BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
troubling even without the overtones of bribery. Cleon’s corruption is particularly
problematic because it enables him to escape accountability. 95 Accordingly, his bribe-
giving enables him to invert his relationship with the dēmos so that he, not the dēmos,
becomes master. 96 Just as Pericles’ control over public monies was called into question
by accusations of dōrodokia, here too it is assumed that public speakers illegitimately
control, and disproportionately benefit from, the allies’ imperial monies (esp. Ar. V. 660-
79). All of the monies found in the ways corrupt politicians negotiate politics are thus
cast as the bribes. Hence, that we find Cleon’s misthophoria recast as bribe monies
strongly suggests that a number of Athenians thought that Cleon’s relationship to the
dēmos, like Pericles’—specifically, his influence on the distribution of public funds—was
inherently problematic.
I am suggesting that, as with the Springhouse Decree and public works, with
misthophoria and other political monies created around mid-century the dēmos self-
consciously strove to be its own patron. It identified a money of Cimonian-style
patronage—feeding the public—and refashioned it in democratic form, in effect blocking
elite citizens from playing that role using the old monies of patronage. Nevertheless,
elites like Pericles and Cleon, who previously would have derived political authority
from the politics of patronage, instead tried to appropriate for themselves the dēmos’ new
monies; in this way, they forged a new kind of politics. 97 Even if the picture I am
95 esp. Ar. Eq. 801-9; cf. V. 669-79, 960-1.
96 This point is explored at length in McGlew (2002: 86-111), which focuses on Aristophanes’ Knights and
Cleon’s desire to control the dēmos. See also Wohl (2002) and Scholtz (2004) on the politics of
domination latent in conceptualizing politicians as erastai.
97 So in Aristophanes we find explicit comparisons between the contributions of new politicians and oldstyle
patrons of the dēmos. In the Knights, for instance, the Sausage-seller uses metaphors of food
consumption to compare his deeds to Themistocles: Ar. Eq. 810-19 with Anderson (1989: 15-16), Marr
(1996). As Davidson (1993: 57-62) explores, the comparison, and implicit contrast, with past public
officials signal how unjust the New Politicians’ patron-like redistributions were thought to be.
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