BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Five
corrupting through promises, this earlier law probably outlawed only taking bribes;
effectively, it was a law against dōrodokia.
Just as important as what the law does say, what the law does not say tells us
much about its legislative import and history. One curious feature of the wording of the
law as we have it is that the verbs lack a direct object: the regulation forbids anyone from
‘taking’ (lamba/nh|) or ‘giving’ (didw| ~) or ‘freely promising’ (e0paggello/menoj) to the
detriment of the dēmos or any of the citizens, but it is unspecified what is given, taken, or
promised in each case. This is less of a problem for a verb like dido/nai (give), which can
be used absolutely without any expressed object, but for lamba/nein (take) and
e)pagge/llesqai (promise unasked) the lack of a direct object requires explanation. 43 We
might emend the text to include a direct object (e.g. ti or dw=ra), but it is not at all clear
how an entire word could have dropped out of the text, nor is it clear that an object would
regularly have been inferred from these verbs in context. 44 Why, then, would the
Athenians have omitted an object in the wording of this law?
This problem disappears if we remember that the law as we have it is actually a
redrafting—and, I argue, an explicit redefinition—of an earlier law which included the
older meaning of atimia. Keeping in mind that the original law would have been drafted
before the mid-fifth century, the verb used to describe the offense probably would have
been de/xesqai (“receive in exchange for something bad”), not lamba/nein (“take”). As
43
Didonai without a direct object: e.g. Hom. Il. 9.37, 24, 529, Od. 1.348, 7.35; Hes. WD 354-5. See LSJ
s.v. lamba/nw II.1a,h and e)pagge/llw A.4.
44
So MacDowell (1990: 337 ad Dem. 21.113) is rightly dubious. Of the two alternatives, dw=ra is the
more likely omission, as it was consistently used in public documents concerning dōrodokia: cf. Dem.
24.150, AP 55.5, IG ii² 1183.8. Further, it is more likely that dw=ra was understood from context than that
it dropped out of the text, as most critics tacitly accept in their alignment of the law against dōrodokia with
the graphē dōrōn process. These scholars do not offer why dw=ra was not expressed in the original law,
but see further below for reasons why the omission might make sense.
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