Patterson, Cynthia B. Those Athenian Bastards.

Those Athenian Bastards
Author(s): Cynthia B. Patterson

Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Apr., 1990), pp. 40-73
Published by: University of California Press
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CYNTHIA B. PATTERSON
Those Athenian
Bastards
Athenians citizens? The question and the debate, lega

WERE ILLEGITIMATE
cies from the nineteenth century, remain unsettled. In the early twentieth cen
tury,William Wyse commented briefly and caustically that this was a "long,
confused and unimportant controversy."1Recent discussions in Classical Quar
terlyand Classical Antiquity indicate that the longevity and perhaps confusion of
the debate
are even
greater
than Wyse
imagined.2 What
is the reason
for the
persistence and inconclusiveness of this debate? Is there any justification for yet
another
discussion
of bastards
in Athens?
In answer
to the first question
I sug
gest that unexamined assumptions aboutAthenian family structure and terminol

the issue and precluded
its solution.
In answer to the
ogy have both confused
of the adjective v6Oog will show
second I argue that clarification of the meaning
that rather than being "an obscure detail of Athenian
life,"3 the identity and
Parts of this paper were presented in earlier forms at the American Historical Association
meetings inChicago, December 1984; at theUniversity of North Carolina, Department of Classics,
February 1986; and at theAmerican Philological Association meetings in San Antonio, December
1986. In its present form it has benefited from the comments and criticism of Richard Patterson,
Rush Rehm, David Halperin, Martin Ostwald, David Whitehead, Michael Jameson, and the anony
mous readers for Classical Antiquity. I also thankPatricia Stockbridge for both her word-processing
skill and her patience.
1. William Wyse, The Speeches of Isaeus (Cambridge, 1904) 280.
2. D. M. MacDowell, "Bastards as Athenian Citizens," CQ, n.s., 26 (1976) 88-91; P. J.
Rhodes, "Bastards as Athenian Citizens," CQ, n.s., 28 (1978) 89-92; K. R. Walters, "Perikles'
Citizenship Law," ClAnt 2 (1983) 314-36; R. Sealey, "On Lawful Concubinage inAthens,' ClAnt 3
(1984) 111-33.
3. Wyse (above, n. 1) 278.
? 1990BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PATTERSON:
41
status of those called nothoi are important to an understanding of theAthenian

family and theAthenian polis.
In this paper I first offer a brief survey of the past debate with particular
attention to its failings, then turn to themeaning of nothos inHomer and early
Classical law and prose, and finally confront the central questions of Athenian
nothoi and Athenian citizenship. I conclude that v60og, while properly con
trastedwith yvioLog ("legitimate," "well-born"), isnot equivalent to theEnglish
terms "illegitimate" or "born out of wedlock."4 A closer look at Greek usage
suggests a more specific meaning. In general, a nothos/l is a child born of a
mixed or unequal union-in the sense that the transferof thewoman (mother) to
the husband (father)was not contracted by socially equal partners-who retains
a recognized relationship with his or her father. Typically, the nothosle is the
child of a concubine
and is known
and acknowledged
as such by his or her father.
Thus, the nothos can have a patronymic but is not a legitimate (gnesios) off
spring. Understanding v6oog in this way helps clarify the status of nothoi as
marginal familymembers excluded formally inClassical Athens from the essen
tial and interconnected privileges of family and polis, but retaining an ambiguous
social position at the margins of Athenian society. Further, Athenian use of
v6oog in political contexts after 451/0 B.C.highlights theway inwhich theAthe
in the later fifth century
nians
of their polis
conceived
as an elite
"family
of
families." Finally, an understanding of the peculiarly marginal status of the

nothos sheds light upon dramatic and philosophic interest inwhat might might be
called the "heroic nothos," the character like Theseus, Heracles, or perhaps
Socrates, who by virtue of not fully belonging to the established order gains
authority
to create
something
new-or,
in the case of Socrates
and his circle,
to
criticize old ways of thinking or acting.

THE "CONFUSED
In his commentary
on
Isaeus Or.
DEBATE"
3 ("On
the Estate
of Pyrrhos"),5
Wyse
singled out for particular criticism two extensive works of nineteenth-century

German
Miiller.
and 0.
on marriage
and nothoi,
those of H. Buermann
scholarship
in 1877-78 Buermann
that
Athe
In a series of articles published
argued
nian law recognized a relationship of "legitimate concubinage," inwhich a concu

bine (pallake) was formally betrothed (enguete) and from which legitimate
4. This is the assumed or stated meaning of the word in the authors noted above (including
Wyse) and in all other discussions I have read. It isperhapsworth noting thatLatin nothus is likewise
not equivalent to spurius (see Lewis and Short s.v. nothus). Vergil uses nothus ("Antiphates, nothus
of Sarpedon from a Theban mother," Aen. 9.697) in clear imitationof Homeric usage, forwhich see
text below. Quintilian uses nothus in regard to a controversia involving inheritance rights (3.6.96-97)
and comments (citing Cato) that Latin had no equivalent term. The case involves the respective
rightsof three sons: one who had been given away in adoption, one who had been disinherited, and
one acknowledged nothus.
5. See Appendix, below, for a discussion of this speech.

42
Volume 9/No. 1/April 1990
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
(gnesioi) children were born.6 Such childrenmight be brought up in the care of

theirmother or theirmother's family andmight need to be adopted (eispoieisthai)
into the father's family,7butwere nonetheless gnesioi. So, for example, in the case
of IsaeusOr. 3, Buermann argued thatPhile, who the speaker insists is the child of
a hetaira, is in fact a gnesia daughter of Pyrrhos and a "legitimate"concubine, that
is, awoman entrusted as such to Pyrrhos by her own brother. Thus, marriage was
not the only road to the production of legitimate heirs; indeed, asWyse noted, on
Buermann's theory there is a great "similarity, coming near to identity"between
'lawfulwife' and 'lawfulconcubine.' "8
Buermann's theorywas unconvincing as an interpretationboth of IsaeusOr.
3 and of Athenian
and has "succumbed
marriage,9
to time and common
sense."
However, the underlying confusion about the relationship between the nature of
the parental union and the status of the child remains.The implicitassumption of
both Buermann andWyse is that in the pairing gnesios/nothos, gnesios refers to
any child recognized as legitimate heir while nothos refers to any and all children
not so recognized, because born of nonlegal or nonrecognized unions, that is,
illegitimate children. Now itmay be that in some specific contexts-for example,
one
in which
the status of a particular
is in question-gnesios
child
and nothos
present the only two relevant terms of classification. But this is entirely consis
tent with the possibility that in other contexts, and in the broader scheme of
things generally, there ismore than one kind of non-gnesios offspring. Nothos
might indeed describe one sort of person excluded from the gnesioi, but there
may
be children who,
while
not being gnesioi,
are also not nothoi
either.
Simi
larly, in another legal context, Athenians might have referred to "citizens and
metics" in regard to military recruitment, without implying that all those who
were
noncitizens
of the speaker
were metics.
The
field of interest and point of view of the law or

the unexamined
evident,
assumption
are crucial. As will become
that nothos simplymeans "not gnesios" or "illegitimate" constitutes a fallacy of

false dichotomy that has contributed greatly to the obscurity of the "nothos
debate."
6. H. Buermann, "Drei Studien auf dem Gebiet des attischenRechts," Jahrbuchfur classischen
Philologie, Suppl. 9 (Leipzig 1877-78) 569-646. The thesis is announced in the opening paragraph.
7. Ibid. 581-82.
8. Wyse (above n. 1) 277. The engue has the purpose of establishing a woman as mother of
legitimate children. To insist that both pallake and wife (damar)were enguete and produced gnesioi
offspring would seem tomake nonsense of theAthenian family and inheritance system and to deny
that the Athenians were monogamous, in the sense noted by Herodotus when he comments that
"like theGreeks" the Egyptians each yuvaoxi ttn . . .OVVOLXEel
(2.92.1). For comment on synoikein
and other Greek marriage terminology, see text below. Monogamos, however, is not apparently a
Classical word-and strictmonogamy in the sense of having one sexual partner isnot part of Greek
or Athenian social values, despite Plato's recommendation in the Laws (841d).
9. If the institution thatBuermann describes existed, the speaker of Isaeus 3most likelywould
have mentioned
it-in
order,
at the very
least,
to argue
that this was
not the basis of the relationship
between Pyrrhos and Phile's mother.

10. Wyse (above, n. 1) 277.

PATTERSON:
Those
Athenian
Bastards
43
One immediate effect of translating nothos with the general term "illegiti
mate" has been to obscureAthenian usage; for inAthens, at least from 414, when
Aristophanes' Birds was produced, nothos could apparently include themeaning
"bornof a non-Athenian mother."'1 Thus it has seemed to some, includingLSJ,
thatAthenians used nothos in two distinctways, namely, "illegitimate" and "of a
foreignmother." This apparent ambiguity has caused no end of confusion, begin
ning for present purposes with the second theory singled out byWyse for discus
sion, thatofMiiller published in 1899.12ForMfiller, the centralmeaning of nothos
in Athens
and in Athenian
law was
always
"born of an Athenian
and a foreign
woman," and on this theorynothoi rode a roller-coaster career inAthenian politi

cal history-disenfranchised by Solon, reenfranchised by Damasias asmembers
not of a phratry but of the Kynosarges synteleion, disenfranchised by Isagoras
(Cleisthenes included!), reenfranchised by Cleisthenes and given complete equal
itywith gnesioi, disenfranchised by Pericles (who simply revived Solon's law),
restored to a special status in 411 (Kynosarges again), and finally excluded again
with the restoration of the democracy in 403. This ambitious theory has no doubt
also "succumbed
to time and common
sense" but remains a telling example
of how
modern interpretationof specificAthenian institutionsand structurescan skip the

rails if the languageof those institutions and structures isnot read sympathetically
and in the context of larger social structures.Miiller simply took a specific instance
in later fifth-century (comic) usage (Birds 1651) and applied it indiscriminately if
methodically to all of Athenian history.
Miiller
was
answered
in detail
and with
authority
by Ledl
a few years after
Wyse published his Commentary.13 In a series of three discussions of Athenian

marriage law, Ledl enunciated what has become the first principle of the posi
tion arguing
for both
the centrality
of marriage
in the Athenian
polis
and the
noncitizenship of nothoi: anchisteia (the family relationship allowing inheri

tance)14and politeia (the right of citizenship) are "untrennbar."15Family mem
bership was
the basis
and necessary
condition
for polis membership.
Thus
the
nothos, clearly opposed inAthenian law to the gnesios or legitimate heir, could
not be a polites.
Ledl's
thesis was
accepted
and given
a historical
dimension
in 1944 by H.
J.
Wolff, who suggested that the complete equation between anchisteia and politeia
11. Av. 1650-52: "Pisthetairos: 'You'renothos and not gnesios.' Heracles: 'I,nothos?What are
you saying?' Pisthetairos: 'You are, by Zeus, for you're [born] of a foreign woman [~ewvg
yvvaLxo6].' "
12. 0. Miiller, "Untersuchungen zurGeschichte des attischen Burger- und Eherechts," Jahr
buch fur classischen Philologie, Suppl. 25 (Leipzig 1899). See especially his "Uberblick," pp. 857-65.
13. Ledl, "Das attische Biirgerrecht und die Frauen," WS 29 (1907) 173-227; ibid. 30 (1908) 1
46, 173-230.
14. Literally, anchisteia means the relationship of being "next" or "nearest" and denotes in
matters of inheritance those up to the relationship of children of cousins. See, e.g., Is. 11.2with the
commentary of A. H. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens I (Oxford, 1968) 143-49.
15. WS 30 (above, n. 13) 230.

44
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
was post-Cleisthenic and democratic.16 The persistently troublesome case of

Phile in IsaeusOr. 3 causedWolff further tomodify the argument for illegitimate
children of Athenian descent. On a straight (butmost likely naive) readingof the
speech,
Phile
is both
the child of an Athenian
man
and an Athenian
hetaira,
and
also legallymarried toXenocles, another Athenian citizen. The speaker asserts

. yyvaUoal (45; also 48, 52, 55, 70,
repeatedly the Phile was c)g e eaLQag . ...
with
no
indication
that
the
71),
resultingmarriage was illegal.But lawsquoted in
the Demosthenic speech "Against Neaira" (delivered in the 340s) prohibited
an astos and xene or aste and xenos. Thus if the law was in
between
marriage
effect at the time of Phile's marriage,
itmight seem that Phile was both nothe and
aste and, in general, that nothoi were citizens inAthens.'7 Wolff, however, took
an intermediate position on this issue, suggesting that illegitimate offspring of
twoAthenian parents, such as he takes Phile to be, were undoubtedly nothoi,
but as nothoi
of two Athenians
were
classed
among
the astoi. Following
U. E.
Paoli, Wolff distinguished the astos from the polites or "full citizen."'8Along
with women and children-likewise astoi but not politai-nothoi, he suggested,
enjoyed a lesser kind of citizenship. Thus Wolff insisted on the principle of the
connection between anchisteia and politeia, but opened a loophole for the
Athenian-born nothos to enjoy a limited citizenship.
I have
reserved
detailed
discussion
of Isaeus Or.
3 for an appendix,
below,
butWolff's suggestion thatAthenian nothoi enjoyed a limited or partial citizen

ship calls for comment
here. First, Paoli's
distinction
between
astos and polites,
although incorporated into the LSJ entry under vo6og and citedwith approval by
and most recently Gould,19 is not supported by Greek or Athe
Wolff, Harrison,
nian usage.20 The basic meaning
of astos/l seems to be "native member
of the
as
term
is
and
such
contrasted
with
the
for
the
xenos,
community,"
typically
indicate a person with
astosle does not necessarily
eigner or nonmember. While
political
rights,
it also does not
indicate
a lack of political
rights.
In fact, astoi
is
frequently used in political or military connections with reference to the adult

male
citizen
civil/political
body.21 The distinction

(as in LSJ s.v. &ao6g),
does not simply translate to

astos/polites
and putting nothoi among the astoi will not
clarify the problem of their status.

Despite the ill-founded terminological point, however, the suggestion of a
16. H. J.Wolff, "MarriageLaw and Family Organization inAncient Athens," Traditio 2 (1944)
43-95. See below for discussion of the impact of Cleisthenes' reforms on the position of nothoi.
17. This conclusion has been emphasized in particular byMacDowell (above, n. 2). See further
Appendix, below.
18. Wolff (above, n. 16) 83; U. E. Paoli, Studi di diritto attico (Florence, 1930) chap. 3.
19. Wolff (above n. 16) 83; Harrison (above, n. 14) 188 n. 2; J. Gould, "Law, Custom and
Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens," JHS 100 (1980), 46 n. 57.
20. I have discussed this and other aspects of Athenian citizenship terminology at greater
length inPericles' Citizenship Law of 451/0 B.C. (NewYork, 1981) app. 1.
21. See, e.g., Ar. Av. 33-34, Ec. 459; Thuc. 4.91.1.

PATTERSON:
45
place for nothoi at themargins or edges of Athenian society is potentially more

promising than the awkwardness of phrases such as "partial citizen" or "passive
citizen"might suggest.22 In a recent discussion of Athenian citizenship, K. R.
Walters objects to the idea of an intermediate position between citizen and
foreigner, insisting that a person either was or was not an Athenian citizen.23
When itwas amatter of receiving or not receiving public distributions or holding
or not holding public office, this was no doubt true. But in other situations
Athenians may have been tolerant of a certain amount of informal ambiguity of
status; indeed theymay have been increasingly confronted with such ambiguity
as they sought to define more closely rules formembership in their polis. The
existence, not lack, of rules and definitions produces margins and ambiguities.
Thus, although Phile herself may in fact have been gnesia (see Appendix),
Wolff's raising of the possibility of an "in-between" position for nothoi is
important-not as a formally defined in-between status, but as a marginal or
ambiguous status created by imposition of formal rules on a traditional social
fabric.
Most discussions of nothoi, however, have shunned ambiguity and preferred
thewell-trodden approach to the problem: were they or were they not citizens?24
To this question, Isaeus Or. 3 has been interpreted as giving a positive answer
(see above) for nothoi of twoAthenians. In further support of thisviewHarrison
has asked rhetorically,Why did Pericles' law speak only of birth from "two
22. There is some theoretical support for such terms inAristotle's Politics, Book 3 (see C.
Mosse, "Citoyens actifs et citoyens 'passifs' dans les cites grecques: Une approche theorique du
problem" REA 81 [1979] 241-49), but they are used in reference to neither women nor nothoi. At
different points inBook 3Aristotle is interested in defining the status of different groups, such as old
men and children, metics, or theworking class, each of which he considers to lack true or complete
citizenship (see especially 1275a7-24). Moss6 gives the name "passive citizen" to Aristotle's
aQX6Covog, the one who has only the virtue of being ruled, not of ruling. For Aristotle this is a
member of theworking class. In general, however, Aristotle emphasizes that citizenship isa privilege
of active not passive status-e.g., the citizen isone who shares indeliberative or judicialoffice (1275b
18-19).
While in practical termswe with Aristotle might call those aliens who received the right to own
land inAttica or were allowed special access to theAthenian courts "partial"or "passive"citizens, in
Athenian terms theywere still privileged aliens. Likewise some have called Athenian women partial
or second-class citizens, but theAthenians called them astai. (See C. B. Patterson, "HaiAttikai: The
Other Athenians," Helios 13.2 [1986] 49-67, for the question of female "citizenship.") Athenian
citizenship was an active status-inclusive of religious, economic, athletic, as well as political and
military activity.As revealed by Aristotle's difficulties inPol. 3, "passive citizen" is almost a contra
in terms.
diction
See
also n. 24 below.
23. Walters (above, n. 2) 319-in Latin for emphasis: "tertium quid non datur."
24. An exception isD. Lotze, "Zwischen Politen und Metoken: Pasivbiirger im klassischen
Athen?"
Klio
63 (1981)
159-78.
Lotze
does
not
so much
attempt
to define what
the "passive
citizen"
might be as show, in a thorough discussion of the evidence, the ambiguities of the nothos identity.
They
were
not citizens
but also not xenoi: Was
there an in-between
status,
both
for them and other
misfits, such as those excluded from citizenship in the oligarchic revolution? I think the answer isyes,
but that it was
an informal
not formal
status, which
left them formally
out
in the cold when
economic and political privilege.

it came
to
46
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
And why, added

astoi," and not of legitimate birth, if legitimacywas required?25
MacDowell, did Aristotle not mention legitimacyper se in his account of citizen
ship procedures in his day, or why did theAthenian decree declaringAntiphon
andArcheptolemos to be atimoi include their children, "gnesioi and nothoi," if
in fact nothoi were not citizens?26
There
the debate
has rested. On
the one
side are those who with Ledl
and
Wolff emphasize the essential familial structure of the Athenian polis: one's
membership in kin groups, real and fictional, was the basis formembership in
the state. The nonlegitimate, non-gnesios person is formally outside this system.
On
side are those who
the other
insist on the significance
of what
appear
to be
specific counterexamples such as Phile, on Aristotle's silence, on the logical

impossibility (as it seems) of making atimos someone who was not a citizen to
begin with, or finally on the a priori notion that theAthenians justwould not
have excluded bastard children of twoAthenian parents.27And all, while assum
ing that nothos is equivalent to "illegitimate," have focused on illegitimate chil
dren of two Athenians. The most recent contribution to this discussion, how
of nothos, places a foot in both camps at the
ever, offering a novel interpretation
same time as it brings us full circle back to Buermann.
In "On Lawful Concubi
nage inAthens,"28 Sealey has suggested that theAthenians were concerned not
with
the nature
Legitimacy
was
of the parental union but only with the identity of the parents.
was legitimate or
but any child of two Athenians
necessary,
gnesios. Nothos, he theorized, referred to the child of "disputable parentage,"

except when itmeant "of mixed descent."29 In offering this thesis Sealey cites
neither his predecessor, Buermann (and his critics), nor Athenian usage. With
justified discouragement, we might now askwhere this debate has led us.30
25. Harrison (above, n. 14) 65. The answer is that Pericles' lawput forth not a definition but a
new standard requirement for citizenship.
26. MacDowell (above, n. 2) 89-90, also emphasizing the case of Phile. I do not find the
argument from the decree against Antiphon and Archeptolemos convincing, since in formulating
such a decree the concern would be to use the strongest possible language, even at the cost of strict
logical categories. See also the comments of Rhodes (above n. 2), who dismisses all three of Mac
Dowell's points as inconclusive.
27. So even Wolff (above, n. 16) is led to qualify his insistence on the connection between
anchisteia and politeia: "it is, nevertheless unlikely that those born of Athenian mothers were in
every respect reduced to the status of aliens" (p. 82). As we shall see, however, children of Athenian
mothers would not ordinarily be nothoi inAthens. Rather, themothers of nothoi would be women of
inferior status, as against the citizen elite.
28. Above, n. 2.
29. Sealey (above, n. 2) 128-29.
30. In addition to the articles or books already noted, a number of other contributions should
be mentioned:
J. M.
Hannick
("Droit
de cit6 et mariages
mixtes
dans
la Grece
classique,"
AC
45
[1976] 133-48) discusses Arist. Pol. 1275b21-22, 1278a26-34, and 1319b6-11 on citizenship criteria.
(ForAristotle's use of nothos in these passages, see below n. 84.) M. H. Hansen (Demography and
Democracy [Herning, 1985] app. 2) discusses the citizenship of bastards or "nothoi born from
Athenian parents" (p. 75) and concludes that the evidence is "inconclusive" (p. 76). In her disserta
tion, "The Social and Political Ramifications of Athenian Marriages, ca. 600-400 B.C." (DukeUniv.,

47
PATTERSON:
IN EARLY GREEK
NOTHOI
The primary virtue of Sealey's articlewould seem to be that itmakes blatant

the faults and sources of confusion in the previous discussion.We are forced to
step back and begin where we should have begun initially.What is the contextual
meaning of nothos, and how does the nothos fit into theGreek, and particularly
the Athenian, structures of marriage and of family and polis membership?
view
Sealey's
is that "no extant
text says what
the criterion was for being a nothos"
and that "conjecture is possible."31 Surely there is another alternative. In this

I shall consider
section
in Homer,
the use of nothos
and in early Greek
law and
prose. Here and in the following sections I am tryingnot somuch to find empiri
cally a precise lexical definition, but rather to identify themain elements of the
familial and social identity of the nothos as revealed by Greek and Athenian
In what
usage.
and contexts
situations
was nothos
used,
and what does
this usage
suggest about the place of the nothos inGreek family and polis terminology?
HOMERIC
The
NOTHOI
Iliad contains
not at all in dispute.
numerous
In Book
instances
2 we
of nothoi whose
are introduced
identity is clear and

to "Medon, nothos son of
Oileus whom Rhene bore" (2.727); likewise Telamon reared his nothos son
Teukros in his own household, and Priam had numerous nothoi (e.g., 4.499,
16.738) and at least one nothe (13.173) in his.Without exception nothoi are the
recognized children of aman, typically a hero or king, and a woman other than
his wife, typically a bought or captured concubine livingwithin the household.
The nothos is part of his father's household, although generally with an inferior
status
reflecting
In contrast
status of his mother.
the inferior
to its relatively
frequent use in the Iliad, nothos does not appear in the Odyssey. Odysseus's
identity in Book 14, however, would seem to fit the Iliad pattern for
the nothos. He is, he says, the child of a bought concubine,
and while recognized
and favored by his father he still did not inherit equally with his gnesioi half
fabricated
siblings (14.203-10). Also in the Odyssey, the only son and apparent heir of
1983), Cheryl Cox briefly discusses the nothos controversy (pp. 258-90); most of her conclusions are
compatiblewith those offered in this paper. In thispaper I have not attempted to address individually
each discussion of nothoi, but rather to present the essential assumptions and arguments of the
debate
as a whole.
31.
Sealey
(above,
n. 2)
127.
It should
at least be noted
that
the Hellenistic
and Byzantine
lexicographersdid give definitions for voOog.Unfortunately these definitions are of limiteduse, since
they seem neither complete nor consistent. For example, Pollux defines a v6oOo as someone either
born from a foreignwoman or a concubine (ctakaxri), and Photius says simply that a v6oog is not
born
of
two aoaoi.
Hesychius
cites
voOoyevvrTog
as referring
particularly
to the non-yvi'oLog
born
from a J6Ovq, 4Q(ark,

bovinX,or nax.ax/i. How these definitions reflect in different ways the social
of
the
history
polis, particularlyAthens, will I hope become clear in the course of this paper. For
now,
it can be noted
that the inferior
status
of the mother
seems
to be a key element
status of nothos for her child.

in a resulting
48
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
Menelaos in Sparta isMegapenthes, born toMenelaos by a slave woman (ex

6oiXrig, 4.12). As recognized son (he is TYrkI)yetog
[4.11], indicating a special
affection),32Megapenthes, the child of a slave, gained both freedom and an
inheritance.He seems to be treated as at least the equal ofMenelaos's legitimate
daughter, Hermione (also called Trluyktilv, by Helen at II. 3.175). Both were
being honored with wedding celebrations when Telemachos arrived in Sparta.
Hermione was being sent off tomarry Neoptolemos, while Megapenthes has a
Spartan bride. Even though nothos is not used of Megapenthes in the Odyssey,
his peculiar position as the free child of a slavewoman, given a place within the
paternal oikos, is comparable to the situation of nothoi in the Iliad. An impor
tantdifference inMegapenthes' position, as against for example thatof Teukros,
is that he was Menelaos's only recognized son.
In contrast to the nothos, the gnesios child is the child of awoman designated
to produce gnesioi or heirs, by being given (in later Athenian terms "en
trusted")33to a husband inproper public fashion-with gift-giving and feasting.34
So Agamemnon offers to give one of his daughters to Achilles (II. 9.286-90),
andMenelaos is busy giving his daughter away to Neoptolemos (Od. 4.3-9).
According to an early Athenian law quoted in [Demosthenes] Or. 46.18, the
woman who is entrusted (enguasthai) by her father or paternal brother or grand
father has legitimate (gnesioi) children. Similarly, ifmore informally, inHomeric
society the exchange of gifts and property between two families validated their
marriage alliance and set up the eventual devolution of their property.35
It is notable
women
who
law between
in Homer
explicit distinction
and the nothos than between
those
could mean
that there seems
in later Athenian
bear
to be a more
the gnesios
children. Alochos
"wife
(and bearer
and
the
of
gnesioi)" (Od. 14.20-22) or could refer simply to a "bedmate" such as Briseis in

the firstbook of the Iliad (114).36Briseis's case isparticularly instructiveon both
32. See A. Heubeck, S.West, and J. B. Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey I
(Oxford, 1988) 194. The authors comment thatMegapenthes' "name is evidently chosen to express
Menelaos' grief atHelen's desertion."
33.
For
the significance
of
the "entrusting"
or engue
of the woman
to her husband,
see Wolff
(above, n. 16).
34. Cf. Od. 4.3. On Homeric marriage as a many-gifted event, seeM. I. Finley, "Marriage,
Sale and Gift in theHomeric World," RIDA 3 (1955) 167-94 (= Economy and Society inAncient
Greece [London, 1981] 233-45).
35. Thus W. K. Lacey's comment (The Family in Classical Greece [London, 1968] 42) that
Homeric marriage was a "de facto state" ismisleading. The marriages ofMegapenthes andHermione
did not have official legal sanction, but rather the communal sanction of those who witnessed and
enjoyed themarriage celebration.
36. Agamemnon qualifies his description of Clytemnestra by terming her his xovQLbi6rl
akXoog
(1.114). The adjective is generally agreed to derive from xoiVQror XO'6l (Chantraine s.v. xoLerl) and
has been
interpreted
as referring
to the woman
given
as a virgin
to her husband
or who
at marriage
offers her virginity to her husband (so F. Bechtel, Lexilogus zu Homer [Halle, 1914] 200). As
opposed to a concubine or prostitute (see Hdt. 1.135, 5.18), her sexuality is the sole possession or
domain
of one
man,
called
by
extension
xouvi6tog
Jx6oig
(II. 5.414).
Perhaps
then
the phrase
kouridie alochos is similar toEnglish "virginbride" or even "chastewife." In any case, the tendency

PATTERSON:
49
the fluidity of marital status inHomeric society and also the significance of the
public giving-away of the bride and celebration of themarriage. Speaking to the
dead Patroklos, Briseis remembers firsthow she had seen Achilles cut down the
man to whom she had been given by her father and mother, and then how
Patroklos himself had comforted her with the promise that he would make her
the kouridie alochos of Achilles,37 take her back to Phthia, and celebrate the
marriage with a feast among the Myrmidons (II. 19.287-99). Thus Patroklos
would have assumed the role of Briseis's father and given her inmarriage to
Achilles. After that celebration, we should suppose that Briseis would have
borne gnesioi, even if Achilles simply called her his alochos or Trv act1oI (II.
9.340-42).
Given the looseness of Homeric vocabulary denoting thewife, it is striking
that gnesios and (in the Iliad) nothos are used consistently and precisely. The
emphasis of Greek family terminology is on the product rather than the state of
marriage, as is evident also from Aristotle's observation that there was no
single word in Greek for the relationship (or "yoking together") of husband
and wife.38Athenians made do with the verb ovuvoLxELV
("cohabit," "share an
or
more
added
to
be
JaLboroLeToOaL,
"produce children
oikos"),
specific they
an
(for oikos)."39
The nothos,
has a clear identity
like the gnesios,
inHomer.
He
(or she) is the
free, recognized child of a resident woman of non-wife status.As noted earlier,

the recognized yet socially inferior status of themother was passed on to her
child. The
nothos
(or note)
belonged
to the paternal
household
but was not a
"shareholder" in it. Along with the positive fact of parental recognition and
possible
favor went
parental
the negative
fact of unequal
status,
parental
an
inequality reflected in the relationship between the nothos and his half-siblings.
Thus we
find Priam's
nothos
son Isos (a notable
name!)
serving as driver
for his
to read into kouridie the idea of "legitimate" or "lawful" (so LSJ s.v.) isnot supported by etymology
or usage.
37. See previous note.

38. Pol. 1.3.2. Although ydtog (or pl. ya?tot) is often translated "marriage," its basicmeaning
is rather the "marriage celebration" or "nuptials" (see, e.g., II. 18.491, 19.299). Sophocles plays
upon the potential ambiguity of the term in the Trachiniaewhen Deianeira foresees new yadot inher
house (843). Similarly the verb yaClelvdenotes the active takingof awoman aswife, andHeracles in
the same play is said to have "married" (Ey'le) many women (460). (Note also that both Deianeira
and Iole are called b6dalc [406, 428], a term usually reserved for the [one]wife herself.) ya[elv may
thenmean more "mate" than "marry"and could be used in reference to any regular sexual partner.
However,
the gamos
was
usually
celebrated
with
the woman
to bear
destined
a man's
heirs,
and
it is
noteworthy that yalewni is used in the phratry oath of the "Demotionid" decrees (IG II21237.111)
instead
of more
usual
Eyyvrql.
See
also
Is. 12.10
and Ath.
Pol.
4.2.
I do not
agree
with
Sealey
(above, n. 2: 122) that yacLEt- in these contexts is significantly different from EyyvrIM.
For further comment on Greek "marriage" terminology, see J.-P. Vernant, "Mariage en Grece
archaique," inMythe et society enGrece ancienne (Paris, 1974). The one term that seemsmost precise
in its reference is yvvi Euyyrvn, referring to themother of legitimate, gnesioi, children.
39. See especially the language of [Dem.] 59.122.

50
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
gnesios half-brother Antiphos (II. 11.102-3), and on the Greek side Teukros
stands protected by the huge shield of his half-brotherAjax (1. 8.266-68). But
themost significant inferioritywould be in inheritance.Against gnesioi, nothoi
have no inheritance claim.40
InHomer, then, gnesios and nothos would in fact appear as exclusive but not
at all exhaustive terms for all possible offspring. They are both recognized by
their father as his own offspring, but not as equals. Still, the nothos had a socially
recognized father, which set him or her apart from other irregularlyborn or
illegitimate children. The child of an unmarriedwoman, termed once a parthe
nios (1. 16.180; cf. the Spartan partheniai), would for better or worse be depen
dent on its mother. The Iliad's parthenios, Eudoros son of Polymele, was
brought up in his maternal grandfather's house (ibid.). Another nonlegitimate
figure in the Iliad isBoukolion, whose mother bore him skotios, even though he
was the eldest son of Laomedon (6.23-24). That his mother bore him skotios
suggests that she, and her child, were not part of Laomedon's household.
The term skotios is suggestive of the circumstances of bastardswithout the
social recognition of their fathers. They would inhabit the dark, lower reaches of
a society
that had no special
term for them and often
no room for them. They
might be exposed at birth, perhaps surviving to be reared as slaves. The nothos,

on the other
hand, was
a paternally
recognized
child with
a place
in his father's
household. Thus, the distinction legitimate/illegitimate, familiar in theWestern

legal tradition,41 in which "legitimate" means born into a legalmarriage and
"illegitimate"means not so born, cannot be neatly mapped onto Greek social
and legal terminology.While we use one term for the offspring of a range of
irregularunions-adultery, incest, prostitution, premarital sexual relations-the
Greeks
had a more
NOTHOI
IN EARLY
varied
and,
GREEK
LAW
in the case of nothos,
more
specialized
usage.
to the heroic world he de

use of nothos is clear and appropriate
women as "war brides,"
women
as
or
seize
where
heroes
scribes,
prizes
exchange
while maintaining
wives and heirs back home. As an alochos one woman was as
Homer's
good as the next (indeedAgamemnon preferred Chryseis to his kouridie alochos,

Clytemnestra: II. 1.114),42 but inheritance and property/status transmission re
between gnesios and nothos. Homer's
usage leads then to
quired the distinction
the question of the position of nothoi in the early Greek polis. To what extent did
Homer's
nothoi have a distinct social or legal identity in the early polis?
I think it can be argued that the "Homeric" nothos, the child of a concubine or
40. SinceMegapenthes isMenelaos's apparent heir, nothoi perhapswere excluded in "Homeric
society" only by male gnesioi. In Classical Athens, a brotherless daughter was an epikleros; by law
the property stayed with her, to be passed on to her sons by an appropriate husband.
41. For discussion of the concept of illegitimacy in theWestern tradition, see J. Teichman,
Illegitimacy:An Examination of Bastardy (Ithaca,N.Y., 1982).
42. On the significance of kouridie, see n. 36 above.

PATTERSON:
51
pallake within the paternal household, did have a recognized social and perhaps
legal status inArchaic Greece and particularly inAthens. Further, although the
status of the nothos became increasingly circumscribed (and although the use of
the adjective nothos was extended metaphorically in the laterClassical period),
the basicHomeric meaning and identitypersisted as recognized usage through the
Classical and on into the Hellenistic age.43 Solon's legislation on nothoi is an
important case in point here, as well as a crucial part of the argument for the
position of nothoi inClassical Athens.
In Aristophanes' Birds, Pisthetairos quotes a "law of Solon" in order to
persuade Heracles that he has no real interest in theOlympian cause: "A nothos
has no right of inheritance [anchisteia] if there are gnesioi. If there are no gnesioi,
the property falls to the next of kin" (1661-66). (Some ten lines earlier
Pisthetairos has called Heracles nothos since he was born ek xenes-as amortal
hismother was a foreigner in the realm of the gods.) The joke is on Heracles
and on us, as we
try to make
sense of this comic quotation.
S. C. Humphreys
has
suggested that for comic effect Aristophanes put together clauses from two
different laws "one on nothoi and one on intestate inheritance,"44both to the
exclusion of nothoi.Wolff, however, argued thatSolon merely excluded nothoi if
therewere gnesioi, as suggested by the first clause; their complete exclusion, he
argued, was
instituted
by Cleisthenes.45
For now
to say that Solon
it is enough
limited in some way the family and inheritance rights of nothoi, even if by simply
codifying customary disabilities of nothoi. In keeping with his effort to curb
aristocratic excess and display and to promote the integrityof individualoikoi,46
Solon may
within
of concubinage
the practice
have discouraged
the oikos
as an
aristocratic flaunting of wealth and status potentially disruptive of polis and

family solidarity (cf. the tensions produced by such situations in laterAthenian
drama, inAeschylus's Agamemnon, Sophocles' Trachiniae, or Euripides' Andro
mache). In any case, he excluded, either completely or only if therewere gnesioi,
the children
of pallakai
from the patrilinear
of family responsibility.
nothos
line of descent.
to Plutarch,
According
He
also relieved
a law of Solon
stated
the
that
the nothos was not required to support his parents in their old age (Solon 22.4).47
These
nothoi who
are the focus of Solon's
legislation
should
be understood
as
43. In particular, note Menander's use of nothos inSam. 135,Aspis 176, and Epit. 898. In the
Samia, Demeas thinksChrysis has borne him a nothos son; in theAspis, Smikrines complains that he
is being overlooked as head of the household, as if he is a nothos; and in theEpitrepontes, Charisios
thinks he
is the father
of a nothos
before
he
learns
that the child's mother
is his own wife,
Pamphile.
44. "TheNothoi of Kynosarges," JHS 94 (1974) 89 n. 5.

45. Wolff (above, n. 16) 89-91. See text, below, for a discussion of the impactof Cleisthenes'
reforms on Athenian family structure.
46. So Iwould also interpret the Solonian lawson conspicuous consumption, on heiresses, and
on wills. See further below. I accept the lawson nothoi as genuinely Solonian, primarily because they
make sense in an early sixth-century context.
47. Vernant (above, n. 38: 52) comments obscurely on this passage to the effect that the law
confirms rather than restricts the place of the nothos in the paternal household.

52
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
"Homeric" nothoi, children of concubines who were recognized as such by their

fathers and who previously maintained some kind of connection with the pater
nal family. There would be no need to relieve unrecognized bastards, or illegiti
mate offspring of all sorts, of such responsibility or to exclude them from the
anchisteia; the law dealt rather with the ambiguous and marginal case of the
recognized bastard.
Adultery and extramarital sexual activity were also disruptive to the cohe
sion of the family line, but here the sanctions of Solonian law, and pre-Solonian
law insofar as it is discernible, were directed against the sexual partners rather
than any offspring. Thus, by the law on justified homicide quoted inDemosthe
nes Or.
23.53,
a man
could
kill anyone
he caught
in the act of adultery
with
female members of his household; or by a Solonian law, reported by Plutarch

(Sol. 23) but perhaps not often used, a father could sell his daughter into slavery
if she had engaged in premarital sex. (Most likely, themarriage of the daughter
to her sexual partner was
a preferable
solution,
and one
that would
insure
the
legitimacy of her children.)48 In distinction to the nothos, whose marginal and

ambiguous familial position required definition, the child born of proven adul
tery, for example, would be without question "not gnesios" and not hismother's
husband's
the child born to an unmarried
heir, while
woman
was,
in the language
of English common law,filius nullius,49with no claim to any paternal inheritance

(cf. again Eudoros in I/. 16.180). The nothos, the paternally recognized bastard,
was
an anomaly
focus of Solonian
That
Archaic
in the Solonian
family order,
law.
and later inheritance
and his (or her)
status was
the
in the
is a term bearing a specific legal and social reference
"not
rather than the more vague meaning
and early Classical periods,
nothos
legitimate," is supported by Herodotus's specific use of nothos in contexts of

uses nothos three times: to note the
family status and inheritance. Herodotus
that the nothos son of a king, did not inherit the throne if there
Persian nomimon
was a gnesios (3.2.2);50 to describe Hegesistratos the son of Peisistratos by an

Argive woman
(5.94.1);51 and, again in reference to the Persian royal family, to
of 480 B.C.
note that certain nothoi paides accompanied Xerxes on his expedition
In addition, Nothon
appears as the personal name of the father of a
(8.103.1).
certain Aischines of Eretria (6.100.3). Used as an adjective, then, nothos in

Herodotus
paternal
48.
denotes
the son with

Herodotus's
household.
Cf.
the comments
of A.
W.
an acknowledged
usage conforms
Gomme
and F. H.
if inferior connection
completely
Sandbach
to the
to that of Homer
(Menander:
Commentary
[Oxford, 1973] 32-33) in regard to premarital unions inMenander.

49. This is the description of the bastard in English common law; see J. Teichman (above, n.
53-75.
41)
50. Note thatHerodotus is applying Greek terminology-and also perhaps attributingGreek
customs-to the Persian court.
51. There is some debate over whether this sonwas actually nothos or simply likeThemistocles
called nothos on post-Periclean criteria. See J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300
B.C. (Oxford, 1971) 449-50.

PATTERSON:
53
and, Iwould argue, of Solon. The use of Nothon as a personal name is striking
and may reflect the social situation of themid-sixth century, when presumably
Aischines' father (and also Hegesistratos) would have been born.52Was this
Nothon a self-proclaimed "Bastard," born of parents from different social classes
in an era of marked
social
upheaval?
Is he perhaps
a historical
analogue
to
Theognis's Kyrnos?53 In any case, it seems thatnothoi are particularly "athome"

in the sixth century
and
in the Persian
that court was
court-as
seen
through
Greek eyes. Thucydides, it can be noted, uses nothos twice, both times in refer
ence toAmorges, the nothos huios of the Persian satrap Pissouthnes.54
Finally, amid-fifth-century inscription fromTegea adds a bit of epigraphical
and even non-Athenian support for the interpretation of nothos offered here.
The inscription establishes the order of claim to a temple deposit, proceeding
fromXuthias, to his gnesioi and gnesiai, to his nothoi, and finally to collateral
relatives.55Thus, here again, the nothos was a child of inferioryet acknowledged
statuswithin the paternal lineage.
Given the specific identity of the nothos evident so far inArchaic Greece, it
is perhaps surprising that the Gortyn Code, in which family law is a central
concern,
contains
no reference
to nothoi.
The
order
of succession
is stated
in
column V, lines 9-22:

When
a man
or woman
dies,
if there be children
or children's
children,
they are to have the property. And if there be none of these, but broth
ers of the deceased and brothers' children or brothers' children's chil
dren, they are to have the property. And if there be none of these, but
sisters of the deceased and sisters' children or sisters' children's children,
they are to have the property.
here. In the section discussing
the status of children
word
does
not appear. Nor is
and
the
nothos
unions,
serf)
(free
nothos used in the section of the code dealing with the status of children born
after divorce or adultery (III.44-52).
On the basis of the previous argument we
would not expect nothos to appear in contexts of divorce or adultery, but the
No nothoi
are mentioned
born of mixed
complete absence of nothos from the legal terminology of the code suggests
52. Nothos continues to appear in a few compound names in the fifth and fourth centuries. For
example, Notharchos appears in the Erechtheid casualty list of 460/59 (IG I2929.89), and is also the
name of an arbitrator inDem. 29.31. Kleinothos appears in the casualty list of 439/8 (IG I2943.93),
and Philonothos in a bouleutic catalogue from the fourth century (IG II2 1697.12 = Agora 15 n.o
492.12). That Athenian citizens bore such names is noteworthy (perhaps a name such asNotharchos
is an additional indication that nothoi were recognized as a distinct social or legal group), but not
particularly significant for the question of the citizenship of the nothoi themselves.
53. For the significance of the name Kyrnos ("bastard"), see Nagy, inT. J. Figueira and G.
Nagy, Theognis ofMegara (Baltimore, 1985) 54.
54. Thuc. 8.5.5, 8.28.3; cf. Xen. Anab. 2.4.24. Xenophon also speaks of "nothoi of the
Spartiates" in reference to themilitary recruitment of non-Spartans (Hell. 5.3.9).
55. IG V:2.159 = Dittenberger, Syll.3 1213b.

54
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
perhaps that thiswas not aDorian word or aGortynian institution.56For present

purposes, however, it is enough to recognize that nothos is not used for "illegiti
mate" in the code. The code does use gnesios for "legitimate,"57seemingly a
general Greek usage. Nothos, however, is a more specific term originally used
for the child of what might be called "Homeric" concubinage.
IN ATHENS
NOTHOI
SOCIAL AND
Now,
POLITICAL
STATUS:
SOLON
at last, we are in a position
TO CLEISTHENES
to consider
the place and identity of nothoi
inAthens. Before the early sixth century and the special nomothesia of Solon,
Athenian family and inheritance structures seem to have been essentially "Ho
meric":
a man
of wealth
and stature would
have
a kouridie
alochos
to bear him
heirs, but might also have a slave or "war-bride"alochos or pallake who bore
him nothoi, free but unequal members of the household. Traces of the pre
Solonian structure can perhaps be seen in the laws noted earlier defining the
gnesioi as those born from an entrusted wife (Dem. 27.17), and that sanctioning
the killing of anyone caught in illicit union with a man's wife (damar), sister,
daughter, or pallake whom he keeps "for the sake of free children" (Fn'
EDXeQO/oLg tnaoiv, Dem.
23.53). The latter clause, with its use of the early
Greek damar, has a venerable
ring to it. The pallake kept "for the sake of free
children" also calls to mind the "war brides" of the Homeric
world, who al
though themselves slaves bore free nothoi to their owner or "husband."On

Buermann and Sealey's theories of "legitimate" or "lawful" concubinage, the
children thesepallakai bore were also gnesioi and citizens. Some of the problems
with Buermann's theory have already been noted above. In addition, Sealey's
theory requires a strained interpretation of eleutheros as being equivalent to
"citizen"
here
since he considers
it equivalent
to "citizen"
in Ath.
Pol.
42.1.58 A
reading of the law informed by Homeric and Archaic usage, however, leads to
the straightforward conclusion that these eleutheroi should be understood as
nothoi, even though they are not so called. (Perhaps the implicit contrast here is
usual status of children of slave women.)
not with gnesioi but with douloi-the
with known fathers
Isoi
of
These are the Menons,
Teukroi,
early Athens-free,
and families,
but nothoi.
As
J.-P. Vernant
has
insisted,
these children
are not
simply "illegitimate";59indeed they are nothoi. Against aHomeric background,

56. The inscription from Tegea (see text) uses nothos, but Xuthias does not appear to be a
Tegean. See Dittenberger, Syll.3 1213b n. 2.
57. E.g., col. X.41, 48: yveola Txxva. The passage concerns the inheritance rights of adopted
sons. If there are no gnesia the adopted son can inherit as though legitimate. If there are legitimate
children, he receives a daughter's share.
58. Sealey (above, n. 2) 113-15.
59. See Vernant (above, n. 38) 55.

55
PATTERSON:
both
the law of Demosthenes
Or.
23 and the practice
of calling
the "free chil
dren" nothoi make perfect sense.

In the expanding and often unsettled world of Archaic Greece, the tradi
tional "Homeric" family was both presented with new opportunities and sub
jected to new pressures. Colonization gave those without a place in the tradi
tional family structure a chance to start new families; tyrants, on the other hand,
seemed to threaten the traditional family order by confiscation of property,
violent treatment of women, or their own irregular family behavior.6 While
early sixth-centuryAthens was as yet free of tyrannyand not pushed to external
colonization, Solon seems nonetheless to have confronted a peculiar Athenian
crisis in family structure and stability. "The many were enslaved to the few"
(Ath. Pol. 5); the small ormiddling oikoi were having difficultymaintaining their
economic independence in the face of rapacious kin or larger landowners. So
lon'smost dramatic remedies were the forbidding of loans taken on security of
the person and the allowing of wills (Ath. Pol 6, Plut. Sol. 21). But Iwould argue
that Solon's formal rules restricting de jure the connection of nothoi to the
paternal
family
(see above)
are also part of the same economic
and social pro
gram and one step toward the distinctivelyAthenian systemwhose firstprinciple

was the integrity and continuity of individualAthenian oikoi. Just how large a
step depends, as noted earlier, on how we interpret the crucial piece of evidence
embedded inAristophanes' Birds 1661-66 (above; and see further below). If,
however, Solon
still articulated
did not completely

in legal language
cut off the nothos

and
in codified
on the path
inferiority of the nothos. He set Athens
law of, at the latest, 403 B.C., that "to the nothos
from the paternal oikos, he

law the social and familial
that led to the fifth-century
and the nothe there is no
anchisteia," no familial right of inheritance (Dem. 43.51; Is. 6.47). Again, al

though concubinage itself was certainly not prohibited, laws that isolated the
nothos
extent
from his paternal household would also have an effect on the nature and
to main
continued
some men in Classical Athens
of concubinage. While
tainpallakai (e.g., Euktemon in Is. 6, or Philoneos inAntiphon, "Against the

Stepmother"), they seem generally only to have kept concubines within the
household
if there was
no wife
present,
and (in the fourth century
at least) not
generally for the sake of having children.61

60. See L. Gernet, "Mariages de tyrans," inAnthropologie de la Grece antique (Paris, 1968)
344-59. The relationship between family structure and colonization is discussed by JamesMcGlew,
"Crime and Illegitimacy in Foundation Legend andHistory" (unpubl.ms.).
61. After divorcing his wife, Pericles livedwith Aspasia, whom Plutarch, following Cratinus,
calls a pallake (Per. 24.6) and from whom he did have a nothos son-later declared legitimate and
given the name Pericles. Pericles' ward, Alcibiades, on the other hand, outraged social convention
and his wife by keeping hetairai, both astai and xenai according to Plutarch, in his house (Alc. 8.3).
For the proper keeping of concubines in the fourth century, see the situation in Isaeus 6 and
Menander's Samia. (The role of concubines inMenander's comedies has recently been studied byM.
Henry, Menander's Courtesans and theGreek Comic Tradition, Studien zurKlassischen Philologie 20
[Frankfurt and New York, 1985]. An important observation of the book is the significant role of

56
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
Solon's legislation as a whole emphasized the essential unity of the house

hold and its importance as a social and economic unity for the stability of the
polis as awhole. I suggest that theAthenian wife was thereby both elevated to an
unchallenged position as sole bearer of heirs for the oikos and also subordinated
legally and economically to the kyrios of that oikos, her husband. An Athenian
wife had no economic or legal independence inClassical Athens; her interests
were represented by her kyrios, whether husband, brother, son, or father.We
could say that the status of thewoman aswife within the oikos was protected and
elevated by Solon, while that of the woman as individualwithin the polis was
limited and made dependent upon her male relatives or husband. This is the
distinctive Athenian pattern, for which Solon seems in large part responsible.
What then was the political status of nothoi after Solon? (To speak of the
"citizenship" of nothoi-or indeed of gnesioi-before Solon is perhaps mislead
ing or a misnomer in any case, since to a great extent Solon first established a
realmeaning for citizenship or "being anAthenian.") There is a general agree
ment that at least until Cleisthenes' reforms the Athenian phratries were the
arbiters of Athenian citizenship, or, we could say, thatmembers of Athenian
oikoi accepted intoAthenian phratries were Athenian citizens or shareholders.62
There also seems to be general agreement that in the fifth and fourth centuries,
the phratries insisted that theirmembers be gnesioi children of a phratrymember
at least that the phratry member
swear that this was so.63 And
was
the
child
of a woman entrusted by a
only
emphasized,
and his "wife"-or

a gnesios,
as has been
male relative to her husband "for the purpose of (begetting) legitimate chil
dren."64A natural conclusion from these points of consensus is that legitimacy
was a traditional requirement for phratry and polis membership from the time of
Solon. Family membership or anchisteiawas the basis of early polis membership,
as the language of family participation, (pETeXE?Lv
xal 6oi(ov) was also that
@EQCv
of political or polis inheritance (see, e.g., Dem. 39.35). An Athenian expressed
membership in the community with the very concrete expression "to have a
share in the polis"
(eXeiXeLv Tig nJt6keoo), which was a direct extension
of sharing
concubines inMenander's family-oriented plots.) But even "proper" keeping of a concubine could
lead to family tension, especially over the issue of the status of children if any happened to be born
(see again the situation in the Samia). In a Greek marriage "contract" fromHellenistic Egypt (92
B.C.) the husband agrees not "to bring home for himself another wife" nor "to maintain a female
concubine nor a little boyfriend" (tr. S. Pomeroy, Women inHellenistic Egypt [NewYork, 1984] 88).
On the status or identity of pallakai, see below and n. 80.
62. So, for example, Rhodes (above, n. 2) 91.MacDowell, however, disagrees, insistingon the
separation of citizenship from both membership in a phratry and familial anchisteia (above, n. 2: 88;
similarly, The Law inClassical Athens [London, 1978] 68).
63. See, e.g., Dem.
yeyevqRt*Evov. This point
57.54.
is agreed
The
father
swears
on by all authors
that the child

cited
is aoxTv
in n. 2 above
et
oig
and seems
iyyurlTgt
..
indisputable.
64. Literally "for the plowing of legitimate children." The formula is regularly cited inMenan
der (e.g.,
Sam.
727, Pk.
1013-14),
but as far as I know
is not
found
in other
sources.
generally taken as authentic and traditional.

It is nonetheless
PATTERSON:
57
in his or her family.65Therefore, if nothoi, the paternally recognized children of

(usually) concubines, were excluded from the anchisteia, from rights of family
inheritance-at least if there were gnesioi children within the household-then
theywere also excluded from polis participation andmembership.
This conclusion, however, still needs to be squaredwith Aristophanes' "law
of Solon" and the Cleisthenic reforms; that is,what effect did the sixth-century
history of Athens have upon family law and its relation to polis law?As it stands,
Aristophanes' "quotation" fulfills its comic function; it utterly confuses poor
Heracles while excluding him completely from his father Zeus's estate. By 403
B.C. at the latest, the nothos and nothe were completely excluded: v6ow ktrlne6
V ri' 6otiov 'an'E LxXEi6ov
lTEQC
v6OrnA ELVaC
aQXovTog(Is.
aYXLt(EiLav 9i0'
6.47, Dem. 43.51). Most likely this law is a reenactment or clarification of
previously existing rules, just as, for example, the Periclean citizenship lawwas
reenacted
at the same
time.66 So we have
a terminus ante quem but no certain
date of enactment. It is possible that the total exclusion of the nothoi from the
anchisteia is Solonian (as suggested by Humphreys);67 on the other hand, allow
ingnothoi a place when therewere no gnesioi does not seem out of character for
anArchaic lawgiver, given the still close connection between nothos and pater
nal oikos
and also
that each
the concern
oikos
have
an heir.
(Compare
the
position of the adopted son in theGortyn code, col. X.) SoWolff argued that the
complete exclusion of nothoi was thework of Cleisthenes, not Solon. Cleisthe
nes, according toWolff, sought to establish universal franchisewhile maintaining
the religious and familial foundations of Athenian society: "itwas necessary so
to solidify the oikos as to prevent it from succumbing to the individualist tenden
cies which
inevitably were promoted by the extension of the franchise."68 This is

case. It
clearly a theoretical argument, which cannot be taken as proving Wolff's
statement
left the gene and
also runs up against Artistotle's
that Cleisthenes
Ath. Pol. 21). Yet again, if the laws

phratriai as they were (xata x 3tdaxTQla,
against nothoi were strengthened between the early sixth and late fifth century,
then Wolff
may
be right about
the date and context
of the change.
The
fact that
Pericles' law of 451/0, excluding those not born of two astoi from citizenship or
"sharing
in the polis,"
was
popularly
thought
to be a law "about nothoi"
(see
below) strongly suggests that the complete exclusion of nothoi was already in
effect
by this time.
lack of evidence-that
It is perhaps
Cleisthenes
then a reasonable
was
the face of sheer

guess-in
the author of this exclusion.
Wolff, then, saw the developing democracy tightening the connection be

tween anchisteia and politeia: citizenshipwas for everyone-everyone, that is, of
legitimate birth within an Athenian family. Others, however, have interpreted
65. I have discussed the Athenian language of citizenship at greater length elsewhere: see
above, nn. 20, 22.
66.
Eumelos,
FGrHist
77 F 2 = Schol.
Aeschin.
1.39.
67. Cf. Humphreys (above n. 44).

68. Wolff, (above, n. 16) 90-91.

58
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
the impact of Cleisthenes' reorganization of Athens' political structure in quite

anotherway. Aristotle's emphasis on Cleisthenes' deme organization and on the
role of the deme in his own day (Ath. Pol. 21, 42) has led to the common
assumption that deme membership replaced phratrymembership as the condi
tion for citizenship inAthens.69 The next step is to argue that the demes did not
require legitimacy of theirmembers.70 Thus, Cleisthenes' system brought about
a de facto inclusion of nothoi in the citizen body.
Evidence of Cleisthenes' interest in such a change is found in Aristotle's
cryptic comment in the Politics thatCleisthenes brought "many slaves and for
eigners" into the polis (Pol. 1275b36-37). Then, these "slaves and foreigners" are
identifiedwith those "not pure in birth" who had supported Peisistratos (Ath.
Pol. 13.5) and were (presumably) excluded after the Peisistratids' fall. The
pieces fall together: "not pure in birth" are the nothoi, to whom Cleisthenes
restored citizenship.71
There are, however, some problems with this thesis and its supporting argu
ments.
To
take
the
latter argument
first,
it may
be
that nothoi
did
flock
to
Peisistratos as leader, includingperhaps his own sonHegesistratos, and that such

nothoi were de facto included in the new deme system devised by Cleisthenes.
However, this does not mean that Cleisthenes (or Peisistratos) changed the
relationship between polis and familymembership, but only that his new system
embraced, as potential heads of households and owners of Athenian land, those
whom the old system had not. Certainly no one supposes that after Cleisthenes'
reorganization theAthenians continued regularly to admit "slaves and foreign
did admit such
and the Athenians
body. If Cleisthenes
enactment
and not a new principle of polis
it was clearly a one-time
people,
did in fact waive the legiti
not
the
demes
it
is
clear
that
Second,
membership.
ers"
into
the citizen
macy requirement. The argument that they did so rests primarily on Aristotle's
description of contemporary citizenship procedures inAth. Pol. 42. Legitimacy
but citizens must be "free" (6iEUO0eQoL) and born "ac
per se is not mentioned,
I do not see
others disagree,
to
the
laws"
cording
(xaTa xoilg v6louvg). Although
why these nomoi should not include those limitingphratry or deme membership
to gnesioi offspring of Athenian households.72No extant ancient source quotes
the oath
required
of fathers
registering
sons
in the deme;
the oaths
that are
69. So M. H. Hansen (above, n. 30: 73) represents the communis opinio.

70. MacDowell, (above, n. 2) 89. The weakness of this step, depending almost entirely on the
apparent absence of the legitimacy requirement inAth. Pol. 42.1, isnot often noted.
71. For the main elements of this argument, see Vernant (above, n. 38) 50-51, cf. Rhodes
(above, n. 2) 92.
72. MacDowell
(above,
n. 2: 89)
insists
that xacTa TOV; vo6tov
does
not mean
"legitimately"
but "according to the law"-i.e., the law requiring double Athenian parentage. However, if legiti
macy was a customary requirement formembership in theAthenian family and polis, the phrase
"according to the laws" could include both requirements. Cf. the comments of Lotze (above, n. 24)
176. Rhodes (above, n. 2) agreeswith MacDowell on thispoint, but argues thatAristotle's silence on
legitimacy is not decisive, since theAth. Pol. contains numerous omissions on importantpoints.

59
PATTERSON:
quoted are phratry oaths, which did include a statement of the new member's
legitimacy.73It seems reasonable that the phratrywould most likely have been
themodel for the organization of the new deme institutions.74In any case, given
thatwe have no statement from antiquity that Cleisthenes changed the tradi
tional relationship between family and polis membership-that
is, that polis
status depended on family status75-it seems rash to assume that he did so. Some
nothoi may have become new Athenian heads of households as a result of
Cleisthenes' reorganization of theAthenian polis; that is, some nothoi may have
been registered as deme members in the canvassing of Attica necessary for the
empaneling of Cleisthenes' new tribalcouncil. But the status of future nothoi as a
whole, I suggest, was not changed at this time, unless perhaps for the worse.
Nothoi were not heirs of their fathers' households, and not eligible members of
their fathers' phratries, and so, de jure, not members of the communal family of
the polis. Informal inclusion inAthenian families andAthenian society-with a
marginal status not legally defined but rather itself the product of new legal
rules76-is of course entirely possible.
PERICLES'
One
LAW
"ON NOTHOI"
of these new rules was
the Periclean
Law of 451/0 requiring
dual Athe
nian parentage for "sharing in the city" (Ath. Pol. 26.4), which Plutarch referred
to as a lawJCeQiv6Oov (Per. 33). This, togetherwith Aristophanes' more nearly
was a nothos because
that Heracles
his
contemporary
(414 B.C.) comment
in the realm of the gods; see above) and the
mother was a xene (i.e., a mortal
reported decree of Aristophon in 403 that "whoever is not born of a citizen

woman
is a nothos"
(Athenaios
577b-c),
has
led to the idea that in Classical,
post-Periclean Athens, nothos had two different meanings: "born out of wed
lock" and "born of a foreign mother."77 And this in turn has been the basis for
to the effect that these "different" nothoi had
rather elaborate
arguments
some
different status in theAthenian polis. The latter sortwere not citizens by Peri
cles'
law; the former were
citizens
if they were
born
from two Athenians,
since
Pericles' law does not (insofar aswe know it)mention marriage or legitimacy, or
since, as noted earlier, Aristotle does not mention legitimacy per se. K. R.
73. Walters' assertion (above, n. 2: 320) that an oath declaring the son's legitimacywas not part
of the deme procedure ismisleading. By his own admission (ibid. n. 17) the actual oath sworn at the
deme ceremony is unknown. He has assumed that legitimacywas not part of the oath, again because
Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 42.1) does not mention it.
74. I have argued this point elsewhere (above, n. 20: chap. 1).
75. On this point, see Rhodes (above, n. 2) 92.
76. In particular, the legal status of citizen andmetic were more precisely defined in the first
half of the fifth century. For metic status, see D. Whitehead, The Ideology of theAthenian Metic
(Cambridge, 1977); for citizenship, see Patterson (above, n. 20). As Lotze's title (above, n. 24)
suggests, the nothoi fell between the defining lines of both.
77.
See LSJ
s.v. v60og,
and
text, above.
This
view pervades
the articles
(above, n. 2) inparticular.

of Sealey
and Walters
60
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
Walters has recently provided us with a logical analysis of the relation between
Pericles' law, as reenacted in 403 on the proposal of Nikomenes (see above) and
rephrased by him, and Aristophon's "law" noted earlier. He sets forth the two
as follows:
principles
(1) if X
is not born
from a citizen mother
then X
is a
foreigner (Pericles/Nikomenes/Walters); (2) if X is not born from a citizen

mother thenX is a bastard, nothos (Aristophon). He then instructshis readers
that "the identity of the antecedents does not ensure that the consequents are
coextensive," that is, that bastards are foreigners.78This is straightforward
enough, but such logic does not disprove the claim thatnothoi are not citizens, as
Walters
to think or at least wants
seems
his readers
to think. Given
these princi
ples, it is still possible that the consequents coincide wholly or partly and that
nothoi belong, in a general perspective, to the class of xenoi. More important,
Walters' analysis does nothing to explain why this usage was adopted by the
call the child of an alien woman,
they would
Athenians-why
now to be denied
share in the polis, nothos-if prior to this law nothoi were "sharers in the city."
The apparent popular perception that Pericles' lawwas about nothoi stems from
the reduction of all foreign spouses to the level of pallakai. Thus, as argued
earlier, Plutarch's andAristophanes' usage suggest strongly that by 451/0 nothoi
were completely excluded from the anchisteia, as the child of an alien was com
pletely excluded from citizenship from this date forward.
Once
I suggest
again,
that a proper
understanding
to
is the key
of nothos
understanding Aristophanes' and Plutarch's usage. Emphasis on the idea that

nothos means
has resulted in taking the out of wedlock children

as the central case at issue. In my view this is a red herring. The
"out of wedlock"
of two Athenians
situation usually envisioned in discussions of nothoi is that of the child of adultery

or premarital union (see, for example, Sealey's story of JohnDoe, JohnRoe, and
John Doe's wife),79 but the offspring of such unions are not typically called
nothoi. Nothoi were the offspring of pallakai or concubines, who generally in
Athens were of slave or foreign origin.80Positive evidence for this interpretation
is the use of nothos
inAthenian
drama
for characters
such as Teukros
(Sophocles'
Ajax) or Hippolytus (Euripides' Hippolytus) and in historical writing for, in

the son of a Persian king or satrap's concubine
particular,
(see above). Negative
evidence is the absence of nothos in contexts of suspected adultery. So, according
78. Walters (above, n. 2) 322.
79. Sealey (above, n. 2) 127-28.
80.
For
some
evidence
on
the identity
of pallakai
in Athens,
see E. W.
Bushala,
"The Pallake
of Philoneus," AJP 90 (1969) 65-72. Bushala's argument depends on his establishing thatpallakai
were often free women, since he wants to maintain, against common opinion, that Philoneus's
pallake
was
not
a slave. Many
of his examples
suggest
a freedwoman
status.
If an Athenian
woman,
due to the poverty of her family, became a pallake for anotherAthenian, shewould bear him nothoi;
by assuming such a position she would also call into question her own and her family's ability to
maintain
themselves
as members
of the citizen
elite.
I do not
think
that Isa. 3.39,
"those
giving
their
women jcl Jak.axiCLmake agreements about the benefits for the ackkcaxai," should be taken to
indicate that thiswas a normal arrangementwithin the citizen class.

PATTERSON:
61
toAndocides, Callias firstdenied thatChrysilla's childwas his legitimate son and

then changed hismind and swore the opposite. In the former situation he did not
say the child was nothos; he denied paternity completely.81 In Demosthenes'
speeches "Against Boiotos" (39, 40), Mantitheus insinuates thatBoiotos is not
legitimate and his mother is promiscuous, but he never suggests thatBoiotos or
Boiotos's
brother
is nothos.
Plangon,
their mother,
was
known
to be a free,
Athenian woman. Likewise inMenander's comedies (considerably later but re

vealing traditionalAthenian family structures), premarital children are not called
nothoi.Menander reserves that term for specific use in the sense argued for here.
When Demeas thinks his concubine, Chrysis, has borne him a child, he says to his
son, "Do you expect me to raise a nothos?" (Samia 135). In general, the child of
an irregular union was simply "not gnesios" or AIq6o0goS yeYevrijFivog(cf. Is.
3.12). Nothoi were also not gnesioi, but had in addition amore specific identity.
Nothos, a term with a venerable Homeric tradition, referred to the paternally
acknowledged offspring of a union not contracted by the act of engue (or other
public bestowal) between parties of equal standing.
If we accept that this interpretation of nothos fits best its usage, then Plu
tarch's dubbing
law as a law "about nothoi"
of Pericles'
(Per. 33) is not at all a
"typical error,"82but an instructive reflection of popular response to Pericles'

law. The citizenship lawmade all unions between Athenian and non-Athenian
necessarily unequal. Athens was now an imperial ruling city and her citizen an
imperial elite. Thus, using the language of family and inheritance, any union
between
an Athenian
spring nothoi. We
and non-Athenian
could
say that Pericles'
could be at best pallakia and its off

law created a new class of "public" or
polis nothoi, whose relation to the public Athenian "family"was analogous to

that of the private nothos
polis but no membership,
to his paternal family. They had a connection with the

no "share," and no inheritance.
law as we
Pericles'
know it did not legislate on familial legitimacy or phratrymembership; it is not

or legitimacy-these
of marriage
surprising that the law contains no mention
were regulated xaxa Ta naxTQLa. Rather, Pericles'
a legitimacy
law established
can
seen
as
and
be
of
the
for
the
way in which the
part
polis itself,
requirement
on
the
model
of
Classical Athenian
structured
itself
the
family as well as of
polis
the striking creation of an Athenian public identity in the mid-fifth century.

Pericles'
tE?/XE?LVtg; JC6Xeow and his law cEiQLv60ov
are examples
of the appro
priation by the polis of the language of family inheritance andmembership.

81. See And. 1.126-27. A fragment of the comit poet Metagenes (late fifth, early fourth
century) apparently concerns this child of Callias (fr. 13Kock): "Who is a citizen these days unless
Sakas theMysian and the nothos of Callias?" As Cheryl Cox has pointed out (above, n. 30: 268-69),
this should be added to the evidence against the citizenship of nothoi. I would also argue that
Callias's son is nothos here, because he has a patronymic (Kakitov) but is clearly not gnesios.
Although this son is apparently the product of an unusual sort of adultery-Callias and his wife's
mother-that
irregular
birth
is not
called
to mind
by
the use
of nothos,
but
relationship to his father, Callias.

82. SoWalters (above, n. 2) 334.

rather
his
irregular
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
62
Whether
or not Pericles'
law made
the marriage
of an Athenian
and a non
Athenian illegal after 451 is unclear. MacDowell assumes that the law did in
clude such a prohibition ("the other clause" of Pericles' law),83but there is no
direct evidence of it.However, if the "entrusting"of a non-Athenian woman to
anAthenian man was still possible after 451, it allowed the potentially anoma
lous situation
in which
a son would
heir to his father's
be the legitimate
(Athe
nian) property but not heir to public privilege, that is, not a citizen. He would be
privately gnesios but publicly nothos. This anomaly, in effect the splitting of
anchisteia and politeia, probably led to the passing of laws againstmixed unions,
known from the later fourth century (see [Dem.] 59.16, 52) but possibly also in
effect earlier. In any case, Pericles' law effectively discouraged the production of
children in foreign unions; given the Athenian understanding of marriage as
"living together for the sake of having children," thiswas also a strong discour
agement of foreign "marriage."
I would
Thus,
there
argue,
is only one basic meaning
of nothos,
that is, the
paternally recognized offspring of a mismatched or unequal union, which in

Athens
after 451/0 had both
and "citizen
nominal
an oikos
and foreigner."84 And

to the paternal
connection
and a polis sense: "man and concubine"

a
just as the "private nothos" maintained
household,
through
his use
of
the pa
tronymic, so the "public nothoi," the children of one Athenian parent, might
have
seemed
not
their
totally alien despite
that within
the distinction
lack of a formal
citizen
"share."
citizen and foreign "tertium quid

an
of
informal
social recognition
of such a
the
ignores
possibility
or
new
in
the
interest
for
the
status.85
marginal
sympathy
public nothoi,
Perhaps
of the
created at least potentially
law,86 sparked a reexamination
by the Periclean
Walters'
insistence
non datur"
of myth
nothoi
private
and
legend.
It seems
to me
just possible
that when
83. Law (above, n. 62) 67.

84. Aristotle's use of nothos in the Politics in connection with different criteria for citizenship in
democracies (1278a29, 1319b9) can perhaps be seen as reflecting this double Athenian usage. In the
first passage
he says
that in some
democracies
the child of a female
is a polites
citizen
and "likewise
in
regard to nothoi." Nothoi here are those born from foreign, rather than citizen mothers-the
Periclean meaning of the term. Such rules result, according to Aristotle, from a lack of yvoiolot
jroXItat.A gnesios polites then is a legitimatemember of the polis family. The term is used in a
political rather than familial sense. In the second passage, Aristotle comments that a democracy
tends to increase the size of the demos, admitting not only gnesioi, but also nothoi and those?E
OJIOTeQouvOv
jcoXifov Hannick (above, n. 30: 135) takes nothoi here as unquestionably the illegiti
mate children of citizen parents. Although this is admittedly a naturalway to read this passage, the
lastphrase may simply indicate a furtherwidening of the circle to include thosewho have one citizen
parent,
whatever
the nature
of the union
or sex of the citizen
parent.
85. Walters (above, n. 2) 319.

86. The
nothos
who
comes
immediately
to mind
is the son of Pericles
himself
and Aspasia
(see
Plut. Per. 14.6, quoting Eupolis). This son was later "legitimated" in both the private and public
sense
by
the demos's
allowing
him
to take
the name
Pericles
and enter
his father's
phratry.
At
that
time Pericles had no remaining gnesioi sons (see Plut. Per. 37.5-6). According to G. Cimino ("II
problema dei nothoi e il filopericleismo erodoteo inHdt. 1, 173,"ASNP 6 [1976]9-14), Hdt. 1.173
on thematrilineal Lycians was written with this nothos inmind.

PATTERSON:
63
Teukros insists, in the face of Agamemnon's taunts, that although nothos he is

"aristosborn from two aristoi" (Ajax 1304), theAthenian audience would have
remembered
Pericles'
law: "no one shall have a share in the city who
is not born
from two astoi" (Ath. Pol. 26.4).

THE NOTHOI
OF KYNOSARGES
If then, nothoi are a specifically recognized class of "bastardswith fathers,"

or "bastardswith families," the peculiar Athenian synteleion or cult association
of nothoi at the Kynosarges gymnasium, mentioned in scattered Athenian
as an association
of any and all bastards.
sources,87 cannot be understood
nothos as its patron hero,88 it ought to have been a place
Rather, with Heracles
status to participate
in civic organization
for those of mixed descent and marginal
and perhaps recruitment.89The history of the organization is difficult to deter

mine. Plutarch (Themistocles 1) says thatThemistocles as nothos trained there
(and encouraged upper-class non-nothoi to join him); this, however, can be seen
as anachronistic
meaning
since,
presumably
was not a nothos"9)

as is often noted, "Themistocles
even
a
if
that Themistocles'
mother,
Thracian, was married
or entrusted to his father according toAthenian custom (cf.Herodotus 6.126-30

on themarriage of Agariste andMegacles).
The first clear association of Kynosarges with nothoi (apart from perhaps
Heracles himself) is in a decree proposed by Alcibiades, partly quoted by
stele
on a
and said to be inscribed
(4.234e) on the authority of Polemon

at Kynosarges:
standing in the Herakleion
Athenaios
"The priest
is to sacrifice
the
monthly offerings with the parasitoi. These are to be appointed from among the
nothoi
and their sons according
to tradition"
(xaTca Ta TCaQLa). However,
by the
time of Demosthenes' oration "AgainstAristocrates" the special cult association

no longer existed:
Charidemos
"is enrolled
among
the nothoi
in Oreus,
just as
the nothoi were once enrolled at Kynosarges here" (23.213).91

On the basis of thisminimal evidence, S. C. Humphreys has suggested that
the association
of nothoi was
a short-lived
reaction
to the Periclean
citizenship
87. The main sources are: Polemon fr. 78 Preller (Athenaios 234e); Dem. 23.213; Plut. Them.;
for discussion, see Humphreys (above, n. 44). Also interesting, particularly for the post-Classical use
of the gymnasium at Kynosarges, are: H. L. Versnel, "Philip II and Kynosarges," Mnemosyne 26
(1973) 273-79; and J. Bremmer, "EXKYNOSAPFEZ," Mnemosyne 30 (1977) 369-74.
88. Heracles is nothos inAristophanes' Birds (1651). How far back this idea (perhaps part of
the comic character of Heracles) goes is unclear. In theApology (27d8) Plato refers generally to the
children of a god and amortal as nothoi.
89. Whether
they served with
their fathers'
tribes or like the metics
in a special
contingent,
it is
unlikely that the nothoi were not recruited.

90. See, e.g., Humphreys (above, n. 44) 88: "Modern historians are on thewhole agreed that
Themistocles was not a nothos."
of Oreus, his father'sorigin
91. It is interesting thatCharidemos's mother is said to be a nOXLTLg
unknown. Thus, Charidemos's status at Oreus apparently depends on hismother, suggesting that if
the mother
had
the higher
status,
the nothos
child would
be
identified
with
her rather
father.

than his or her
64
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
law.On the assumption that the law affected all future deme admissions, and
that itwas aimed at "the aristocratic practice of contractingmarriage alliances
with leading families in other states,"92 she suggested that in the 430s a now
disenfranchised group of young "upper-class"nothoi adopted the gymnasium as
their social center andHeracles as theirpatron. But by the time of Demosthenes,
when as Humphreys sees it the circumstances of Pericles' law had receded in
memory, nothos simplymeant "child of a prostitute," and no one would there
fore proudly claim to be part of an association of nothoi.
Although Humphreys' account is plausible in a number of respects,93other
reconstructions seem possible. The synteleion could extend back into the sixth
MxQLca should suggest something before the 430s),
century (perhaps xaTxaT&a
with its constituents taken from the ranks of those nothoi excluded from the
family and polis by Solon's
law. As
a well-known
Athenian
not born
from two
Athenian parents, Themistocles may have become associated with the cult and
synteleion in later tradition.94Further, Humphreys' idea that the synteleionwas
adopted by defiant and proud upper-class nothoi remains amore or lessplausible
hypothesis, depending on whether one accepts the notion that foreignmarriages
where characteristic of theAthenian upper class in themid-fifth century.95The
specific historical evidence on the synteleion is thatAlcibiades took an interest in
its organization and maintenance. And Alcibiades, after sackingMelos, took a
Melian woman as his concubine and reared her sonwithin his household ([And.]
4.22; Plut. Alc. 16). A story with Homeric overtones, to be sure! Indeed, we
might suppose that in the decree recorded by Polemon, Alcibiades was attempt
ing to bolster a largely obsolete institution.When Athens was a ruling demo
cratic and imperial polis, the advantages of a proper Athenian marriage were
notable-and the disadvantages of keeping a pallake with the resulting nothos
status for her offspring were distinct and pronounced. Athenian men might
continue to keep pallakai, but, as suggested earlier, not usually in addition to or
together with a wife, and not primarily for the purpose of having children (cf.
[Dem.] 59.122, Men. Sam. 130). Nothoi, asmarginal persons in a political world
characterized by increasing emphasis on the gap between insider astos and out
sider xenos,
would
have
found
it difficult
to maintain
a strong presence.
Given
92. Humphreys (above, n. 44) 92-94; quotation from p. 94.

93. I am inclined to agree that, at least in the case of Pericles' law, enforcement of the dual
parentage
rule was
for all future
admissions
to the demes-as
well
as phratries.
However,
I do not
agree that nothos meant simply and pejoratively "childof a prostitute" inDemosthenes' day.While a
gradual collapsing of the distinction between nothoi and children of ordinary prostitutes or hetairai
would have naturally resulted from the exclusion of nothoi from polis and oikos through the course of
sixth and fifth centuries, nothos could still be used in itsmore specific sense in the later Classical
period: see n. 43, 105.
94. Humphreys (above, n. 44) 88
95. We simply do not know of prominent Athenians marrying foreignwomen at this time-that
phenomenon belongs in themid- to late sixth century. See Patterson (above, n. 20) 99-100, and Cox
(above, n. 30) 234-35.

PATTERSON:
65
the tendency of later fifth-centuryAthens to isolate itsmembers as a ruling elite,

it is not surprising that the synteleion of marginal Athenians vanished.96
THE
PHILOSOPHIC
AND
DRAMATIC
RESPONSE
(IN BRIEF)
If the actual historical nothoi vanished or retreated into the institutional

woodwork at the end of the fifth century,97the idea of the nothos did not. In this
concluding section Iwant to look very briefly at some of theways inwhich the
nothos status or identitywas taken up and extended inmeaning by Euripides and
the Socratic philosophers as an evocative vehicle for social criticism and reflec
tion.Was "good" or "straight"birth the only way to virtue?Did a homogeneous
background necessarily produce good citizens or men? Or, on the model of
heroes' births, was mixture perhaps productive of something better than the
offspring of homogeneous unions? The nothos was not the only one affected by
Athenian exclusivity, but his peculiar marginal statusmade him a particularly
effective symbol.
as noted earlier, protested
that even if nothos he was "an
Sophocles' Teukros,
aristos born from two aristoi" (Ajax 1304). His claim is borne out by his loyalty to
his family and by his insistence on burying his half-brotherAjax-a striking com
mitment from someone who in contemporary Athens would be excluded from
both the privilege and obligations of family and polis membership! Sentiments
similar toTeukros's are expressed ina fragment from Sophocles' Aleadai (TRGF
IV F 87):98 "Q.: 'Has a nothos the same clout as gnesioi?' A.: 'Everything worth
while has a gnesia nature.' "How can birth alone produce political virtue? Are not
the circumstances
of birth merely a matter of convention?
While
Sophocles
seems
to have
suggested
that a nothos
could
be a good
citizen and familymember, Euripides went a step further in isolating the ironies
inherent inAthenian exclusivity. How, he seems to ask, could a polis whose
myths celebrated its reception of foreigners-and whose own mythical founding
hero, Theseus,
was on any account
a bastard who
fathered
a bastard
son of his
on a principle of exclusively Athenian and legitimate birth? The

Hippolytus presents the Potiphar's Wife theme with a Euripidean Athenian
twist:Hippolytus is a nothos (369, 1083) son of Theseus, residingwithin the
own-insist
paternal
household,
who
only at the end of the play
is recognized
as a true son,
96. Informal associations of self-styled social misfits continued to gather at Kynosarges: see
Versnel (above, n. 87); and text below.
97. It is important to note, however, that in 403 nothoi were still a legally recognized and
identifiable group, as evidenced in the decree of Theozotides, which excluded orphans who were
nothoi or poietoi from state support (Lysias fr. 6 Gernet and Bizos; R. S. Stroud, Hesperia 40 [1971]
280-301). Again, thismight be taken logically as suggesting thatnothoi were citizens-otherwise why
make a point of excluding them? A better solution, however, is to recognize that nothoi were an
anomaly within the developed Athenian legal structure,whose existence both could not be ignored
and necessitated
98.
"clout"
laws such as this one
6 MI v6oog
TigyvtloiotSg
here in a colloquial
way,
or those on inheritance.
Loov
I intend
/&IXJtav X@6gxCo6v yvT7oiav EXEel 4)VOv. By

oevel?
to indicate the social/political
sense of OeyveL.

using
66 CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
Volume
9/No.
1990
1/April
by nature if not convention. Likewise in theAndromache, social convention is

turned on itshead. Andromache, who used to suckleHector's nothoi (224), now
is the "war-bride"concubine of Neoptolemos, the son of theman who killed her
husband;
in fact,
she has borne
him his own nothos
son
in v60oOoL XEXTQZO1
(928), who will be, the play reveals, the sole heir to the house of Peleus. Andro
mache, pallake and foreigner, provides the house of Peleus with an heir, while
Hermione, the barren wife of Neoptolemos, attempts to destroy that heir. If
marriage is cohabitation for the sake of having children and heirs, then who is
the truewife inNeoptolemos's household?
The play, however, that showsmost clearly Euripides' interest in the prob
lems and ambiguities of legitimacy, bastardy, andmixture is the Ion.99Ion is the
son of Creusa, princess of the royalAthenian family, and of Apollo, the godwho
seized and raped her in a cave beneath theAcropolis. Creusa exposed the child
in the same cave where she also gave birth alone; without her knowledge, the
childwas then taken up by Hermes (onApollo's order) and brought toDelphi,
where he grew up as a temple servant.Meanwhile, Creusa married theEuboean
as a special kind of "war bride," since she was his reward for aiding the
Athenians
in war.100 The couple is childless, and when in the course of the play
Xuthos
they journey to Delphi to seek advice from the oracle, Xuthos is told that the
firstperson he meets upon leaving the sanctuary is in fact his son. This turnsout
to be Ion. Xuthos, whose most obvious trait is perhaps insensitivity, is not
bothered by the question of who Ion'smother might be,?10but enthusiastically
prepares
to celebrate
his "birth"
and
take him back
to Athens
as heir.
Ion,
however, does not believe that his irregularorigins can be so easily overcome.
Realizing the disabilities of suchmixed and irregularbirth in democraticAthens,
he says: "They
say that the Athenians,
famous
and autochthonous,
are not an
alien people; I shall come here having two defects [v6ol], being the son of a
foreign father and being nothagenes" (589-92). Not only is he nothos (as he
thinks,
the recognized
son of Xuthos
and a woman
of inferior status),
but he is a
nothos son of a foreign father.102

99. If produced in the years immediately preceding or following the oligarchic revolution of 411
T.
(so B. L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides [London, 1967] 5; cf. D. J. Conacher, Euripidean
Drama [Toronto, 1967] 273-75), the play might reflect the intense contemporary interest in the
question, Who is anAthenian citizen?
100. This may be a veiled reference to theAthenian grant of epigamia to the Euboeans (Lys.
34.3). The date and exact intent of that grant, however, remain uncertain. Throughout the play,
Euripides emphasizes Xuthos's foreignness (e.g., 591) as against the earth-born nativeness of Creusa
and Ion.
101. Note theAthenian joke: when Ion suggests that perhaps the earth is hismother, Xuthos
replies, "No one is born from the earth!" (542).
102.
Euripides
thus puts Athenian
myth
to the test of Athenian
law. The
point
is not
that Ion
will be nothos, but that his legitimation by Xuthos will cause resentment. A. Burnett has, however, a
more complicated view of Ion's position. Arguing that by Athenian lawXuthos must have been
adopted by Erechtheus in order tomarry the epikleros Creusa, and that as an adopted son he could
not adopt
a son as heir,
she suggests
that Ion was
treated
as a nothos
son of Xuthos,

and
legitimized
PATTERSON:
67
Further, Creusa is not at all happy with the oracle's words, and encouraged
the
by
rabidly exclusive paidagogos she decides to kill this foreign intruder.The
plot fails, and the situation has reached the brink of disasterwhen the priestess of
Apollo, Ion's foster mother, finally steps in to restore order. With the aid of
birth tokens, mother and son are reunited. It is at this point that Ion asks his
mother about his parentage:Was he a v6oov TcaQevervAa
(1472)? In this idiosyn
cratic Euripidean construction, the unmarried but royalwoman has a childwho
is both partheneuma (= parthenios) and nothon, since whether we think of
Apollo, the true father, or of some lessermortal (as does Ion), the union is
clearly unequal. In the latter case, Ion is nothos with a known and aristocratic
mother, as opposed to themore usual situation, where the fatherwas of higher
status (cf. Dem. 23.213).
All
iswell
that ends well,
however,
and by the end of the play Creusa
has her
son and Athens its king, while Xuthos still is innocent of the whole truth. The
audience, however, through their double mythical/contemporary perspective,
would perhaps have seen Ion as doubly legitimate and doubly nothos. He is in
fact (or inmyth) themost legitimate descendant of Erichthonios and the rightful
or other heroes or demi
and yet also nothos, as was Heracles,
king of Athens,
son of Xuthos
and
the legitimate
gods. On the human plane he is declared
son
the
of
Creusa, yet again is nothos as either (as Xuthos
thinks)
acknowledged
Xuthos and some unspecified Delphic girl or, in the contemporary Athenian
realm,
as the child of an Athenian
and a foreigner
(even
if an "adopted"
one).
Whatever else Euripides is doing in this play,103two points are relevant here.
First, he exposes the ironies of Athenian social conventions and pretensions.
Nothoi or bastards were outside the family and polis structure, yet at crucial
moments
were
essential
to its creation.
The
nothos
a special
be as "bastard" son of
is someone
with
Ion imagined he would

status, which could be inferior-as
as "bastard" son of Apollo
and Creusa.
Xuthos-or
Ion
is
in
fact
as
superior,
of the Athenian
Nothoi are necessary both for the self-definition
polis and for its
mythical origins.Where would Athens be without Theseus, or the Ionianswith

out Ion, or all of Greece
Second,
Euripides
without
began
the greatest bastard of them all?

Heracles,
to extend the use of nothos beyond
the specific
because therewere no gnesioi (Ion: A Translation and Commentary [Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974]
75). However, as argued in the text, this qualification on the exclusion of nothoi no longer applied in
the late fifth century. If Ion's position isgoing to be scrutinized in termsof contemporary law, then as
nothos he had no share in anchisteia. But like the nothos of Callias, he became gnesios when Xuthos
declared him so.
The question is not one of adoption; technically nothoi were probably excluded from adoption:
see Wolff (above, n. 16) 79-80; contra, Harrison (above, n. 14) 68. This issue has again been
obscured because of focus on "nothoiwhose parents were both Athenian" (Harrison 68).
103. On the Ion, see esp. C. Wolff, "TheDesign andMyth inEuripides' Ion,"HSCP 69 (1965)
169 ff.; C. Whitman, Euripides and theFull Cycle of Myth (Cambridge, 1974);A. Burnett, Catastro
phe Survived (Oxford, 1971) 101-29; A. Saxonhouse, "Myth and the Origin of Cities," in Greek
Tragedy and Political Theory ed. P. Euben (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986).

68
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
traditional andHomeric sense, with such expressions as notha lektra (Andr. 928)
or nothon partheneuma (Ion 1473). Now the bed of Andromache can itself be
nothon, party to an unequal union, and the child of an unmarried "maiden," the
partheneuma, can also be nothon, a pairing of terms thatmight not have been
understandable in an earlier time and thatmay suggest some ironicplaying with
the situation inwhich Creusa is a princess who is raped by Apollo and given as a
special kind of "war bride" toXuthos. What Euripides began, Plato continued,
extending further themetaphorical range of the old Homeric adjective. So in the
Republic Plato speaks of nothai pleasures (587c), in the Laws of nothe education
(741a), and in the Timaeus of nothos reason (52b). In each case, what isnothos is
not false or even "illegitimate" but rather inappropriately put together or
as a nothe pleasure
formed,
results when
a part of the soul does not keep
to its
own proper task.104Plutarch's usage is often similarly (Platonically)metaphori

cal, as when
65.A11-B1)
he
or,
and nothos friend (Mor.

speaks of a flatterer as a debased
on Love,"
as a
of the passion
for women
in his "Dialogue
feminine and nothos eros, "which ought to be enrolled in thewomen's quarters

just as [nothoi] at Kynosarges" (750F5-6). As this last example indicates, the
literal and legal meaning of nothos was not forgotten, and Plutarch also fre
quently uses theword in that older way (e.g., as already noted, Sol. 22, Them. 1,
Per. 37; see also Thes. 17, Alex. 9-10).
Plato
also could use the term more
literally,
as when
in the Laws he forbade
the "sowing of notha spermata in concubines" (841d4). But perhaps the best
illustration of both the metaphorical use of nothos together with its persistent
Homeric core isPlato's account of the "marriage"ofMiss Philosophia. Imagine,
a "small and bald tinker who has come into some money and, just
says Socrates,
released from jail, has taken a bath, put on a new cloak, and is got up like a
bridegroom tomarry the boss' daughter because of her poverty and loneliness"
(Republic 495e, tr.Grube). "What sort of children will thatmarriage produce?"
he asks. "Surely notha and inferior [caiXI.a],"he answers himself.105Euripides
104. A. E. Taylor (A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus [Oxford, 1962] 343-45) comments
of the Timaeus. Putting together his comments with the argu
extensively on the vo6og koyLoIL6O
ments of this paper, itwould seem thatPlato has carefuly chosen v60og to describe the peculiar kind
of reason that apprehends the eternal space (X(cQa) that "provides a home for all created things"
(52b, tr. Jowett). The Xoyloog6 thus takes its adjective from themixed character of what it appre
hends. So Plato extends v6oog into the realm of metaphysics.
105. Plato, Rep. 461b. Note that here the woman (Philosophia) is of higher status than the
man: one would say that the offspring are her notha; cf. Charidemos's status inOreus (Dem. 23.213).
Lucian, among other authors,makes noteworthy use of v6oog. He uses it technically (Eubiotos,
nothos brother of Leukanor: Tox. 51.19) or metaphorically (themoon's light is stolen and nothos:
Icar. 20.15), but most interesting for present purposes isLucian's use of v60og in the "Assembly of
theGods" (13.1), a dialogue that seems to present a parody of the passing of Pericles' citizenship law.
Momus
is enraged
over
the entry
into Olympus
of
foreign
and nothoi
gods-i.e,
those
born
of a
mortal parent, likeHeracles. He proposes, with all due Athenian formality, that all those unlawfully
enrolled
be expelled.
Because
of T6 3kiuos
he says,
tCOv JLCVO6VTOV,
there
is a shortage
JTOkLTWV.
Olympus! Compare Ath. Pol. 26.4, 8L&T6OjijOog TLOV

of nectar
in
PATTERSON:
69
also anticipated later usage, most particularly that of the Socratic circle, in his
interest inwhat might be called the "heroic nothos." On the firstpoint, Socrates
himself in theApology seems to play with the notion of being a nothos, a heroic
sort of person
(as well
as a social misfit) with
a mission
as well
as labors (22a7).'?6
And it is clear that the Socratic Antisthenes, an undisputed nothos, took a

special interest inHeracles, Cyrus, and other people of "mixed breed," saying
among other things, "even the gods had a Phrygian mother" (D.L. 6.1). We
know also that Antisthenes and the cynic Diogenes established "schools" in
Kynosarges. The official synteleion of nothoi disappeared, but self-proclaimed
Thus nothos,
nothoi, likeAntisthenes or Diogenes, continued to gather there.107
as a term describing someone who stood at themargins of (and perhaps at times
above) political society, became amodel for the relationship of the philosopher
to the political community inwhich he lived.Despite, however, heroic assertions
(byAntisthenes and others) of the irrelevance of parentage or the superiority of
mixed birth, the more common view and metaphor by themid-fourth century
was
that nothos
implied
debased union. What

Macedon
and
scion
a debased
and inferior nature
of an impure or
because
then might have been the response of Philip, king of

of Heracles,
when
the Athenians
set up his
at
statue
Kynosarges?'08
CONCLUSION
Given
a brief summary
the length and range of this paper,
of its conclusions
seems appropriate here.

1. In its first attested use in the Iliad, nothos is an adjective with a specific
is the child of a man, typically a hero or
the nothos son (or daughter)
meaning:
a
a
slave or a woman bought or won in
and
concubine,
purchased
king,
usually
as such by his or her father and bears a
war. While
the nothosl/
is recognized
patronymic,
he or she has
inferior
inheritance
rights as against
the gnesios
or
legitimate child.
2. The common pairing of terms "nothos and gnesios" in reference to chil
dren indicates that children were generally recognized by their father as either
gnesios or nothos, not that all childrenwere either one or the other. Children not
recognized or without known fathers are simply not legitimate, not gnesios.
3. Athenian
inheritance
law formalized
the distinction
between
gnesios
and
nothos offspring and took the decisive step of excluding the nothos from the
anchisteia, the "nearest kin" entitled to inherit family property. Athenian law
focused on nothoi not because they were the only nonlegitimate offspring who
106. For this motif, see D. Clay, "Socrates'Mulishness and Heroism," Phronesis 17 (1972)
53-60.
107. D.L. 6.1.13.
108. See Versnel (above, n. 87).

70
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
did not inherit, but because as paternally recognized offspring their case was the
most problematic.
4. Because theywere excluded formally from the anchisteia of theAthenian
family, nothoi were also excluded from participation in theAthenian polis. The
precise chronology of this exclusion is unclear, but it began formallywith Solon
and was completed by, I have suggested, themid-fifth century. Athens, unlike
Rome, did not separate legitimate family from legitimate polis membership.109
5. This formal exclusion may still have left nothoi with some informal claim
tomembership in both family and community.We should not exaggerate the
extent towhich Athenian society conformed to formal, legal structures.
law of 451/0,
6. Pericles'
termed
a law "about
by Plutarch
nothoi"
and
establishing that anyone who did not have two citizen parents (astoi) would not
share in the polis, was couched in the language of familymembership. Athens
was now an elite ruling "family"of Athenian families, inwhich someone born of
only one Athenian parent would be at best a nothos. Nothos, likemetechein ("to
have a share") and poiein ("to adopt; tomake [a citizen]), had from this point
both an oikos
and a polis
reference.
7. Finally, although in laterClassical writers nothos acquired amore general

meaning of "base" or "spurious" (see LSJ s.v.) the original andmore technical
(in regard to inheritance) meaning persisted. And some philosophers and/or
social misfits in later years proudly claimed that their relationship to the polis
was precisely that of the nothos. Perhaps itwas at this time thatEs Kynosarges!
became another way of saying Es Korakas!
APPENDIX:
3 AS EVIDENCE
ISAEUS OR.
OF NOTHOI
FOR THE IDENTITY AND
STATUS
IN ATHENS
status of Phile, a claimant to the estate of Pyrrhos in Isaeus Or. 3, has

Is Phile both
traditionally been central to the controversy over nothoi inAthens.
The
nothe and the wife

were
citizens
of an Athenian
inAthens?
Since
citizen? Does
the case is complex
this "fact" establish

and the speaker
that nothoi
clever,
I have
reserved detailed discussion for this appendix.

3 is usually referred to as "On the Estate of Pyrrhos," although
the case concerns a charge of false testimony in regard to that estate.
Isaeus Or.
technically
The speaker is the son of Pyrrhos's sister. Before his death Pyrrhos had adopted
another nephew, the speaker's brother, named Endios. Endios inherited the
estate and possessed it for some twenty years without (it seems) opposition.
However,
he never married
and produced
no heir for the estate;
and when
he
109. See, e.g., W. W. Buckland, A Text-book of Roman Law2 (Cambridge, 1932) 99, 105 n. 2;
cf. the rule quoted by Quintilian in regard to an inheritance controversia: "Nothus ante legitimum
natus, legitimus filius sit, post legitimum tantum civis" (3.3.96; cf. 7.7.10). On this controversia, see
also n. 4 above.

PATTERSON:
71
died, the property (valued at three talents) was claimed by Pyrrhos's sister,
represented by the speaker, and also by a certainXenocles on behalf of his wife
Phile, who was-he claimed-the legitimate daughter of Pyrrhos. Pyrrhos's sis
ter, through
that Phile was
her son, maintained
not
legitimate
and so had no
place in the anchisteia, those familymembers with inheritance rights. She was
not, therefore, the epikleros of Pyrrhos's estate.
The
concern
of the speaker
in Isaeus Or.
3 is to show that Phile's maternal
uncle, Nikodemos, was guilty of false testimony when he stated that he "en
trusted" (EyyuvoaL, 4, 9, 16 et passim) his sister to Pyrrhos, so making her
Pyrrhos's wife and the bearer of legitimate heirs to his estate.11 The point is
clearly crucial to the case. It is difficult, however, to prove the lack of proper
marriage inAthens, especially when therewere thosewilling to swear that it had
occurred. The speaker tries to discredit thewitnesses, but uses primarily argu
ments from probability intended to convince the jury how unlikely itwas that
Nikodemos ever so entrusted his sister or that Pyrrhos ever received her.Why
did he not provide a dowry for his sister? he asks (28-38). SurelyNikodemos was
not so unconcerned with property andmoney-since, the speaker adds, he hopes
to receivemoney for his false testimony. Surely, he says,Nikodemos would have
obtained
more
and better witnesses
if he actually
had made
such an impressive
marriage alliance (18-27). The speaker even attempts to undermine the testi
mony of Pyrrhos's uncles: "It appears to me, judging from probabilities, that
secret
Pyrrhos would have been much more
likely to wish to keep the matter
from all his friends, if he was meditating
the making of a contract or the commis
sion of an act discreditable
to his family, rather than summon his own uncles as
witnesses of so outrageous an act of folly" (27, Loeb tr.).

Why would such amarriage be so discreditable? The speaker has carefully
laid the groundwork for this claim in the opening sections of the speech, where
he claims
that Phile's
mother
was
a promiscuous
woman,
available
to all who
wanted her. The evidence is less than overwhelming: neighbors spoke of sere
nades and wild parties
(13-14).
The
speaker's
claim that Phile's mother
"has not
borne a child to any other man" (13) is apparently intended to imply that Phile's
mother
had always acted

was the bearer of children
a wife, who by definition

the part of a prostitute-not
casts
The
claim
also
doubt on Phile's own
(see above).
origins.Whose child was she?

The opening sections of the speech, therefore, are crucial to the success of
thewhole. The jurorswill be more likely to accept the speaker's arguments from
probability ifPhile's mother is seen as a completely disreputablewoman. Even if
he would never have married
infatuated with such a woman,
Pyrrhos became
that Phile may not even be his own
the speaker
insinuates
her; in addition,
in
of
the
It
is
notable
that
this
part
argument the speaker does not term
daughter.
110. On the enguesis see [Dem.] 46.18; and text above.

72
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
Phile a nothe;
rather she is simply a woman
AdI6Q0)og yeyevrRevY
(12), and her
mother a loosewoman, the common property of whatever man wanted her (11).
Despite, however, the all-out attack on the character of Phile's mother, it
seems clear that Phile did have a place inPyrrhos's household and that her given
name was Cleitarete, the name of her paternal grandmother (34).11Did she also
have a claim
to his estate?
The speaker's strongest argument against Phile's claim is the question he

puts to Nikodemos midway through the speech:Why did he not object to the
adoption of Endios, the adjudication of the estate toEndios, and themarriage of
Phile toXenocles, a complete stranger (40-53)? Such a failure to act, asserts the
speaker, made Phile a nothe (41)-the first use of that term in this speech
because it implicitly excluded her from the anchisteia. Accordingly, on the
speaker's accounting, Phile was given (enguasthai) toXenocles as the child of a
hetaira (6g Et ertaicag). He insists repeatedly on this description (e.g., 45, 48,
that we should
52, 55), and usually it is taken at face value. I doubt, however,
trust the speaker on this point. He has tried his best to disassociate
Phile from
her paternal family, but cannot escape the fact that, even setting aside the
witnesses to her parents' marriage and her own naming, Phile was given in
marriage by the appropriatemale member of her family, her cousin and adopted
brother Endios.
Her
husband
and guardians
had testified
that Endios
gave her as
his yvioiav &aEk4jv (58). Given the strong assumption that Phile did belong to
Pyrrhos's family, the best the speaker can do is insist that her failure to assert her
claim earlier is an indication that she is nothe, lacking any right to inheritance.
The repeated phrase 6;g et EtaiCag might also have the effect of recalling to the
jury'smind the earlier description of her mother's character.

If, however, Phile was nothe, and if the laws recorded in [Demosthenes] Or.
59 (16, 52), prohibiting marriage between the astosle and xene/os, were in force
at the time of Phile's marriage,112 then it could be argued that nothoi were astoi
and citizens-since
the speaker never says that the marriage was illegal. On the
other hand, if the marriage was in fact illegal (i.e., the laws were in force and
Phile was not an aste), the speaker might not want to emphasize
it, since his own
laws are con
the
Demosthenic
brother had given Phile in marriage.
Finally,
to outright xenoi; as Rhodes has noted, Phile's status was
cerned with marriages
more ambiguous
and not really addressed by those laws.113 Thus, Phile's mar
riage, even if she was a nothe, is not as decisive as it has been taken to be.114
But
is it clear
in the end that Phile
tions than being nothe
for her failure
is nothe? There
to claim Pyrrhos's
are in fact other explana

estate earlier. First, as
111. The uncles testified that this name was given her at the tenth-day ceremony. The speaker
attempts to use the discrepancy in the names as evidence against the uncles' testimony, but surely
Phile could have been a familiar or childhood name.
112. This usually is taken for granted; an exception isLotze (above, n. 24) 173.
113. Rhodes (above, n. 2) 91.
114. E.g., byMacDowell (above, n. 2) 89-90.

73
PATTERSON:
Wyse pointed out long ago,15 Phile was very young at the time of Pyrrhos's
death and so could have been passed
over
in favor of Endios.
Later,
since Endios
did not marry, she (and Xenocles) may have been content to wait their turn.
Otherwise, Xenocles risked losing both his wife and her anticipated inheritance,
since as epikleros
be married
she would
to her male
next of kin.116 Second,
itmay
be that the citizen status of Phile's maternal familywas in dispute. The speaker
makes good use of the fact thatNikodemos only escaped conviction for xenia by
four votes. Until this was settled, Phile's family may have been reluctant to
pursue her case.
In sum, many
things can happen
on the way
to a division
or devolution
of
familyproperty, and IsaeusOr. 3 should not be read naively as a direct reflection

of Athenian marriage or inheritance law. The peculiar situation of Phile, her
family, and her marriage are "most likely" not just as the speaker describes
them. The speech does not prove that nothoi were citizens, because (1) it is not
clear that Phile reallywas nothe, and (2) if she was nothe or ex hetairas, it is not
to Xenocles
was technically
that her marriage
legal. He, at any rate,
of fact and
thought she was legitimate. But, in the midst of all this obfuscation
clear
status, the speaker uses the term nothe carefully and consistently (41, 58) to
a place in the anchisteia. As a daughter of Pyrrhos so
indicate a daughter without
or not that is her
far without
Phile is de facto a nothe. Whether
inheritance,
rightful status is another question.

Emory University
115. Wyse (above, n. 1) 276.
116. On
the circumstance
in which
an epikleros
was
claimed
by her paternal
Wyse (above, n. 1) 275-76.

next
of kin,
see

Patterson, Cynthia B. Those Athenian Bastards.

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Those Athenian Bastards

Author(s): Cynthia B. Patterson

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

Athenians citizens? The question and the debate, lega

to the first question

gest that unexamined assumptions aboutAthenian family structure and terminol

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

status of those called nothoi are important to an understanding of theAthenian

as such by his or her father.

families." Finally, an understanding of the peculiarly marginal status of the

in the case of Socrates

and his circle,

criticize old ways of thinking or acting.

singled out for particular criticism two extensive works of nineteenth-century

nian law recognized a relationship of "legitimate concubinage," inwhich a concu

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

Volume 9/No. 1/April 1990

(gnesioi) children were born.6 Such childrenmight be brought up in the care of

and has "succumbed

to time and common

the status of a particular

not being gnesioi,

are also not nothoi

field of interest and point of view of the law or

are crucial. As will become

that nothos simplymeans "not gnesios" or "illegitimate" constitutes a fallacy of

that this was

not the basis of the relationship

between Pyrrhos and Phile's mother.

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

woman," and on this theorynothoi rode a roller-coaster career inAthenian politi

to time and common

sense" but remains a telling example

modern interpretationof specificAthenian institutionsand structurescan skip the

a few years after

Wyse published his Commentary.13 In a series of three discussions of Athenian

noncitizenship of nothoi: anchisteia (the family relationship allowing inheri

for polis membership.

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

Volume 9/No. 1/April 1990

was post-Cleisthenic and democratic.16 The persistently troublesome case of

the child of an Athenian

also legallymarried toXenocles, another Athenian citizen. The speaker asserts

the astoi. Following

butWolff's suggestion thatAthenian nothoi enjoyed a limited or partial citizen

here. First, Paoli's

astos and polites,

it also does not

frequently used in political or military connections with reference to the adult

body.21 The distinction

does not simply translate to

clarify the problem of their status.

This content downloaded from 96.242.68.144 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:08:33 PM

place for nothoi at themargins or edges of Athenian society is potentially more

but also not xenoi: Was

for them and other

left them formally

in the cold when

economic and political privilege.