BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
sought to destroy their city; it was, instead, the partisans of Philip, his “guests and
friends” (ce/noi kai\ fi/loi), citizens who actively abused the people’s trust in order to
betray the city (Dem. 19.294-5; cf. 18.46, 19.248).
No longer was the dōrodokos conceptualized primarily as a thief as he had been
earlier in the century; nor was the dōrodokos a solitary individual like Timagoras a
couple decades prior. 22 By 343, Demosthenes suggests, an entire network of traitors had
become dōrodokoi, threatening the very security of the city; indeed, dōrodokia shattered
the foundations of trust underlying the Athenian polis. The Athenians simply could not
trust that all their leaders were trying to ensure the people’s safety (cf. Dem. 9.64); and
when they did trust a leader, they often did not trust the right one (cf.ou1te pisteu&ein,
Dem. 19.23). 23 In Demosthenes’ vision, the Timagorean model of bribery qua treason
had been transposed into a new context in which the fear of imminent stasis gripped the
polis and ever more distrust was brewing among the citizens. 24
Demosthenes’ speech On the False Embassy reflects a notable shift from
arguments based on logos, as espoused by the defendant in Lysias 21, to those steeped in
ethos and pathos. In so doing, the orator’s narrative about Philip’s bribery brings to the
fore an assumedly pervasive distrust among the citizens, a fear that seemingly
trustworthy citizens had already sold the city’s interests—in other words, that stasis and
22 In fact, Demosthenes compares his opponent to Timagoras three times, each time insinuating that he was
a ‘bad friend’ like Timagoras: Dem. 19.191, 226, 248.
23 Indeed, it was right around this time that the oracle at Dodona warned Athens to be wary of the conduct
of her leaders and counselors, who might betray the city’s interests. On this oracle, see Dem. 18.253,
19.297-9; Din. 1.78, 98; Parke (1967: 139-41). Cf. Aeschin. 3.130. Similar oracles from the Sibyl and
Musaeus can be found in Pausanias 10.9.11, who attributes them, however, to the fifth century.
24 Cf. Isoc. 4.114-17, 167-8. Likewise, in the Third Philippic, Demosthenes rails against how dōrodokia
used to be punished, but now was commonplace and overturning the very concord (homonoia) that had
held together the city ever since the overthrow of the Thirty (Dem. 9.38-9). Here, too, he refers to
dōrodokia as a disease (cf. nenh/soken, Dem. 9.39). On the significance of homonoia as a prominent
political slogan in the fourth-century Greek world, see especially de Romilly (1972), West (1977), Funke
(1980).
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