BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
particular exchange as the cause of some normative violation. Whether or not an
exchange really did cause the violation is beside the point, I argue, because accusing
someone of bribery was a particular mode of Athenian politics. In this sense, it would
have mattered little to the Athenians whether Timagoras’ actions as ambassador were
caused by, specifically, the dōra he received from the King; all that would have mattered
was that he had failed to advocate Athens’ interests enough.
Accordingly, we can see how discrete claims that bribery had been committed
could be linked up with broader political narratives about bribery and the democracy.
This is the value of the ‘potential trajectory’ represented by Timagoras’ bribery. By
weighing whether or not Timagoras’ actions should be deemed legitimate, the Athenians
transformed an accusation of bribery into a constitutive part of public discourse. As will
be outlined in Chapter One, individual accusations of bribery framed a bribe-giver or
bribe-taker in terms of a broader social type, the dōrodokos or ‘corrupt man’. By casting
an offending individual as a stereotype, each accusation of bribery thus negotiated broad
public norms structuring who the dōrodokos was and what role he should play in the
democracy.
For his contemporaries, Timagoras qua a dōrodokos was an example of a bad
friend, a man who betrayed his friend and fellow ambassador Leon for money and the
company of others. Timagoras was thus prosecuted in part because he refused to room
with his fellow ambassador and because he followed the Theban ambassador Pelopidas’
counsel in all matters (Xen. Hell. 1.35). As Demosthenes clearly indicates, these two
accusations were conceptually linked, for both represented the breaking of a “compact”
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