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[648] 648 = 16.59. μετανάστην, one who has changed his home. In the early stage of society, in which religion as well as polity is based entirely on family and clan relations, the man who has had to leave his home becomes contemptible, an enemy of society, “ἀφρήτωρ ἀθέμιστος ἀνέστιος”. Hence in most European languages the name of outcast has become a general word of contempt. So with the “μέτοικος” at Athens; our own wretch means no more than ‘exile,’ Germ. Elend = foreigner, and so in other cases (see Schrader Handelsgesch. p. 7). ἀτίμητον doubtless = unpriced, a man to whose life no blood-money is attached, so that he may be killed with impunity. Aristotle, however, took it to mean excluded from office ( Pol. iii. 3 “ὥσπερ μέτοικος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ τῶν τιμῶν μὴ μετέχων”), a natural view in the fourth century in Athens. (But in Rhet. ii. 2 he makes it mean simply despised, which is of course possible.)

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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  • Commentary references from this page (2):
    • Aristotle, Rhetoric, 2.2
    • Homer, Iliad, 16.59
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