Hardly a day goes by without headlines about immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. In the ancient world, movements of people were also very common (state boundaries did not exist), often because war, famine or exile left them with no option. So how did refugees try to win acceptance?
In Homer’s world of heroes (c. 700 bc), a man indicated he was harmless by kneeling before his (proposed) helper, perhaps touching the knee, and appealing for aid in the name of Zeus, god of suppliants. He expected a welcome into the household as a guest, and becoming part of that household, or being helped on his way.
When Athens was a democratic city state (c. 460 bc), Aeschylus wrote a tragedy in which the mythical daughters of Danaus fled Egypt for Argos in Greece in order to escape forced marriage.
Danaus went with them and advised them to supplicate the Argives from the protection of an altar, and meekly and diffidently to claim sanctuary as helpless fugitives, explaining that the Danaid family was historically Argive in origin.
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