BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

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Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three plunder the city, on the grounds that his own financial outlays provided consistent revenue for the treasury; rather than endanger the city, he endured numerous dangers on its behalf. 62 In an attempt to distinguish himself from the elites who plundered the city, providing bads for goods, the defendant thus presents himself as anything but the Thirty’s anti-type: he was no greedy dōrodokos like the oligarchs. In place of their anti-type, he substitutes a model of citizenship predicated largely on financial obligations. His own ‘goods’ to the community are explicitly financial outlays, and when he describes the reciprocity he enjoys with the city, he underscores that he is owed a return precisely for the steady revenue he has provided. 63 The precise reason why he should be emulated, he claims, is that he does not covet public property, but rather spends his own money on the people (tw=n me\n u(mete/rwn mh\ e)piqumh/swsi, ta\ de\ sfe/tera au)tw=n ei)j u(ma=j a)nali/skwsin, Lys. 21.15), a refrain which recurs throughout his speech (Lys. 21.12, 17, 22; cf. 21.23). He is the sort of person who benefits the polis by being frugal in private and generous in public (Lys. 21.16), constantly providing maximal revenue for the polis. And it is precisely because of this expenditure that he considers himself to have justice on his side. 64 The benefit he provided, however, was not some indescript civic ‘good’, but a specific, quantified financial outlay; in this sense, the civic obligation itself is 62 Plundering the city: Lys. 21.13, 14. Danger: kindu/nouj u(pe\r u(mw=n kekinduneukw/j, Lys. 21.11; cf. 21.3, 24, 25. 63 He refers to the entire catalogue of liturgies as his way of “doing the city such great goods” (tosau=ta a)gaqa\ ei)rgasme/noj th\n po/lin, Lys. 21.11; cf. po/sa t\hn po/lin eu} pepoihke/nai, Lys. 21.8). Outlining further the reciprocal return he expects for the exceptional amount spent on the polis, the speaker emphasizes the language of gift exchange (cf. dwrea/n, a)nti tou/twn par’ u(mw=n labei=n, lamba/nein, decai/mhn, a)xa/rista, Lys. 21.11-12). Cf. Lys. 21.13-14. 64 Lys. 21.12. He subsequently reprises this notion in claiming that, because of his public benefactions, the people should rightly spare him: Lys. 21.17. 155
Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three ‘financialized’, just as we saw in Aristophanes’ Wealth. The defendant signals this financialization in two ways: he enumerates the costs of every one of his liturgies, and he asks the jury to think of how much revenue in money his services brought the city. First, every single public service is given a numerical price: 2,000 drachmas here, 5,000 drachmas there, 6 talents over one period of time, 30 mnae and 40,000 drachmas over another. Had the jurors been keeping a running tab in their minds, they would have discovered that the defendant had spent 63,600 drachmas—the colossal sum of 10.5 talents—in doing ‘good’ for the city. Elsewhere, too, he refers to his money (xrh/mata, Lys. 21.13, 21) and the specifically financial value it holds for the polis (esp. Lys. 21.12- 13). Such enumeration of expenses and value is perhaps understandable in the context of financial outlays, but the defendant also alludes to the quantifiable revenue his services brought back for the community. When describing his performance of the trierarchy, he asks how much ‘bad’ his deeds wrought for the city’s enemies, how much ‘good’ it did the polis itself; but he prefaces both of these questions by asking, above all, how much money (xrh/mata) a ship decked out like his brought in as revenue. 65 Although the defendant never signals that a certain total amount of public revenue and private expenditure would justly merit an acquittal—in this sense, there was ultimately no ‘price’ 65 Kai/toi ou3tw pareskeuasme/nhn trih/rh po/sa po/sa oi1esqe a)nhlwke/nai a)nhlwke/nai xrh/mata xrh/mata; xrh/mata h2 po/sa tou\j polemi/ouj ei)rga/sqai kaka/ kaka/; kaka/ h2 po/sa th\n po/lin eu eu} eu pepoihke/nai; Lys. 21.8. This language returns later in the speech with the antithesis of eu} peponqo/taj…eu} pepoihko/twn, Lys. 21.22. Both passages pick up on contemporary public decrees honoring those who “do the polis well” (eu} poi/ein): e.g. IG i 3 80.9 (421/0 BCE); IG i 3 174.6 (c.420 BCE); IG i 3 102.9 (410/9 BCE); see discussion at Veligianni-Terzi (1997: 198- 200). What is remarkable about this echo is that, in the fifth century at least, this formula appears only in decrees honoring foreigners with either citizenship or the proxeny. The earliest secure attestation of such praise in a decree honoring a citizen dates to the mid-fourth century: IG ii 2 1188.15-16 (mid-C4); cf. IG ii 2 196.13-14 (353/2 BCE). It is possible, then, that the defendant in Lysias 21 was consciously picking up on his perceived outsider status and, with reference to his good deeds, seeking re-integration into the moral community of the dēmos. 156
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BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam
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© Copyright by Kellam McChesney Co
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legislating dōrodokia. Rather than
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encouragement that made me crazily
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and long-lasting patience were crit
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Athenian dōrodokia
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BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

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