BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
The equation of money and empire should by now be clear—indeed, for Athens’
imperial heyday in the second half of the century, it has long been obvious—but one oft
neglected component of this pairing is the money of empire, or, to be more precise, the
monies of empire. Whenever our sources juxtapose Athenian hegemony with its
consequences, especially its baldly economic returns, we find the monies of empire.
Tribute, 20 cleruchies, 21 naval pay, 22 cows and panoplies 23 —all functioned as monies of
empire, media that were transacted and used to negotiate Athens’ relationship with her
allies. Crucially, all of them symbolized Athenian hegemony: it is in that sense that I call
them monies of empire, even though some of them were transacted from the earliest
years of the Delian League. 24 Ultimately the monies used to negotiate foreign political
relations signified the imperial power of Athens, the power her people had over the
resources of empire.
20 phoros: Plut. Cim. 11.3. Kallet-Marx (1993: 44-9) underscores the novelty of a long-standing phoros
and rightly connects it to the Persian system of taxation and compulsory gifts. As Brasidas remarks in
Thrace, the allied tribute was a mark of friendship and slavery (cf. doulei/aj, Thuc. 4.87.3).
21 Cleruchies: Plut. Per. 11.5-6; cf. DS 11.88.3, Paus. 1.27.5 all connect the establishment of cleruchies
with the need to control disloyal allies. IG i 3 37=ML 47 (Colophon, 440’s or 420’s), IG i 3 46.43-6=ML 49
(Brea, 440’s-420’s). Cleruchies, in particular, connoted imperialism; when the Second Athenian League
was formed in the fourth century, the charter contained a clause explicitly banning the establishment of
cleruchies and Athenian private ownership of land in allied cities: IG ii 2 43.35-41; cf. Cargill (1981: 60,
148-50). Although land owned by individual Athenians is not well attested for the empire, Oionias’
considerable property holdings abroad—over 81 talents’ worth according to IG i 3 422.311-14—suggest that
it was extensive. Cf. IG i 3 426.45-6.
22 Naval pay: AP 24.2-3. This came directly from tribute monies and was one of the ways in which empire
was thought to have supported the democracy: AP 24.3.
23 From perhaps the 440’s, Athens required allies to send “a cow and a panoply” to Athens, to be escorted
in the procession of the Greater Panathenaea festival as if they were colonists: IG i 3 34.41-3=ML 46
(447/6?) appears to be the earliest inscription; see also IG i 3 71.56-8=ML 69, IG i 3 46.15-17=ML 49.11-13.
For discussion, Meritt and Wade-Gery (1962: 69-71), AE 292-4; Smarczyk (1990: 549-69) is particularly
helpful on the Panathenaea as a symbol of Athenian military power. Along the same lines, the requirement
that subject cities send the aparchai or ‘first fruits’ of corn and barley to Eleusis—cf. IG i 3 78=ML 73—
also reified an image of Athens as patron over her empire: Isoc. 4.28-31 with Smarczyk (1990: 224-52).
24 This claim should be uncontroversial for Athens’ imperial heyday in the second half of the century.
What I would like to argue here is that such social meaning was invested in political monies even in the
earliest years of the Delian League.
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