Voices across Boundaries: Citizenship, Language, and Ethnicity in Classical Athens and Hellenistic-Roman Delos

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relationship between language and civic identity in two interconnected contexts: Classical Athens and Hellenistic-Roman Delos. Drawing on literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, it shows how linguistic competence served as a marker of civic inclusion or exclusion. In Athens, mastery of Attic was central to ideological constructions of citizenship and often used polemically, especially against demagogues. In Delos, by contrast, daily interaction among Greeks, Romans, and Easterners gave rise to multilingual practices and hybrid identity negotiations. Greek emerged as a vehicle for social permeability, while Latin reinforced legal distinctions. Adopting the theoretical framework of ‘metrolingualism’, the article argues that language, space, and material culture operated together in shaping civic identity. Yet, this fluidity unfolded within a stable juridical-institutional background that remained largely untouched: despite the multiplicity of voices and interactions, the boundary between citizens and non-citizens, between inclusion and exclusion, continued to be defined and preserved at the institutional level.