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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Demetra Kasimis, "The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Description: Demetra Kasimis’s new book, The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2018) interrogates the role and unstable place of the metics (metoikoi) in Athenian society. The book focuses on three different presentations and discussions of the metics, in Euripides’ Ion, in Plato’s Republic, and in Demosthenes’ Against Euboulides. The metic, as Kasimis explores, is a classification of individuals within Athenian democracy for those who do not have Athenian blood—they are neither insiders nor outsiders. This whole class of people, who were free and enjoyed certain rights within the society, were, nonetheless, in a kind of l...