It was not, however, merely in Alexandria that the Jews settled, precisely as it was not merely in Greek cities that Greeks were to be found. That part of Egypt which lay outside the definite civic communities as they were founded from time to time, was organized in nomes, in large agricultural districts containing many villages or even cities. In every instance, however, the administrative unit was the nome. These nomes had themselves a history of immemorial antiquity. Some of them were surely in boundary coincident with the petty nationalities that antedated the first dynasties. The mass of the population in them had practically always been peasant-serfs, and continued to be so. Beside them, in the villages and towns, there lived in Greek times motley groups of men, whose legal status was determined in a number of ways. Some were citizens of Alexandria, Ptolemais, etc., and merely resident in the nome. Others enjoyed certain military and fiscal privileges, which involved the right of residence. But in all circumstances, in the elaborate financial organization of Egypt every resident had certain precise dues to pay, and was marked by a certain designation. The military and other settlers whom the Greeks found in Egypt, whether they were Persians, Jews, Syrians, or Babylonians, retained their status, _i.e._ they paid taxes and performed services differing from those of the native Egyptians in part, although no doubt certain taxes were levied upon all. The foreigners whom Ptolemy invited or brought into Egypt must have been settled either in the cities or the nomes, and were given a definite fiscal status. And besides all these various grades, there were metics—a term which may have included emancipated slaves, and of course slaves as well—in huge numbers. There can be little doubt that Jews were to be found in all classes, from the highly privileged nobility of “Macedones” to the slaves.[108] In most large Greek cities metics of foreign birth or ancestry existed. There were Phoenicians and Egyptians in Athens in very early times. But they were all, together with non-Athenian Greeks, gathered into the general group of metics, and no one group ever became numerically so preponderant that a special class had to be legally constituted of them. In Egypt, however, the general term metic was rarely used. For the nome organization of the country it seemed scarcely applicable. Instead, those foreigners who had acquired legal residence and other rights were known by their national name. So there was a group of Egyptian residents known as Ἰουδαῖοι, as “Jews,” which was in their case a legal designation, whereas, when the “Macedones,” “Alexandreis,” etc., of the same nationality were referred to as Ἰουδαῖοι, the term was merely descriptive.