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought in the army of Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result of this high-handed subversion of all existing order.
Such a metoikos was not like an actual burgess assigned to a specific voting district once for all, but before each particular vote the district in which the metoeci were upon that occasion to vote was fixed by lot.
Slabs 23, 24 have continuations of the procession, consisting of females draped, bearing vessels and torches. These women were selected from the noblest families of Athens. The fragment marked 25 closes those which adorn the eastern front. It represents a mutilated figure of one of the Metoeci, or strangers, bearing a tray filled originally with provisions.
Although, however, the organization of the centuries was introduced merely to enlarge the military resources of the burgesses by the inclusion of the metoeci and, in so far, there is no greater error than to exhibit the Servian organization as the introduction of a timocracy in Rome yet the new obligation imposed upon the inhabitants to bear arms exercised in its consequences a material influence on their political position.
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