BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
underpinning the democracy were that the dēmos should have power and, consequently,
that no single individual should have too much power. Indeed, the previous chapter
revealed how this same anxiety over a public official’s authority to make judgments
binding on the community was already nascent in Solon’s reforms and the creation of the
graphē dōrōn procedure.
Beginning with Cleisthenes, the dēmos thus defined its authority within an
increasingly broad range of political bodies and processes. All new administrative
offices were part of boards of multiples of ten (at least one official from each tribe); as
detailed in Chapter Two, the dēmos increasingly controlled political rewards in the city;
eventually the Areopagus would be stripped of its oversight abilities; and the judgment of
the people, not of some official, would be made final and authoritative in the most serious
court cases. 1 Within the newly established democracy, however, there was increasing
concern that officials might disregard their public charge or might act against the dēmos’
interests. In effect, as the democracy progressed, there was a greater anxiety that the
dōra often regularly received by officials might render them disobedient dōrodokoi.
Amid these broader institutional changes, though, it would be a long time before
the original law against dōrodokia was changed or before the dōrodokos would again
crop up in the law. Over the course of the next century, up through the first few decades
of the democracy, the Athenians instead created a series of informal, extra-legal measures
concerning dōrodokia. At the same time as the dēmos was defining its own political
authority within various institutional bodies, clauses on the illicit receipt of dōra were
added to a variety of public oaths and curses in conjunction with the performance of
1 For an overview of those institutional changes, see especially Ostwald (1986: esp. 77-83), Ober (1989:
68-82), Hansen (1991: 34-6), and Chapter Two.
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