BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
public monies (lhmma/twn de\ dhmosi/wn…a)napimplame/nouj, Plut. Cim. 10.8). 39
Whereas Cimon continually gave to the city and thereby affirmed Athens’ archē over her
allies (and his own archē and informal leadership within Athens), others thus failed to
redistribute the monies of empire. Accordingly, those ‘public’ (dēmosion) monies
stopped signifying the Athenian dēmos’ hegemonic power over the League. It was in this
sense that the dōrodokos became problematic, for he subverted the value assigned to the
monies of empire.
The Disobedient dōrodokos: Pericles, Creon and the Breakdown of Political Patronage
So far we have sketched a picture of the dōrodokos as a figure who, in subverting
the political value attached to the monies of empire, implicitly contested the dēmos’
authority to control them. Rather than position himself as a patron adorning the city with
those monies, he pocketed them for himself, in effect removing them from an economy in
which they signaled Athens’ hegemonic relationship to her allies. By contrast, Cimon
and other political leaders of the first half of the fifth century were presented as
authoritative stewards of those monies: elite citizens whose own archē and informal
political standing were reified by the act of distributing to the polis monies linked to
empire. Of course, after Cimon we have little evidence that there were any similar
‘patrons’ in Athens. 40 How and why, then, did the breakdown of patronage occur? As
39 The phrase lhmma/twn de\ dhmosi/wn could indicate embezzlement or peculation, but bribes qua
lh/mmata are probably intended, as well. Plutarch explicitly singles out Aristides and Ephialtes as the only
other two politicians of Cimon’s day to be incorruptible (Plut. Cim. 10.8)—itself a surprisingly rare epithet
in the democracy: cf. Ober (1989: 237). And both are elsewhere praised for being, specifically, not bribed:
cf. xrhma/twn…a)misqi/ of Aristides (Plut. Arist. 3.3), a)dwrodo/khtoj of Ephialtes (AP 25.1).
40 Millett (1989) is essential here; see also Connor (1971).
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