BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
I propose that the reason jury pay and pay for public officials were consistently
associated with ‘feeding’ the dēmos from imperial monies was that they represented self-
conscious ways in which the dēmos was replicating—or, to be more precise, competing
against—Cimon-style patronage. Certainly thinking of these monies as providing,
explicitly, food for the dēmos would have resonated strongly with the way Cimon had
invited his demesmen to dinner. So, too, would the source of the funds: the kōlakretai, or
“collectors of limbs” or “hams” (kw=la),” who probably date back to Solon (AP 7.3) and
whose name suggests a connection to the collection of honorary shares of meat at a
sacrifice. 84 Later dispensing public monies for a range of purposes, the kōlakretai
frequently provided monies associated with public honors, just like the kw=la they
presumably once collected. 85 Moreover, that the payment was called a misthos need not
have connoted a commercial “wage,” but readily could have evoked the honorary misthos
awarded the victorious generals at Eion (cf. Aeschin. 3.183): that is, it may have signaled,
especially, a money from a superior (the dēmos) to a citizen, just like Cimon’s handouts
to his demesemen. 86 If we liken misthophoria to the monies of patronage, which
themselves were derived from the monies of empire, it makes sense that even
misthophoria, though paid for from domestic funds, was nevertheless linked to the
monies of empire.
84 As Samons (2000: 55) notes, jury pay and pay for magistrates are absent from the epigraphic record
dealing with reserves from the sacred treasury. By contrast, sources explicitly attest that the kōlakretai
doled out the payments: Ar. V. 695, 724, schol. Ar. Av. 1541, Hesychius s.v. kwlakre/tai. Cf. Kallet
(1998: 47) and Samons (2000: 57). On the connection between the kōlakretai and the collection of
sacrificial meat, see Samons (2000: 57), Harding (2001: 93-4).
85 On the associations of civic honors and kw=la qua honorary portions of meat, see especially Tsoukala
(2009). In the inscriptional record, we find the kōlakretai dispensing funds for the erection of stelai (IG i 3
11.13-14, 71.25-26, 165.10), paying various religious officials (priestess of Athena Nike, IG i 3 36.10; those
making a theōria to Delphi, Androtion FGrH 324 F 36), and providing meals in the prytaneion (Androtion
FGrH 324 F 36).
86 On this definition of misthos, see especially von Reden (1995a: 89-92).
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