BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
entailed the intermingling of arms-length citizens with metics or foreigners who had
citizen privileges—in short, people whose interaction was not at all predicated on the
content of some civic tie. Equally by living off in the Piraeus and by taking dōra,
Demosthenes was thought to be devaluing the city’s symbolic economy of civic honor.
In rejecting the symbolic foundations of citizenship and the city itself (Din. 1.89), he
implicitly disavowed a democratic character and threatened the very ethos of the city.
The purportedly corrupt activity of other public speakers, too, was conceived as a
threat not just to the laws, but even to the character of the city. Dinarchus details, for
example, how on at least six different occasions Demosthenes was purportedly bribed to
propose actual laws or the award of honors, statues, and even citizenship (Din. 1.41-5).
This list is prefaced with a telling detail, namely, that his corrupt activity as a public
speaker made him “unworthy” (a)na/cion) of the city (Din. 1.41). The word a)na/cion,
often used of measuring the value of two different things, picks up on the exact same
symbolic measuring we have been examining: by taking dōra and cheating the system of
public honors, Demosthenes proved both that he was “unworthy” of the city’s honors,
that the values he privileged were clearly not those of the city. 76 By implication, to honor
Demosthenes with an acquittal would be tantamount to dishonoring the city itself.
76
Further, a)na/cion picks up on a verb only a few lines prior: talking about rogues like Demosthenes,
Dinarchus comments, “They have made the city more disreputable (a)docote/ran) than themselves, and
now, convicted of taking bribes against you (dw=ra kaq’ u(mw=n), they deceive you and think it worth it
(a)ciou=si a)ciou=si a)ciou=si), a)ciou=si after conduct such as this, to give you instructions (paragge/llein) on their own greed” (Din.
1.40). What Demosthenes and other corrupt traitors value is first to dishonor the city (a)docote/ran) by
privately gaining without giving back to the community and then to presume themselves sufficiently above
the law to instruct (paragge/llein, cf. supra n.63) the people on how to esteem their public ‘works’. Their
valuing of private gain (a)ciou=si) is antithetical to the city’s valuing of public outlay (a)na/cion). Such
explicit evaluation of public outlay was commonplace in this period, as is clear from two formulae from
contemporary honorific inscriptions, in which the dēmos provided a “worthy” (a/ )cion, etc.) reward or
thanks to an official who had done his job well. Honorands were either provided “very worthy thanks” (e.g
xa/ritaj...[k]ataci/aj, IG ii² 505.43 ; cf. IG ii² 423.5; restored at IG ii² 183.7, 269.10-11, 391.11-12,
392.2-3, 425.13) or were to be granted “whatever good they are deemed worthy of” (a)gaqo\n o4tou a2n
dokei= a1cioj ei]nai, IG ii² 360.75, 412.5, 424.11; cf. IG ii² 232.13, 235.2, Dem. 20.151). In the same vein,
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