Citizenship as Performance

Looking for a definition of archaic citizenship that will be elaborated on positive evidence, and not reduced to the idea of an ‘incomplete’ status roughly enshrined in emerging legal criteria, the chapter proposes to assess archaic citizenship as a performance embodied in individual and collective behaviours. In a world rooted in social mobility, the privileges and opportunities of a citizen had to be permanently demonstrated in order to be acknowledged and accepted by other members of the community. Across the Greek world there were multiple behaviours deeply embedded in social practices through which citizenship could be asserted or even claimed. Adopting the normative behaviours of the citizens in all aspects of one’s lifestyle provided the best means of being acknowledged as a fellow citizen. Two specific sets of citizen behaviours are discussed, horse-breeding and luxury practices, eventually stressing how citizens could often be defined as elites.