BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
works. Rather than be an engaged citizen using his money for the city’s benefit,
Demosthenes moved away from the city to the Piraeus port, where he spent his time
living in luxury amid the city’s misfortunes. 74 This lifestyle is instructively described as
“bringing shame on the city’s doxa” (kataisxu/nwn th\n th=j po/lewj do/can, Din.
1.35). What is more, the comparison to Timotheus underscores how Demosthenes then
tried to pass off his corrupt profiteering as an actual benefaction in exchange for which he
might escape conviction (Din. 1.17). 75
Implicated in this nexus of corruption and contempt for the city’s laws, therefore,
is a veritable weighing of bribes against good works. Such a weighing is familiar from
the last chapter, where we saw how, for instance, the defendant of Lysias 21 weighed his
public works against the charge of corruption. Demosthenes seems to go one step
beyond simply not using his gains for the greater good, however, for he seems to reject
the value of such a system altogether, actively preferring the corrupt currency of bribe
monies to the symbolic currency of honoring, and being honored by, the city. As we saw
in the previous section, the kinds of commercial dealings at the Piraeus in which
Demosthenes purportedly engaged were devoid of any real civic content, for they
74 trufw~n e0n toi=j th~j po&lewj kakoi=j, kai\ e0pi\ forei/ou katakomizo&menoj th_n ei0j Peiraia~
o(do&n,Din. 1.36. Cf. Din. 1.69; Aeschin. 3.209; Hyp. 5.16b. Demosthenes’ location in the Piraeus had its
own ideological significance of removal from the asty (city) of Athens, for it was the civic space of the
Piraeus which so many foreigners, traders, and foreign cults occupied. In fact, throughout the fourth
century, the Piraeus was conceptualized in just this way as some kind of other world to the city-center
itself: von Reden (1995b), Roy (1998: esp. 198-201). Demosthenes’ purported allegiance to the Piraeus
thus marked him as morally corrupt and not truly allied with the city itself: cf. Plato, Laws 705a-b, Dem.
32.10-11, Arist. Pol. 5.1303b7-12. Here, Dinarchus’ reference to the luxurious lifestyle of Demosthenes
(cf. trufw~n) also plays off of class tensions within the polis: rather than adhere to the middling,
egalitarian ideology of the polis, Demosthenes flaunts and wastes his wealth. For more on the civic
ideology of the ‘middling’ (metrios) citizen, see e.g. Ober (1989: esp. 257-9).
75 In passing off his venality as a public service, Dinarchus says, Demosthenes “instructs” the people about
what to think about his greed (peri\ th=j e(autw=n pleoneci/aj paragge/llein, Din.1.40). The verb
paragge/llein is normally used of a general giving orders (LSJ. s.v. paragge/llw II) and thus regularly
connotes a disparity in authority between two people. That Demosthenes so “commands” the people to
reinterpret his selfish gains as public benefactions only reinforces the notion that he thinks himself above
the people and the laws.
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