BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
political agents. These clauses shifted the focus from accountability in general to
accountability to the dēmos as a whole. As such, they indicate that the Athenians were
especially concerned about actively enforcing their political authority so that officials
consistently complied and acted not simply for themselves, but especially for some
greater good. Further, both measures seem to have configured the dōrodokos in the same
way as an insider who must be cast out of the moral community of the polis. In short,
these early attempts at implementing the democratic hallmark of public accountability
were forged through a desire to rectify the disobedience of the dōrodokos.
This shift from general accountability to informal public accountability was
formalized with Ephialtes’ reforms in 462/1. Although the substance of these reforms is
still a bit murky, Ephialtes almost surely transferred the procedures for holding officials
accountable—the euthyna and probably the eisangelia process as well—from the
Areopagus to the Council of 500 and the jury courts for the former, the Assembly for the
latter. 18 To be sure, these reforms do not seem to have been ‘about’ dōrodokia per se.
Still, the next chapter will illuminate the important role dōrodokia did play in
contemporary public debates about the substance of the reforms. We can note here that
with the reforms the jury courts and Assembly became the new authoritative domains for
judging dōrodokia by public officials. Yet it would take a while before such public
accountability became standardized; as we will now see, the standardization of
institutions for public accountability emerged from the very ways in which the Athenians
articulated a space for addressing new kind of dōrodokia.
18 For an overview of Ephialtes’ reforms, see especially Humphreys (1983: 242-7), Ober (1989: 77-8),
Hansen (1991: 36-7), and see Chapter Seven below. More detailed examinations can be found in Hignett
(1952: 193-213), Wallace (1974; 1985: 83-7), Ostwald (1986: 30-42), Carawan (1987), Raaflaub (2007).
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