BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
Legal Innovation and the dōrodokos
The Solonian graphē dōrōn examined in the previous chapter evinces the
interrelationship between political ideas and the creation of new legal and political
institutions. As we saw, Solon’s anxieties about the polity focused on the purportedly
corrupt judgments that elite officials were making. The specter of the dōrodokos thus
seems to have lurked beneath not just the creation of the graphē dōrōn, which explicitly
dealt with dōrodokia, but other related hallmarks of his reforms, including the ephesis
and eisangelia procedures, as well. This chapter extends that narrative through the
democracy by tracing how the creation of legal institutions to address dōrodokia was
intimately connected to broader reforms that shaped and reshaped the democracy. In
short, this chapter reveals, the very institutions by which democratic values were
articulated were themselves forged in opposition to dōrodokia. Just as the dōrodokos as a
social type was used to think through democratic principles, the Athenians created a
space for the dōrodokos qua a legal entity in order to think through democratic
institutions.
Decades of civil war followed Solon’s reforms until the Peisistratid tyranny took
over in the mid-sixth century. Although the Peisistratids essentially retained the laws and
institutions created by Solon—including the authority granted the archons and the
Areopagus Council—the last years under the tyrant Hippias were particularly harsh. The
Athenian people responded by driving out the Peisistratid family with Sparta’s help and,
in 507, passing Cleisthenes’ reforms, thereby formally establishing rule of the dēmos, or
democracy. In part as a reaction to the autocratic rule of the tyrants, two significant ideas
252