A metic is one who is emigrating [μετοικῶν ] from one city [and residing permanently] in another and not visiting briefly, as a foreigner [does]. Every year [a tax of] twelve drachmas, which bore the name metic-tax, used to be paid by them. Isaeus in the [speech] Against Elpagoras and Demophanes indicates that the man paid twelve drachmas in metic-tax, the woman six; also that a mother did not pay if her son did - she paid it only if he did not.[1] When slaves had been freed by their masters they paid the metic-tax. Menander says that, besides the twelve drachmas, these men also pay a three-obol tax, perhaps to the tax-collector.[2] However, metics not laying out the metic-tax used to be hauled in front of the citizens,[3] and, if convicted, were sold. They also used to send the metics aboard the warships, as Demosthenes shows in [the] Philippics.[4] The comic poets used to call the metics "bowl-men", since it was they who carried the bowls in the [festival] processions.