Question

What civic participation responsibilities did noncitizens have in Athens and Sparta?

Answer 1

Short answer: noncitizens in both poleis were required to support the state materially and militarily, but they were excluded from formal political rights. How that worked differed by group and city.

Athens
- Main noncitizen group: metics (metoikoi) — resident aliens legally resident in Attica.
- Responsibilities:
- Economic: they paid a special resident tax (the metoikion) and contributed to the economy as craftsmen, traders and entrepreneurs.
- Military: metics were liable for military service (served as hoplites, light infantry or rowers depending on wealth/role).
- Legal/administrative obligations: metics had to be registered and normally needed a citizen sponsor (prostates); they were liable to the courts (could be sued, prosecuted) and could be punished by the state.
- Limits: metics could not vote in the Assembly, sit on citizen juries, or hold public office; they had fewer political rights and limited access to land and some public benefits.

Sparta
- Two important noncitizen categories: perioikoi (perioeci, “dwellers around”) and helots.
- Perioikoi:
- Status: free, self-governing communities in Laconia and Messenia but subordinate to Sparta.
- Responsibilities: military service in the Spartan army (they supplied large contingents of hoplites), paid tribute or taxes to Sparta, and performed the trade, crafts and commerce that Spartan citizens largely avoided.
- Limits: no political voice in the Spartan citizen assembly (Apella) and could not hold Spartan magistracies.
- Helots:
- Status: state-owned serfs tied to the land.
- Responsibilities: obliged to work the land and hand over a fixed share of produce to their Spartan masters/the state; served the Spartan economy as agricultural laborers and domestic workers.
- Military role and limits: generally unfree and excluded from political life; some helots were pressed into military service in exceptional circumstances or could be freed after service, but normally had no civic rights.

Summary
- In both cities noncitizens bore fiscal and military burdens and supported the public economy, but they lacked the voting rights, jury duties and office-holding that defined full civic participation for citizens. The perioikoi resembled metics in being free and economically active, while helots were an unfree laboring class with chiefly extractive obligations.