BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
of this character corruption (diafqei/rei) as wealth and poverty (Pl. Rep. 4.421d1-4). 1 He
consequently devotes considerable attention in the dialogue to how to separate the
guardians from wealth, poverty, and commerce lest they be corrupted by the taint of
money. 2
In many respects, the dōrodokos of the Republic is strikingly familiar to a modern
audience used to pictures of venal politicians who seek rents out of a desire for money or
power. Although Monoson (2000: 127) astutely points out that the Republic’s policy
recommendations—essentially separating the public and private spheres completely so
that they can never mix—mark a considerable departure from democratic policy reforms,
like the institution of accountability or rotation of office, it should be noted that Plato’s
vision of a complete separation of private and public actually represents the logical,
though radical, extension of contemporary anti-corruption reforms. The philosopher
comes off as one of the first advocates of completely removing the market from politics.
But if in Plato’s dōrodokos we can detect the seed of modern depictions of venal
politicians, it is striking just how far removed the greedy, money-loving dōrodokos of the
Republic is from the disobedient figure we encountered in the previous chapter.
Certainly, when Creon asserts that money perverts men’s minds so that they take to evil
actions (Soph. An. 297-301), we can detect some affinity to Plato’s sentiment. Yet for
Creon, as we saw, money serves as an explanation for only a single incident; he may
lambaste the power of money to achieve discrete aims, but nowhere does he suggest that
1 Along the same lines, elsewhere in Plato wealth is contrasted with virtue (aretē): cf. Pl. Rep. 421d, 591d,
Leg.742e, 705b, 893c, 836a, 919b; Arist. Pol.1273a37-38.
2 Pl. Leg. 9.875a-e similarly posits that self-interest can corrupt even the most just of characters; cf. Pl. Leg.
3.691c-d, 4.713c-d, 9.875a. This point comes out most forcefully in Socrates’ discussion of the Hesiodic
races and their corruption over time (Pl. Rep. 8.547a-b, cf. 4.415a-b). There, the mixing of like and unlike
metals—the races of gold, silver, bronze, and iron—constitutes a form of political degeneracy that leads to
subsequent degradations in political constitution as individuals and society are increasingly ruled by
desires, not reason (Pl. Rep. 8.547a-53e). See Irwin (1995: 281-97) and Balot (2001: 246-7).
127