BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
severed beyond repair. Although the dōrodokos had misjudged and acted against the
greater good, would he do so again if given another opportunity to serve as an official?
Though he had wanted to act as if outside the moral community, could he somehow be
redeemed as an insider again? As the Athenians slowly came to realize, the answer to
this question hinged, in part, on whether or not they would continue to be offered dōra
again. It takes two to commit dōrodokia, and how the Athenians came to address bribe-
givers will be the subject of the next section.
The Rise of the Bribe-Giver: Individuals and the Public Sphere:
The legal and institutional changes detailed in the previous section carved out a
specific place for the figure of the dōrodokos. All of these measures focused on the illicit
receipt of dōra—that is, on the bribe-taker, not the bribe-giver—and the only Athenians
whose conduct was regulated by the law were, specifically, those citizens invested with
the honor of public office. 44 Though initially an elite figure, like an archon subject to an
archaic graphē dōrōn process, in the democracy the dōrodokos came to be configured as
an everyman, whether an elite stratēgos like Eurymedon or a councilman like Lycides.
In this respect, the Athenians seemed to fear that any citizen involved in politics might
become dōrodokos, someone corrupted to act or advocate against the community’s
interests. The informal and formal measures adopted at Athens thus aimed to restore
reciprocity after a purportedly corrupt official had failed to provide a proper return to the
community. By the end of the fifth century, however, there was a clear conceptual
division over how to restore this reciprocity. Earlier efforts had emphasized expulsion
from the community via outlawry or, later, death. But with the introduction of monetary
44 Thalheim (1902: 339-45; 1906: 304-9), Hansen (1975: 51-3), Carawan (1987: 173).
274