BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
Pelop. 30.6). Even with the well-documented Persian custom of giving dōra to
ambassadors, then, Timagoras did not need to take any gifts. 7 He certainly did not need
to take home such an ornate couch, together with 80 cows and 80 cowherds, a litter and
attendants. So why did he?
Plutarch’s account of Timagoras’ embassy attempts to answer this question, but in
so doing it only complicates our efforts at understanding the ambassador’s motivations.
According to Plutarch, Timagoras recalled what a certain Epicrates had once said about
receiving gifts on an embassy and apparently not being punished. Presumably it was this
memory that gave Timagoras confidence in his own gift-taking with the Persian King
(Plut. Pelop. 30.7). This Epicrates had been a prominent politician in the 390’s, and here
we should understand reference to an embassy to the Persian King in the late 390’s
during the Corinthian War. 8 On the face of it, the pair had much in common. Both were
sent to draft an alliance with the King in an effort to curb the aggression of one power:
Sparta in Epicrates’ case, Thebes for Timagoras. And both, apparently, took bribes.
Plutarch’s Timagoras recalls Epicrates’ embassy ostensibly as a reminder that the
Athenians did not care if an envoy received gifts, but this is a baffling, selective reading
of the earlier embassy. Though Plutarch does not indicate this, the specific anecdote that
Timagoras purportedly recalled seems to have come from a comedy lampooning
Epicrates’ expedition to the King. There, having returned laden in dōra from the King,
7
On bribery and gifts from the Persian King, see especially Perlman (1976), Lewis (1979), and Mitchell
(1997: 111-33).
8
Epicrates is called ‘shield-bearer’, sakesfo/roj at Plut. Pelop. 30.7. Ancient scholiasts note that this was
the nickname of Epicrates because he had a big beard: schol. Ar. Ec. 71, Harpocrat. ad ’Epikra/thj. This
confirms the identification. The embassy of Epicrates and Phormisius, along with Plato Comicus’ Presbeis
can be dated to 394/3 or 393/2. The embassies of Timagoras and Epicrates are juxtaposed again in
Athenaeus 6.251b. Conceivably, both Plutarch and Athenaeus were drawing on the same source, i.e. the
third-century collector of anecdotes Hegesander, but we have no indication that Plutarch had actually read
Hegesander’s work. Epicrates’ embassy: Lys. 27.3; Plato Com. frr. 119-27; Hegesander FHG
4.414=Athen.6.251b; Athen. 6.221f, 6.251a-b.
6