BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
of a few select magistrates, nobody could be punished thereafter for any crime committed
during the Thirty’s reign and the ensuing civil war. 15
The ‘amnesia’ sworn by the Athenians was a means of communally forgetting the
horrors committed during the Thirty’s reign; and in other respects, too, the Athenians
tried to forget or undo the period of oligarchy under the Thirty. 16 But, as Plato’s Republic
obliquely evinces, the oligarchs’ legacy lived on. Decades later speakers in court still
brought up their opponents’ involvement in the events of 404/3 as important evidence
that they thought should have continuing relevance. 17 Members of the cavalry, which
had actively cooperated with the Thirty, were resented. 18 Likewise, the good or bad of
someone’s actions was often measured against the Thirty’s example. So, in a prosecution
speech at a dōrodokia trial, one speaker frames his opponent’s bribery in terms of the
Thirty’s heinous actions. 19 We might say that in the decades after the Peloponnesian
War, political behavior was reconfigured in the shadow of the Thirty, as the oligarchs
became an anti-type against which public officials were measured. 20
15 The amnesty applied to all Athenians except the Thirty, their successors the Ten, the Ten supervisors of
the Piraeus, and the Eleven; any of these latter would have been covered by the amnesty had they submitted
their official accounts, but few likely did so (AP 39.6). Carawan (2002) says that the amnesty only applied
to those who were atimoi at the time, but see the cogent reply by Joyce (2008) who reinstates the orthodox
view that the amnesty was about general political forgiveness. See further Loraux (1997), Wolpert (2001),
Ober (2005: 171-82).
16 Demosthenes records that all court decisions from the Thirty’s reign were deemed invalid (Dem. 24.56),
and in 402/1 the properties confiscated by the Thirty were sold by the poletai if not to their original owners
(many of whom had been excecuted), then often to their owners’ neighbors: SEG 16.120-1, 32.161;
38.149, 41.100=Athenian Agora XIX part 2; see also Walbank (1982) for text and discussion. Xen. Hell.
2.4.38 also notes the return of possessions to their owners after the peace.
17 See, for example, the accusations found passim in Lysias 16, 25, fr. 9 (Eryximachus); Lys. 31.12-14
condemns the Athenian Philon simply for not actively opposing the Thirty.
18 Cf. Lys. 16.8, 26.10. On the cavalry’s involvement in the Thirty’s reign, see Bugh (1988: 120-53),
Krentz (1982: 116-17), and Németh (2006: 86-90).
19 Lys. 28.14, discussed in greater detail below; cf. Lys. 25.30.
20 Similarly, in 411/0 less than a decade earlier, the oligarchy of the Four Hundred had set a precedent for a
number of the Thirty’s measures, including vitiating the power of the jury courts (Thuc. 8.67, AP 29.4) as
well as exiling, imprisoning and executing citizens (Thuc. 8.70.2; cf. Andoc. 2.13). Again, though, the
Thirty in particular became a powerful anti-type in democratic politics in the early fourth century, and it
was the latter oligarchy, not the former, that was continually evoked in public discourse. For this reason I
132