The metics are an inferior part of the citizens, like the achura of barley. Aristophanes [writes]: "for the metics I call achura of the townsfolk."[1]
Metics [are] those moving from one city and living in another.[2]
"If ever you spoke well in a petty lawsuit against a metic foreigner, you considered yourself an able speaker".[3]
In Sophocles 'metic' appears in place of 'inhabitant' [e)/noikos]: "unless you wish to be a metic of this land".[4] For 'inhabitant' did not mean the same thing, as it does in our language. 'Metics' is what we call those living [somewhere who have come] from another land, and also those who have migrated from somewhere or other. This means an inhabitant [in our language].[5] Aeschylus [speaks of] the birds in high places [as metics], meaning inhabitants.[6]
And elsewhere: "when Zobia took in the fugitive Aristogeiton and asked for the favour to be returned when he had recovered, he dragged her to the auction-house of the metic-tax, and he sold [his own] sister for export".[7]
And elsewhere: "[the Athenians] sold him when he was unable to pay the metic-tax".[8]