BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
were managed by smaller, more short-lived groups of leaders at the top. 90 In this way,
the social ties that characterized these boards—and, more broadly, how deliberative
politics was conducted—were closer to depersonalized arms-length ties. 91
A second way in which the public sphere became more depersonalized was
through the standardization of practices within institutional bodies. Such a shift could
have had a significant impact on the social character of the space in which those practices
were conducted. As we will see in detail in Chapter Six, the processes for holding public
officials accountable were standardized at the end of the fifth century; this meant that all
public officials had to go through the exact same process of appearing before financial
examiners (logistai), then examiners (euthynoi). 92 Likewise, in the first third of the
century, the selection of jurors and magistrates was routinized with increasingly complex
sortition processes. 93 One effect of such routinization was to ensure that citizens
underwent the same process, meaning that no one individual would be given more or less
fair treatment. This same impetus underpins the standardization of public honors in terms
of the language or phrases used as well as, later in the century, the frequency with which
90 A distinct yet analogous shift can be detected in how citizens were praised publicly by the community.
Beginning around 412, abstract nouns and adjectives that marked membership in a broad corporate group—
i.e. those desiring the dēmos’ praise—supplanted more individualized forms of honor: Whitehead (1993:
47) with sources. Certainly these abstract forms of praise were used in reponse to oligarchic sentiments as
a way of distinguishing between ‘us’ and ‘them’, democrats and oligarchs; yet it is striking how, in
response to the threat (and actuality) of oligarchy, the Athenians defined democracy in abstract, impersonal
terms, just as we have been tracing.
91 Note how in Plato’s Republic it is the impersonal force of rational reason which is meant to guide the
Guardians’ political decisions. Just as the Guardians were to be kept utterly separated from private
interests like money or family ties, so, too, was the justice of their decisions predicated on depersonalized
deliberation.
92 For a description of this process, see Andoc. 1.78, AP 48.3-5 and recently Efstathiou (2007).
93 AP 63-6 provides details: see also Chapter Seven below.
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