Towards a Unified Theory of Greek Citizenship as Timē: Worth, Rights, Social Performance, and Political Participation

This chapter proposes an approach to Greek citizenship centred on the concept of timē. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory, it argues that the Greeks conceptualised citizenship not only through metaphors of sharing, but also through timē and axia as value from which rights and entitlements flow. This framework bridges seemingly competing scholarly approaches – performative, institutional, network-based – as they all express the same underlying dynamic of socially recognised worth. The chapter also addresses why citizenship crystallised as a binary, non-graded category centred on political participation despite the open-endedness of its conceptual foundations. It argues that democratic notions of citizenship became hegemonic, constraining even oligarchic regimes and non-democratic theorists.