INTRODUCTION

This is a study of how social actors understood and imagined themselves as citizens in the Athenian democracy and the particular effects and consequences of how they did so. Although the question of identity is not usually singled out for special investigation in studies of Athens' democracy, it nevertheless frequently informs the questions historians ask of the democracy and the answers they formulate. For example, the ongoing inquiry into when democracy really began in Athens hinges on how citizenship is understood as a social identity. Several scholars argue that in order for democracy to be possible, the social actors involved must, of necessity, have some identification – as soldiers or equals – that underwrites their capacity to act as democratic citizens. Although this intuition is well founded – citizen identity is central to democracy – the question is not merely a genealogical one, confined to democracy's origins, but rather persists throughout the democracy's history. In part, this is because the question of who deserved to be a citizen was never finally put to rest. In his seminal study of Athenian citizenship, J. K. Davies describes the situation this way: