レイトゥルギアの社会的意味 : メトイコイの関与の点から

抄録

Since Boeckh pioneered in the study of liturgies in the nineteenth century, many works have been published on this subject. Yet except for incidental references, none of them have dealt thoroughly with the significance of the participation of metics in the liturgies. The liturgies originated in the period of the oligarchy and, in the democratic period, began to be performed not by noble families as in the earlier days but by wealthy citizens as honourable duties. A curious fact is that both citizens and non-citizens performed them in classical Athens where each category of population enjoyed a legal status distinct from the other. Here I want to discuss the problem of the participation of non-citizens in the liturgies and consider the significance of this fact. In the Panathenaic festival, metics performed a few fixed liturgies. Perhaps originally these accorded them honour; but, as the performer was restricted only to the metics who were humble in their social standing, the liturgies assigned to them also came to be looked upon as rather humble ones. Among the encyclic liturgies, we are certain that metics performed the choregia. However, they did so only in the Lenaean festival, which was held in winter, and for this reason they did not thrive. So the supposed honour may not have been held in common by both metics and citizens. Some scholars state that citizens alone performed the trierarchy but they do not enlarge any further upon this problem. However, as Kahrstedt has shown, the role of metics in the trierarchy was important. However, they did not become official trierarchs; there is a case of a metic embarking on behalf of a citizen trierarch. I think this cannot be the solitary example. Considering the original function of the trierarchy as a measure of naval defence substituting the naucracy, the embarkation was its most essential part. Nevertheless, in this case, a citizen trierarch bore only the financial part of his duties and transferred personal service required of him to a non-citizen. This is a parallel to the fact that citizens preferred to accept mercenaries in the army than to arm themselves. Apart from its importance in the scheme of national defence, the trierarchy had a secondary effect to promote its performers in society. The citizens wanted to monopolize the honour of bearing the title of litourgos. Therefore, when they allowed metics to take part in some liturgies, they restricted the latters' participation; when they entrusted metics the essential personal service in the trierarchy, they reserved the title of trierarch by bearing the financial part of his duties. This explains some passages in the writings of contemporaries as Aristotle, Demosthenes, Lysias etc., to the effect that, while the citizens maintained the position of litourgos to be an honourable one, in fact, they did not want to perform the liturgies by themselves, but only desired the position of litourgoi in order to win fame and they discharged the financial part of their duties for fear that they should harm their reputation by failing to perform the liturgies which they had undertaken. By the time of Aristotle, the liturgies had lost their original spirit and had become detached from their original purpose. However, as they were closely related to the democratic structure of Athenian society, they survived to the end of the democratic period.