To Belong Or Not To Belong 139 these issues would basically have to be determined on an individual basis. Consequently, for an historical encounter, it is necessary to reformulate and widen the issue of statelessness. The following contribution will address the issue of belonging, people’s legal and political status, citizenship and the treatment of foreigners from a legal historical perspective. People not belonging to any community at all will be discussed if there were legal precursors to the current status of stateless persons that mattered at the time. 2 Citizenship in Ancient Times It seems to be a recurrent feature of Indo-European peoples that the extended family is at the basis of their social and political organization: several families forming tribes and tribes peoples (or nations). In most pre-modern societies, law used to apply personally. The community, tribe or people a person belonged to determined what law was to be applied to him. The origins of law are often to be found in rules and institutions that were exceptions for relations between people of an in-group to the ‘normal’ situation of self-help and the private right of retaliation.11 In order to keep peace and order within a community, relations between its members were regulated and conflicts among them were to be settled by due procedures, often closely connected to the community’s religious practices. Therefore, law and legal procedures were strictly confined to community members. This meant that foreigners were either outside the scope of law or were to be tried pursuant to their own laws. 2.1 Greek Poleis The ancient Greeks were the first to develop notions of citizenship. Their poleis were communities of citizens with equal rights and duties.12 They were very restrictive in recognizing an individual as a group member. Citizenship was originally connected to kinship and to local cults, although this particularism was countervailed by religiously sanctioned duties of hospitality towards aliens.13 In ancient Athens, one could only become a citizen if both parents 11 12 13 Erik Jan Broers, Geschiedenis van het straf- en schadevergoedingsrecht. Een inleiding (Antwerp 2012) 35-36. Jochen Bleicken, Die athenische Demokratie (Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1995) 46, 180 and 341; Finer, n4 330-336. David Bederman, International Law in Antiquity (Cambridge UP 2001) 88-89, 120; Coleman Phillipson, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome vol. I (London 1911) 122-124 and 132-133. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 136-152