BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
source posits that the Thirty committed these injustices in order to gain money and satisfy
their greed. Lysias, for example, reasons that the Thirty may have done a number of
things in the name of bettering the constitution, but in fact they simply wanted money,
and he was not alone in his estimation. 23
Yet an equally damning reason for these sources’ focus on money might stem
from the use to which some of that money was put: namely, to pay the Spartan guard that
the Thirty had hired to support and protect the oligarchy. Xenophon explicitly makes this
connection, and it is tempting to follow him on this point. 24 After all, the Spartan guard
had reportedly been instrumental in arresting Athenians before their execution, disarming
those who were not part of the 3,000, and compelling the 3,000 to condemn the
Eleusinians so that the Thirty could seize their property. 25 On this view, just as much as
injustice was a means to acquiring more money, money was a means to injustice—indeed
a very symbol of that injustice.
Whether in taking from the polis or in harming the polis for their own profit, the
Thirty’s desire for money entailed engaging in negative reciprocity, providing bads for
goods to the Athenian people. In pointing to the Thirty’s purported greed, therefore,
contemporary sources called attention to just how problematic the oligarchs’ relationship
to the rest of the city really was: they essentially only ‘took’ from the city, providing
23 Lys. 12.6-7; cf. Xen. Hell. 2.3.16, 21, 43. See further Balot (2001: 220-2) and Lys. 12.5, 12.6, 12.11,
12.83, 12.93, 25.18; Xen. Hell. 2.3.21-2, cf. 2.4.40-2; AP 35.4; Diod. 14.4.4-5, 5.5-7. On the greed and
financial crimes of the Thirty, see also Dillery (1995: 139-63), Németh (2006: 159-66).
24 On the hiring of the Spartan guard under Callibius, see Xen. Hell. 2.3.13, Diod. 14.4.3-4; cf. AP 37.2.
Xenophon reports that the guard had been hired out of the Thirty’s own pocket; yet, given the elite but by
no means super-wealthy status of the Thirty—on which see now Németh (2006: 159-66)—it is unclear
how exactly this cost would be paid for. Xen. Hell. 2.3.21 states that the oligarchs confiscated additional
property and executed metics and former citizens alike explicitly in order to pay for the guard; Lys. 12.6
probably alludes to this same reason.
25 Ostwald (1986: 488-90) points out the potential difficulties in following Xenophon’s chronology here
and in positing that the Spartan garrison was requested early in the Thirty’s rule; I nevertheless follow
Xenophon because Lysias 12.6 seems to refer to the same sequence of events. Arrests: Xen. Hell. 2.3.14.
Disarming: Xen. Hell. 2.3.20. Eleusinians: Xen. Hell. 2.4.9-10, Diod. 14.32.4.
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