BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
to roughly 30 years of pay for public office: enough to be a strong deterrent to any
official who might tamper with the tribute, yet probably also enough to repay, and then
some, whatever sum had gone missing in the first place. 30 Accordingly, in a period when
the Athenians were anxious over suspected dōrodokia involving the tribute, the
employment of a monetary fine signaled that within the law the Athenians were framing
this new type of dōrodokia as both misconduct and mismanagement of funds.
This reconstruction must remain speculative, but it seems warranted by the actual
monetary fines which were meted out in the fifth and fourth centuries. We do not know
for how much Eurymedon was fined—nor do we know whether his fellow stratēgoi
Sophocles and Pythodorus were likewise fined 31 —but it is significant that the fines for
Phormio, the Clinias decree, the Assessment decree, and perhaps Eurymedon were for a
fixed amount: 10,000 drachmas. 32 By contrast, fourth-century sources describe the
30
In the fifth century, Councilors were normally paid 5 obols per day (6 obols=1 drachma; 6000
drachmas=1 talent). By comparison, in a public works project from the late fifth century, unskilled workers
were paid 3 obols a day, skilled workers 1 drachma (cf. IG i² 373-4).
31
Most likely they were sentenced to death: Hansen (1975: 36 and numbers 7-9), Hamel (1998: 144)
contra the standard account, which follows our sources in saying that Sophocles and Pythodorus were
given the explicit punishment of exile. Thucydides’ account of the trial, followed verbatim in only this
respect by Philochorus, says that Sophocles and Pythodorus were ‘punished with exile’ (fugh= | e)zhmi/wsan,
Thuc. 4.65.3; cf. fugh= | zhmiwqh=nai, Philochorus FGrH 328 F127). Yet, as MacDowell (1978: 255)
reminds, the Athenians used exile as an explicit punishment only for unintentional homicides and
sometimes for treason trials; the majority of ‘exiles’, like those implicated in the mutilation of the Herms,
were actually self-imposed, when a citizen refused to stand trial and was convicted (and often sentenced to
death) in absentia.
In fact, nowhere else is exile—instead of atimia—attested as a punishment for dōrodokia. When
we do find ‘exile’ cropping up in dōrodokia trials, it is because a citizen voluntarily went into exile rather
than stood trial. As Hansen (1975: 36) documents, sources indicate that the accused in an eisangelia was
‘exiled’ when actually a capital punishment had been commuted to exile. So, for instance, although the
ambassadors Andocides, Epicrates, Eubulides, and Cratinus were condemned to death in absentia (Dem.
19.277-80), Philochorus says that they were punished with exile (e)fuga/deusan, Philochorus FGrH 328
F149); Philocrates, too, was condemned to death in absentia (Aeschin. 2.6, cf. fuga/j, Aeschin. 3.79). Cf.
Isoc. 16.45, Xen. Hell. 5.4.19, Aeschin. 3.171, Lyc. 1.93. It should be noted that Thucydides may have
intentionally masked the agency involved in the exile of Sophocles and Pythodorus in order to reinforce his
point that the arrogance of the dēmos was once again at fault (cf. Thuc. 4.65.4).
32
Phormio’s fine is reported as 100 mnae, which is equivalent to 10,000 drachmas. Although it does not
significantly affect my argument, I suspect that, given the identical fines of the Clinias and Assessment
decrees, Phormio’s penalty was a fixed amount, not a tenfold fine. Androtion writes simply that Phormio
268