BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua
BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua
Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two political services—in short, trafficking in decrees, laws, honors, and policies. 102 Cause and effect are somewhat muddled here—did Cleon first befriend the dēmos and then begin to profit from it, or was it the other way around?—but the difference is crucial. In the first instance, we are led to believe that Cleon was corrupted by power gained from his newly acquired mass support; in the second, Cleon’s corrupt activity was constituted by his courting of the masses. There are good reasons for thinking that the latter occurred, that is, that Cleon’s new practice of politics was inherently considered corrupt and that, in fact, it was plied through money. 103 First, we should note that political alliances do not spring up ex nihilo; some kind of reciprocal relation is needed in order to leverage political support. For the old-school public speakers, this relation readily appeared in the form of philia; for Cleon, who had renounced his friendships, at first there would have been no such basis for establishing and organizing mass support. Cleon required an ersatz philia, some kind of relational glue to enable him to open up political access to a broader swath of the public. I suggest that this glue entailed what his opponents called dōrodokia; because Cleon’s politicking forged new patterns of social ties within the practice of politics, the monies used to negotiate those ties were deemed illegitimate by opponents. Accordingly, Cleon was called a dōrodokos. 102 Note how insults of the New Politicians typically came in the form of epithets signaling the politician’s associations with trade, i.e. that he was profiting from his politicking. Cf. Cleon the tanner (e.g. Eq. 44, Nu. 581), Hyperbolus the lamp-maker (Eq. 1316, Nu. 1065, Pax 690), Cephalus the potter (Ec. 248-53), Aristoxenus the needle-seller (Pl. 175 with scholiast), and the catalogue of politicians at Knights 129-45 with Sommerstein (1981: 150-1 ad loc.). This became a common motif in Comedy: Jackson (1919) collects the evidence, while Connor (1971: 152-8) helpfully points out the potential class tensions inherent in calling someone a ‘peddler’ or ‘manufacturer’. 103 That rhētores received a misthos was later taken for granted: Ar. Plut. 377-9, 567-70; Pl. Phdr. 257c-d; Aeschin. 2.180, 3.173; Dem. 19.246; Hyp. 3.3, 4.28. Cf. APF 518-19. 121
Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two Let us reframe the issue of access from the perspective of a relatively poor Athenian who, in the Cimonian system of patronage, would have lacked the philoi needed to pass a proposal on his own in the Assembly. One way to overcome such social distance would have been to create and leverage a similar relational tie through money: by simply paying a public speaker to make a proposal, a citizen could potentially tap into that speaker’s network of philoi or, better yet, his clout with the Assembly. Whereas this kind of practice would have been antithetical to the aims of the old style of politics— because it gave political authority to someone other than a local patron—and understandably would have been viewed as the corruption of the friendships that were the foundation of that system, for Cleon and the New Politicians money for political services would have been less problematic. Indeed, it naturally would have bonded politician and citizen into the desired kind of reciprocal relationship, albeit one between two otherwise complete strangers. Note how the accusation of dōrodokia here does double-duty both as a descriptive claim, as we have traced, and as a conceptual lens for understanding Cleon’s actions. Precisely because Cleon’s political support came from the masses, not his philoi, the content of his ties to his supporters would have been arms-length: the same kind of tie frequently found in commercial markets. In this sense, that a commercial misthos was used to characterize how Cleon’s relationship was negotiated only signaled how, from the perspective of old-style politicians, Cleon’s political friends were closer to commercial transactors than actual social relations like philoi. Yet the illegitimacy of these relations was also signaled by the accusation of dōrodokia itself; it was precisely by delegitimizing 122
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Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two<br />
Let us reframe the issue of access from the perspective of a relatively poor<br />
Athenian who, in the Cimonian system of patronage, would have lacked the philoi<br />
needed to pass a proposal on his own in the Assembly. One way to overcome such social<br />
distance would have been to create and leverage a similar relational tie through money:<br />
by simply paying a public speaker to make a proposal, a citizen could potentially tap into<br />
that speaker’s network of philoi or, better yet, his clout with the Assembly. Whereas this<br />
kind of practice would have been antithetical to the aims of the old style of politics—<br />
because it gave political authority to someone other than a local patron—and<br />
understandably would have been viewed as the corruption of the friendships that were the<br />
foundation of that system, for Cleon and the New Politicians money for political services<br />
would have been less problematic. Indeed, it naturally would have bonded politician and<br />
citizen into the desired kind of reciprocal relationship, albeit one between two otherwise<br />
complete strangers.<br />
Note how the accusation of dōrodokia here does double-duty both as a descriptive<br />
claim, as we have traced, and as a conceptual lens for understanding Cleon’s actions.<br />
Precisely because Cleon’s political support came from the masses, not his philoi, the<br />
content of his ties to his supporters would have been arms-length: the same kind of tie<br />
frequently found in commercial markets. In this sense, that a commercial misthos was<br />
used to characterize how Cleon’s relationship was negotiated only signaled how, from the<br />
perspective of old-style politicians, Cleon’s political friends were closer to commercial<br />
transactors than actual social relations like philoi. Yet the illegitimacy of these relations<br />
was also signaled by the accusation of dōrodokia itself; it was precisely by delegitimizing<br />
122