BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
bring more money into the polis. 16 She rightly points to 483/2 as the pivotal year in this
discursive archaeology at Athens, for it was in that year that, with a sudden boon from the
local silver mines at Laureion, the Athenians chose to invest that silver in their navy
rather than to receive distributions for themselves. 17 This decision marked the navy as
explicitly publicly-owned (dēmosia) inasmuch as it served as a substitute for the handouts
that would have otherwise fallen to the Athenians. 18 As Aristotle notes in his Consitution
of Athens, the decision to build a fleet and thereby to pursue hegemony over the other
Greeks increased the livelihood of all Athenians (AP 24.1), and arguably the Athenians in
Themistocles’ day debated the issue on these very terms. Underpinning the formula
money=power, therefore, was a conceptual link between possessions and archē. Within
the context of the League, ‘power to’ slowly came to mean ‘power over’, as the allies
themselves became ‘property’ or ‘subjects’ of Athens. 19
16 See Kallet-Marx (1993, 1994), Kallet (2001); cf. Kurke (1999, 2002).
17 Financing the navy: Hdt. 7.144; Thuc. 1.14; AP 22.7; Plut. Them. 4.1-3, Arist. 46 with Gabrielsen
(1985), Kallet-Marx (1994: 244-5), Kurke (2002: 95-6).
18 Kallet-Marx (1994: 244) points to similar distributions after a surplus in Siphnos (Hdt. 3.57.2) and
perhaps Thasos (Hdt. 6.46). Even if such distributions were not the norm, it is nevertheless emblematic of
their public nature that the dēmos as a whole would vote on how to manage them. As we will see, this
scene of employing political authority to control the flow of financial resources encapsulates fifth-century
attitudes towards the monies that were used to negotiate politics.
In a similar story—probably apocryphal, as Hamel (1998: 47n.20) rightly argues—after the
campaigns at Sestos and Byzantion, Cimon rounded up the Persian prisoners and asked the allies whether
they wanted to take the men or their belongings; the allies chose the belongings, so Cimon took the men as
slaves and sold them, profiting enough to supply his ships for four months and give some leftover gold to
the city (Plut. Cim. 9.3-6). Again, note how the mode of conquest—an Athenian divvies up the rewards of
conquest and ultimately takes that which is most profitable—tellingly signifies the absolute authority of
Athens’ position qua manager of resources and master of slaves.
19 Cf. Thuc. 1.99.1, which attributes Athens’ growing despotism to a need to police allied contributions to
the League. Allies as ‘property’: Thuc. 2.63.2, 3.37.2; IG i 3 156.2, 15. Allies as ‘subjects’: e.g. Thuc.
1.121.5, 1.22.2, 4.87.3; cf. Thuc. 1.8.3, 2.6.3. By mid-century, inscriptions could refer to the allies as
“cities which Athens [controls]”: IG i 3 19.8-9, 27.14-15. The equation of ‘power to’ (authority to distribute)
and ‘power over’ (oppressive control over) is clearest in the Athenian siege of Thasos, one reason why
Thucydides might have picked that siege as the decisive turning point in the League’s history (cf. DS
11.70.3-4). As Thucydides relates, the rebellion was caused by a dispute with the Athenians about the
Thasian mines and a trading post on the shore opposite Thasos (Thuc. 1.100.2); transparently, when the
Thasians lost, they were required to give up both the mainland and their mine (Thuc. 1.101.3, Plut. Cim.
14.2).
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