BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
Distortion also enters into Demosthenes’ picture in his depiction of all of Philip’s dōra as
bribes, even though in some cases those dōra make more sense as financial support for a
military venture than as corrupting payments meant to benefit only a select few. In the
case of Philip’s activity in the Peloponnese, for example, his funds seem to have been
provided not to induce stasis, but to help various poleis ward off Spartan aggression. 8
Still, despite these historical ‘inaccuracies’, it is crucial that many Athenians seem
to have accepted this storyline exactly as Demosthenes and other prominent Athenians
told it. 9 In other words, Demosthenes’ picture, however inaccurate, had considerable
resonance in Athens in the latter half of the fourth century; indeed, it might be not so
much ‘inaccurate’ as representative of broader contestations of the legitimacy of Philip’s
diplomacy and the consequent significance of his expansionism. Why, then, did stories
about the rise of Philip and his diplomatic use of dōrodokia take the specific form that
they did? What was persuasive about imagining that a faction of corrupt men would
betray the city, and what did conjuring up this image gain for an orator like
Demosthenes? As this chapter examines, the image of a traitorous dōrodokos was quite
malleable during this period, so we should dig beneath its surface to uncover the hidden
factors that shaped its framework.
In order to answer these questions, let us turn to Demosthenes’ speech On the
False Embassy, in which he prosecutes his rival Aeschines for taking bribes from Philip
while they were both on an embassy to Macedon during the middle of Philip’s aggressive
8 Although Demosthenes later repeats his claim that a handful of Arcadians, Argives, and Messenians had
turned traitorous (Dem. 18.295), we have no evidence of factional struggles in these cities. To the contrary,
the historian Polybius’ defense of these purported traitors is a strong indication of Demosthenic hyperbole
here (Polyb. 18.14.6): Ryder (1994: 238-41).
9 Cf. Isoc. 5.73-5; Aeschin. 2.72-3; Dem. 2.4, 4.18, 5.12, 8.20, 8.53, 8.61-6, 9.14, 9.36-47, 9.49, 9.53, 9.63-
7. Although we cannot push this argument too far, another potential indication of the persuasiveness of
Demosthenes’ narrative is the substantial political success he enjoyed from 346 until Philip’s death, on
which period see especially Ryder (2000).
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