XENOI KAI PAREPIDHMOI

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 27 06:53:35 EDT 1998


At 9:00 PM -0500 9/26/98, Steven Cox wrote:
>Would this be "tourists and illegal aliens" or vice versa?

Interesting suggestion; where is it from? I had assumed it was Acts 2 but
don't find it there. I don't think that either of these words quite fits
with your suggestions, however. XENOI does mean 'aliens,' 'foreigners,' or
simply 'strangers,' but there is no suggestion of illegality in it;
PAREPIDHMOI may mean 'immigrants'--but I wonder whether it might not be
equivalent to the Attic term METOIKOI, 'resident aliens.' For instance, the
family of Cephalus, the arms-manufacturer in whose house the dialogue of
Plato's Republic is held, are 'metics' who have been living in the Piraeus
for many years; they don't have Athenian citizenship but one of the two
sons, the orator Lysias, is able to prosecute a certain citizen
Eratosthenes in the Athenian court for the murder of his brother
Polemarchus during the regime of the 'Thirty Tyrants' in 404.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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