BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Five
offense in allegedly bribing the family of a recently deceased to claim that the man had
been murdered by Demosthenes 37 :
e0a/n tij 0Aqhnai/wn lamba/nh| para/ tinoj, h@ au0to\j didw| ~ e9te/rw|, h2
diafqei/rh| tina\j e0paggello/menoj, e0pi\ bla/bh| tou~ dh/mou h@ 38 tino\j
tw=n politw~n tro/pw| h@ mhxanh~ | h| )ntiniou~n, a1timoj e1stw kai\ pai=dej
kai\ ta\ e0kei/nou.
If any Athenian should receive from another, or himself should give to the other,
or should he corrupt a few men by freely making promises, to the harm of the
people or one of the citizens in any way whatsoever, let him and his children and
property be outlawed. (Dem. 21.113)
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The law as we have it was not included in the speech first published by Demosthenes, but instead was
inserted later by a scholiast who conjectured which law Demosthenes had read out to the jury on the
occasion of his trial. As a result, doubts about the law’s authenticity have been echoed for at least a
century: Drerup (1897: 304-5), for example, assumes on Pollux’ authority that the graphē dōrōn covered
only taking bribes (Pollux 8.42). Pollux is contradicted by Lex. Seg. 237 s.v. dw/rwn grafh/, which
claims that the procedure could be used for both giving and taking bribes. In any case, Pollux’ neat
division of procedures for giving (dekasmou) and taking (dōrōn) bribes cannot be correct if [Dem.] 46.26—
which includes both—refers to the graphē dekasmou. Cf. Glotz (1904: 502-3) with refutation by Hansen
(1976: 88n.25). MacDowell (1990: 43-6) has compellingly argued in favor of the law’s authenticity.
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h2: h2 i)di/a| Westermann; kai\ i)di/a|: Reiske; h2 dia\: Iurinus; kai\ dia\ S vulg. With the exception of this one
phrase the text of the law is otherwise certain in the manuscripts that do not omit the law. The manuscript
reading e)pi\ bla/bh| tou= dh/mou kai\ dia\ tino\j tw=n politw~n clearly has to be emended: why would
giving or receiving dōra “through one of the citizens” have been a necessary condition in addition to harm
to the dēmos? Iurinus’ emendation only creates an odd antithesis between giving/receiving bribes “to the
harm of the dēmos” and “through one of the citizens.” Reiske ingeniously suggested that dia/ conceals i)di/a|,
which Westermann further changed to h2 i)di/a| tino\j tw=n politw=n. Westermann’s reading has been
standard for over a century but, as I argue here, the use of the word i)di/a| creates nonsensical Greek.
On purely philological grounds, both Westermann’s and Reiske’s reading are untenable. If i)di/a| is
taken as an adjective modifying bla/bh|, we would need a definite article before the adjective; and to take it
as an adverb, as most scholars seem to do, significantly strains the sense of the words, for we would expect
that it would then modify the offense as done ‘privately’, not that it would redundantly clarify that an
individual’s harm was ‘in private’. On legal grounds, too, the word is problematic, for it is unclear why an
offense explicitly marked out as part of the ‘private’ sphere—as i)di/oj regularly connotes: cf. Pl. Euth. 2a;
Isoc. 11.28, 32, 35; AP 59.2-3, 67.1; Dem. 18.210, 24.192-3, [Dem.] 46.26—would actually be treated as a
public offense punishable under a graphē: see especially Drerup (1897: 304), who accordingly thinks the
law spurious.
For precisely this reason, in fact, the unparalleled phrase grafa\j i)di/aj is often excised from the
law against hybris, also cited in Demosthenes’ speech against Midias. For that law as well as for yet
another law cited in the same speech (cf. i)di/aj decia\j, Dem. 21.52), MacDowell (1990: 268 ad Dem.
21.47) shrewdly posits that the word i)di/a| had originally been written next to these quoted laws in order to
indicate that they were ‘separate’ from the rest of the speech; he posits that a later scribe incorporated the
annotation into the text of each law, thus inadvertently creating textual difficulties. By the same process
i)di/a| could have entered the general law against dōrodokia, as well. When combined with what came
before, this addition would have created HIDIA, later misread as AIDIA or KIDIA and emended to
KAIDIA, as per the manuscripts’ kai\ dia/. By excising i)di/a? |, Iurinus’emendation of kai\ to h@ is clearly
correct, and we are left with a much more straightforward reading that neatly balances harm done to the
dēmos and that done to individual citizens.
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