BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Four
19.223), would come only by abstaining from dōra. To receive money from Philip,
therefore, would have entailed losing honor from the people and even rejecting the city’s
values in order to benefit its enemies, as Aeschines had done. 79 It is ironic, then, that the
same weighing of civic honors against monies from corruption would later prove
Demosthenes’ downfall in the Harpalus Affair.
Although he mentions this only in passing, it is crucial that the ultimate guarantor
of trust and justice in Demosthenes’ vision of Athens was the currency of public honor
and recognition. Without this glue binding elites to the straight and proper course of
justice, they might have strayed onto a treasonous course, like Aeschines did, and bring
the utmost ruin upon the city. Given the pronounced threat of stasis and the distrust it
engendered, we can see how at this time the Athenians began to rely more heavily on
both their laws and system of public honors, qua sanctions and incentives, to keep elites
pursuing the community’s interests. This is one reason why contemporary accusations of
dōrodokia were comprised of arguments from ethos and pathos, not logos. The
opportunity for winning timē proved a powerful carrot for the wealthy, yet this
inducement was necessary to help protect against their immediate defection. The
prospect of winning public honor encouraged elites to act justly, in the sense of
privileging the honor of the democracy, and thereby to reinforce what were then thought
to be dangerously weak bonds of trust among citizens.
79 Note how Demosthenes earlier accuses Aeschines of being a “noble gentleman and just (ka)gaqo\j kai\
di/kaioj) to that man [sc. Philip] while a traitor to you” (Dem. 19.110). The orator’s choice of epithets here
is significant, for Aeschines is thought to exhibit the civic virtue of kalokagathia, which by this period
could be considered the virtue of an ideal citizen: e.g. Dem. 18.93, 278 and generally Ober (1989: 260-1).
Yet in that case it is extraordinarily troubling that Aeschines is just to Philip while being a traitor to the
Athenians, for he effectively pursues the civic ideals of justice and virtue but only insofar as they benefit
Athens’ enemy Philip. In other words, Demosthenes here underscores how Aeschines pursues civic ideals
only to the extent that they harm, not help the polis. Likewise, as we saw above, the leaders of Pydna were
thought to have sought out public gifts (dwreai/) not from the city, but from Philip in exchange for
betraying the city (Dem. 20.63).
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