BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Five
What to Do with the dōrodokos?
Approaching Bribery and the Law at Athens
We have spent the past few chapters investigating the role of the dōrodokos
within Athenian public discourse: the social meaning of the space he occupied in the
community, and how this meaning, along with his defining features, changed over the
course of the democracy. Essentially this investigation has amounted to tracing the place
of the dōrodokos within the moral community of the dēmos. As we have seen, merely
describing the dōrodokos’ role within the community has entailed considering his
relationship to that community: was he an insider or an outsider? Was the civic violation
at the heart of his dōrodokia the transgression of someone who belonged, or did not
belong, in the polity? The last chapter, for example, revealed how a purported dōrodokos
like Demosthenes was considered a traitor to the city, an outsider who had made his way
into the moral community of the dēmos and thereby threatened it from within.
Throughout, we have investigated not simply who the dōrodokos was, but especially who
was allowed to make that call in the first place.
This last point is a crucial one, for descriptive claims about the moral standing of
the dōrodokos—as insider (disobedient citizen), outsider (traitor), or insider desiring to
become outsider (thief)—were always also implicit claims about what his moral standing
would or should be going forward. If Demosthenes qua a dōrodokos was inherently a
traitor, the thinking went, he would and should always be considered an outsider to the
democracy. Indeed, Dinarchus comments, it was precisely those wishing ill upon the city
who thought that Demosthenes should be allowed to live (and the city harmed), while
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