BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
29.14). The difference is a subtle yet crucial one, for both men are now presented less as
potential oligarchs who might defect from the polity, than as elites defecting on their
explicitly financial obligations to the city. In other words, the conceit of profiting ‘at the
city’s expense’ signals a different kind of failed political reciprocity, one focused on
profiteering elites more generally, not necessarily oligarchic public officials specifically.
From Financial Obligations to Financialized Obligations:
The shift from Ergocles’ oligarchic negative reciprocity to Philocrates’ failure to
make good on his financial obligations to the community—both framed in terms of
dōrodokia ‘at the city’s expense’—suggests a precarious relationship between the
Athenian community and its elite members in the decades after the Thirty. Even if the
possibility of oligarchy—that is, complete elite defection—was a dead issue after the
stain left by the Thirty, the Athenians nevertheless had anxieties that elites might defect
on their financial obligations to the community, precisely the area where their
participation was needed most. Although Athens’ elite citizens might not have wished to
become outsiders to the moral community of the dēmos, as the Thirty had done, they
nevertheless might have wished to keep their money in a sense ‘outside’ the reach of the
community.
This anxiety was particularly acute in the early fourth century, for contemporary
sources frequently insinuate that the wealthy were not giving back to the community as
much as they should. 40 Irrespective of how elites like Ergocles or Philocrates had
acquired their fortunes, they were condemned for not spending it in the proper way, that
40 Cf. Ar. Pl. 352-90, Isoc. 8.125, 127; Lys. 18.18, 22.14, 25.26, 25.30, 26.22, 27.9, 27.21, 28.1, 30.28;
Ober (1989: 233-6) provides a helpful discussion. On the problem of liturgy evasion, see especially
Gabrielsen (1986), Christ (1990; 2006: 143-204).
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