BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
dōrodokia. Instead, we can see how clauses on dōrodokia functioned as a broad means
for the dēmos to regulate the actions of individuals in the public realm. As specific
political bodies like the Council of 500, the Assembly, and the Heliaia were created or
became newly significant, their proper domain of authority was defined through a
political oath, and the contours of the domain were asserted whenever the community
took action against someone who had broken the oath. Through configuring a legal space
for the dōrodokos, the Athenians thereby articulated the political space of the democracy.
Crucially, as suggested by the addition of clauses on dōrodokia, their members
effectively swore that that space would be inherently de-personalized to a degree: it
would be grounded in the community’s, not some individual’s interests. Inasmuch as
dōrodokia was a ready explanation for how an individual like Lycides could have
misjudged these interests, such clauses were also a powerful way for the dēmos to assert
control over its political agents. In this respect, the addition of these clauses fits in well
with other measures in the early democracy which aimed to assert and enforce the
political authority of the dēmos.
The clauses on dōrodokia in public oaths and curses were thus an extension of
Solon’s earlier legislative efforts to make public officials more accountable. Both sets of
measures stipulated that the judgments of individual political agents on the greater good
of the community could be subjected to re-evaluation by a political body with authority
within that particular domain. In the case of the graphē dōrōn, whether or not a
magistrate was deemed to have taken dōra illicitly depended in large part on how the
Areopagus Council assessed the final outcome of his actions; in the case of public oaths
and curses, it was the community as a whole that evaluated the judgments of individual
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