BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
On the one hand, by taking dōra to bestow honors on others, Demosthenes
implicitly devalued the entire system of public honors: no longer could Athenians tell
which honors were well-deserved, which earned only through bribing a public speaker. 77
Such an offense was bad enough to dishonor the city, yet the gravity of the offense was
compounded by the implication of an entire network of similarly corrupt citizens.
Although Dinarchus does not explicitly accuse Demosthenes, in particular, of being part
of just such a corrupt network, the jurors certainly might have inferred as much given
Demosthenes’ purported contempt for the laws and shameful dishonoring of the city.
Other orators, for instance, were more explicit on this point, describing an entire
system of corruption, wherein those guilty of malpractice—including dōrodokia—would
bribe public speakers not to prosecute them at their audit for public office (euthyna). So
Timarchus is lambasted by Aeschines for doing damage to the city by receiving bribes
from crooked public officials trying to escape audit (Aeschin. 1.106-8). Similarly,
Aeschines describes how the law against receiving a crown before undergoing a euthyna
was first passed in reaction to bribe-givers who were consistently getting away with
crimes. Before they came up for audit, these purportedly corrupt officials would bribe a
public speaker to award them a crown. According to Aeschines, after these officials
received a crown from the dēmos, jurors refused to convict the officials at their audit lest
Dinarchus castigates Philocles for committing dōrodokia and thereby selling the “worth” (a)ci/wma) of a
public office conferred by the people (Din. 3.12).
77 Compare Demosthenes’ own castigation of those who speak in the Assembly or move resolutions after
being bribed (Dem. 23.146-7): that such men proclaim someone either good or bad (xrhsto\n kai\
ponhro/n), not on account of his character but because of the wishes of their bribe-giver, implicitly
devalues similar estimations by all public speakers. Because the Athenians cannot know which estimations
are true, which are motivated by money, their entire system of public recognition is devalued, destabilized,
and dethroned. For this reason, Demosthenes asserts, the “most wicked” class of men is that of bribed
public speakers (ponhro/taton, Dem. 23.146). For similar accusations of bribed rhētores in this period,
see Dem. 15.32, 20.132, 23.201, 24.3, 24.14-15, 24.99, 24.122, 24.123, 24.203; Aeschin. 1.106-8, 1.114-5,
1.154, 2.23, 2.93, 2.144, 2.148, 2.152, 2.154-5, 2.165, 3.58, 3.66, 3.81-2, 3.85, 3.103-5, 3.113-4, 3.129.
3.221, 3.237, 3.242. cf. Aeschin. 3.9.
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