BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
monies were used instead. 55 As Plutarch records, rather than allow Pericles to put his
name on the building (in return for funding it), the Athenians competed with him for the
honor and spared no expense in the “liturgy” (xorhgei=n) they collectively performed. 56
Individual expenditure on public works all but vanishes from our record after this time.
In keeping distinct the monies of patronage and empire, the dēmos thereby
underscored how problematic their overlap—represented, above, by the dōrodokos—
could be. What, though, was so problematic about their overlap? We can perhaps find
an answer in reversing the direction of an analogy Plutarch makes between liturgies and
the dēmos’ outlay of imperial monies. If the dēmos’ outlay of imperial monies (public
works symbolic of Athenian archē) was analogous to an elite patron’s benefactions to the
city, then were not a patron’s benefactions steeped in the same symbolism as the monies
of empire? So long as the boundaries between the two economies remained porous, so
long as the same monies could be used to negotiate both economies simultaneously,
Athens’ recent shift to empire could be refracted through the monies used to negotiate the
relationship between an elite citizen and the community. 57 Patrons of the community
could fast become imperial masters of the dēmos.
In fact, this exact discursive shift seems to have occurred, and we can track it,
again, by looking at the dōrodokos. I suggest that, as Athens’ imperial archē became
55 3
IG i 49.13-14 (430’s BCE); cf. Plut. Per. 14.1-2. For background and discussion, see Stadter (1989:
181-2 ad Per. 14.1), Kallet (1998: 48), Domingo Gygax (forthcoming: 206-7).
56
Plut. Per. 14.1-2. Plutarch’s use of the language of liturgies—cf. pro\j th\n do/can a)ntifilotimou/menoi
tw=n e1rgwn…xorh/gein—is telling.
57
Chapter Six traces another reason for why the blurring of these two economies could be so problematic:
precisely because the dēmos was increasingly concerned to exact a certain amount of tribute each year,
there were greater fears that individuals involved in tribute collection might somehow tamper with the
funds. See, for example, IG i³ 34=ML 46.35-7, IG i 3 71.36-7. By more clearly separating public monies
from the economy of patronage, the dēmos could more readily regulate them. As a result, in the second
half of the fifth century we first begin to find a greater separation between ‘public’ and ‘private’:
Humphreys (1978b ).
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