BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Five
flexibility, viz. every offense could be prosecuted by every process. 31 Rather, specific
legal procedures had specific meanings, and I suggest that this meaning had to be
matched with an offense.
Prior to 399, laws were publicly displayed in a somewhat chaotic fashion around
the city. Still, there was some order to this chaos, as at least the laws of Draco and Solon
were grouped together in the Stoa Basileus, probably from the time of Ephialtes. 32 After
399, this practice continued, but the centralized re-publication of the laws near the Stoa of
the Basileus listed laws according to the magistrate who presided over the trial;
moreover, many new laws were published in the area to which they applied. 33 We can
detect in both practices a common inclination to group together laws belonging to the
same space or domain. Whereas originally this space had been defined according to the
lawgiver, in the second half of the democracy the focus was on the domain of the
presiding magistrate: that is, on the domain over which he could pass authoritative
(kurios) judgments.
Not all judicial bodies were created equally at Athens: both functionally and
symbolically, juries were distinct from the Assembly, which was distinct from the
Areopagus Court. In practice this meant that different judicial bodies were differently
qualified to render judgment on a particular matter. In the creation of the homicide courts
31 On the contrary, by the end of the democracy we find complaints that the eisangelia process was being
abused by those who were prosecuting trivial offenses like hiring flute-girls at below-market price (Hyp.
4.3): see further Hyp. 1.12 with Philips (2006). That this was considered an abuse of the system strongly
suggests not only that the social meaning of legal process was differentiated, but especially that such
differentiated meaning played a role in which process would be matched with which offenses.
32 Ostwald (1986: 410) brings out this point about the haphazard location of laws throughout the city in the
fifth century. AP 7.1 says that the Solonian kyrbeis were located near the Stoa Basileus. See further
Ruschenbusch (1966: 14-22).
33 On the re-publication of the laws near the Stoa Basileus, see And. 1.82 and compare IG i 3 104.7-8
(Draco’s homicide law); Dow (1961), Rhodes (1981: 131-5; 1991: 90-1), Clinton (1982), Ostwald (1986:
513n.60, 519), Hansen (1990a). Organization according to procedure: Hansen (1991: 165) with Dem.
24.20-3, Lanni (2006: 142-8), cf. [Dem.] 46.26. Laws published throughout the city: e.g. Nikophon’s law
on the testers of silver coinage, SEG xxvi 72.45-6 (375/4 BCE).
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