BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
by the middle of our period, in the 340’s, words cognate with philotimia (“love of
pursuing honor”) “were integral to the language of achievement and reward in all
Athenian honorific decrees.” 58 By the mid-fourth century, then, specifically identified
citizens were regularly given specific rewards for specific actions in office. The honor a
citizen won through exchanging goods with the community was more closely identified
with the citizen himself. It thereby commemorated his trusted standing within the polis.
Accordingly, the preponderance of civic honors for citizens and misthos for public
office appears to have switched from the fifth to the fourth centuries, and by the time of
the last few decades of the democracy, it was the currency of symbolic honors that was
most highly prized. Simultaneous with this shift towards the more regular award of civic
honors, citizens counted more and more on receiving some sort of regular, institutional
recognition for jobs or services performed well. In other words, by the middle of the
fourth century, just as much as services, liturgies, and public outlays from citizens had
become essential for the democracy to function, the civic honors these citizens received
had become a necessary inducement for their participation in the system. 59
If in fact there was no regular misthos for public office, these honors had become
the only formal reward for services to the community; and even if there were pay for
office, the currency of honors awarded by the dēmos was manifestly more valued than
cardinal virtues and those that describe more specific actions or attitudes; and, more generally on the
language of fourth-century public honors, Veligianni-Terzi (1997: 165-227).
58 Whitehead (1983: 62, emphasis retained). Similarly, Hedrick (1999: 422-3, catalogued at 434-5) notes
that the incidence of the disclosure formula OPWS AN FILOTIMWNTAI (“so that [others] engage in the
pursuit of timē”) is heavily concentrated in inscriptions dated to around the mid-fourth century. Of 40
occurrences in the corpus of Athenian honorific decrees, he tallies, 29 date to the fourth century, and 16
come from the 330’s. Cf. Whitehead (1983: 63-4).
59 See further Domingo Gygax (forthcoming: 284-91).
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