them. But Athenian
law is not in this sense the law of Athens, nor, to begin with, is Roman
law the law of Rome. What we find is a law of Athenian or Roman
citizens. The stranger to the city is a stranger to its law. As a matter
of principle he is without rights by that law. His life is not protected
by the blood-feud which his family can pursue, or by the compensation
with which it may be bought off. His marriage with a citizen will be no
marriage, or at best a sort of half marriage. He can acquire no land
within the city's territory, and what goods he brings with him are
pretty much at the mercy of the first taker.

Such, at any rate, is the theory of the 'law of citizens'.

We need not, it is true, believe that it was logically formulated in
primitive times and ruthlessly applied. Some of its applications were
the result of positive legislation due to a growing consciousness of the
self-sufficiency of the city state and of the privileges of citizenship,
as when Athens passed a law excluding from citizenship the offspring of
citizens who had married foreign wives. But in its broad outlines the
principle is sufficiently borne out by the exceptions which were
necessary to make human intercourse possible. The stranger within your
gates is protected just because he is within your gates, and you throw
your protection about him, as is indeed your duty, for suppliants and
strangers come from Zeus. The foreigner, even at a distance, may have a
citizen as representative who can and will defend his rights. A stranger
may be allowed to take up a permanent residence in the city, and by the
mediation of a patron or guardian enjoy private rights not much inferior
to those of a citizen. His legal position will not be very different
from that of a woman citizen, who needs the like mediation. Cities may,
again, by treaty confer on each other's citizens reciprocal rights of
legal protection.

In the middle of the third century B.C., Rome, after its first
successful war against Carthage, took special measures to deal with the
problem of the alien litigant. The great and growing commerce which came
from all parts of the Mediterranean called for something more than a
mere admission to treaty privileges. A special officer was from
henceforth appointed to deal with the law-suits to which foreigners were
parties, and the judgement was given by a body (which we may compare
with our jury) which might include fellow-citizens of the foreign