BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
tribute paid by the allies, had taken its toll on the Athenian treasury. 9 The result, as
contemporary literary sources dramatically illustrate, was that Athenians were acutely
aware that they did not have as much money as they used to. 10
While having less money surely might incline an Athenian to focus more intently
on financial recovery, it is less clear how economic losses would by themselves shift how
he thought about dōrodokia, economic obligations, public office and the like. Such a
broad cultural shift suggests that the important factor here was the social meaning of the
monies lost: how they had been lost, who had lost them, what they had signified and
what, by contrast, their absence now signaled. Only by grasping this social meaning can
we make sense of the fact that, elsewhere in the Republic, Plato groups dōrodokia
together with crimes like theft, burglary, temple robbery, and blackmail (Pl. Rep. 9.575b-
c), in other words, with outright stealing. Such crimes were financial (and sometimes
violent) in nature, but for Plato they shared one additional feature: they were all also the
crimes of a tyrant, a man of most evil character (cf. to\n ka/kiston, Pl. Rep. 576b3). The
dōrodokos thus acquired distinct political significance, as well—he was a thief just like a
tyrant—and tracing how this particular meaning came to be assigned to him requires that
we examine not just Athens’ economic circumstances, but also her changed political and
social environment in the early fourth century.
Plato’s association of dōrodokia with tyrants was not by chance, for the image of
a tyrant evoked the memory of oligarchs, specifically the oligarchic Thirty who had
9 Strauss (1986: 48-52), Burke (1990), French (1991: 31).
10 To take but a single anecdote, in 399 BCE Athens had difficulty paying back a mere two talents to
Boeotia (Lys. 30.22). Cf. Hell. Oxy. 17.4, Lys. 19.11, Ar. Pl. and Ec. passim. See Ober (1985: 17-19) and
especially David (1984) on Aristophanes, Fuks (1972, 1977) on Isocrates and Plato, respectively.
Although Athens was able to recover somewhat with the Second Athenian League in the 370’s and 360’s,
this state of affairs continued at least through the end of the Social War in 355: in his Poroi, or Ways and
Means (355 BCE), Xenophon remarks how contemporary politicians still blamed poverty for Athens’
imperialistic needs (Xen. Por. 1.1).
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