BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
What was this anti-type exemplified by the Thirty? As Ryan Balot perceptively
details, critics of the Thirty consistently condemned the oligarchs’ lawlessness and greed,
in effect likening them to omnivorous tyrants. 21 In the first place, the Thirty became sole
masters of the polity, just like tyrants, and were later castigated for using political
institutions in harmful, unjust, and undemocratic ways. They replaced the Council with
500 partisan members, and, in later limiting the franchise to 3,000, not only arrogated the
dēmos’ authority to determine who should become a citizen, but effectively transformed
the Assembly into a partisan body, as well. The effectiveness of the courts was vitiated:
public accountability, granted under Ephialtes’ reforms, was removed, and the Thirty
began executing citizens by circumventing the courts and holding trials in the Council of
500. After the franchise was limited, this circumvention became moot, for a law was
passed allowing the oligarchs to execute without trial anybody who was not one of the
3,000. Thus, although the Thirty began favorably by prosecuting sykophants,
embezzlers, and bribe-takers—reportedly much to the people’s delight—their impulse to
use political organs to strengthen their position quickly devolved into a bloody perversion
of democratic institutions. 22
Plato is sure to point out that the lawlessness of the tyrant stemmed from his
incessant, unyielding desire (erōs): in other words, precisely the same cause as his greed
and dōrodokia (Pl. Rep. 9.574e2-575a5). Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, source after
focus more on Athenian narratives of the dōrodokos ‘in the shadow of the Thirty’, not ‘in the shadow of
oligarchy’.
21 Balot (2001: esp. 220-2) on the Thirty; the comparison to tyrants appears already in Xen. Hell. 2.3.16.
Balot (2001: 234-48) provides a particularly compelling reading of Plato’s Republic within the context of
contemporary Athenian conceptions of greed. I follow his analysis in juxtaposing the Thirty with Plato’s
Republic, though ultimately I am more interested in Plato’s depiction of the dōrodokos (qua a greedy
official).
22 Council: AP 35.1. Ephialtes’ reforms and the courts: AP 35.2. Jury courts: AP 35.2 with Bonner (1926:
213-15). Execution without trial: Xen. Hell. 2.3.14, 17, 21; AP 37.1. Favorable response from dēmos: AP
35.3; cf. Xen. Hell. 2.3.12, Lys. 12.5, 25.19.
133