BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
this assumes that the law plays a particular role in society—namely as a force that deters
people from performing certain actions, and as the sole legitimate force in society for
doing just that—but ultimately this assumption is presumed to be trivial. Yes, the law
seems to act as a deterrent after all; and, yes, it seems reasonable to conclude that laws
are intended to be legitimate. Given these assumptions, our question about the use of the
death penalty against Timagoras becomes, “why did the Athenians place such a high
penalty on bribery? Was bribery that bad? Or was no other punishment acting as a
deterrent?”
I have reframed each of the problems of definition, intent, and the role of law in
terms of questions that might typically be posed by someone, scholar or layman, coming
across the story of Timagoras. As we will see shortly, however, these questions are
essentially dead-ends in the Athenian context for they incorporate theoretical assumptions
that simply do not apply to ancient Athens—ironically, I would argue, they may not
apply to most contemporary polities, as well. 19 A more particularistic analysis is needed
for examining the Athenian case, and this dissertation aims to provide just such an
analysis. The above theoretical questions about how to approach bribery provide a
skeleton for the dissertation. Turning now to the ways in which Timagoras’ embassy
19 Finally, it should be noted that my account focuses solely on dōrodokia, which, unlike extortion,
coercion, or blackmail, was thought to have been devoid of any violence or force (bia). While I do not
deny that bribery can often be combined with these other forms of corruption, dōrodokia, as the Athenians
conceptualized it, was a discrete problem and will be treated accordingly. It was also a far more prevalent
problem, based on the relatively scarce reference made to extortion during the democracy. Note how the
practice of sycophancy, in which a citizen blackmailed another citizen by bringing a false suit against him,
was in fact depicted in the language of violence and coercion: Christ (1998) is essential here; cf. Osborne
(1985) and Harvey (1985). Yet even such blackmail was relegated to the judicial sphere and does not
appear to have carried over into other political spheres. That an official like Miltiades might extort money
was, by comparison to the frequency of dōrodokia charges, exceedingly rare: Hdt. 6.136, Corn. Nep. Milt.
7; cf. Plut. Them. 21.
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