Citizens and Outsiders in Athens and Rome

Ancient Athens and Rome developed powerful ideas of citizenship that later inspired rights thinkers. After Cleisthenes' reforms around 508 BCE, Athenian male citizens could speak and vote in the assembly, serve on juries and hold office by lot. Yet women, enslaved people and resident foreigners called metics were excluded, so only a minority of adults took part. Rome offered citizens legal protections such as the right to appeal against certain punishments, and in 212 CE Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to nearly all free inhabitants of the empire.

Roman law also developed the idea of a 'law of nations' shared by different peoples. Both societies show that strong rights for insiders could coexist with exclusion and slavery. The lesson for historians is that the language of liberty often grew first inside a privileged group before others claimed it.