BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
Nowhere was this impulse more explicit than in the creation of the graphē
dekasmou, a procedure for prosecuting anyone who “bribe[d] the Heliaia or any of the
courts in Athens or the Council by giving money for the purpose of dōrodokia”
(sundeka/zh| th\n h(liai/an h2 tw=n dikasthri/wn ti tw=n 0Aqh/nhsin h2 th\n boulh\n e)pi\
dwrodoki/a| xrh/mata didou/j, [Dem.] 46.26). 60 The penalty was death. 61 The wording
of the law, with one of the earliest attested uses of the compound dōrodokia, suggests a
date in the second half of the fifth century. 62 Other scholars have dated it (shortly) after
409 on the strength of the Athēnaiōn Politeia, which records that active bribery (to\
deka/zein) began at this time, when the stratēgos Anytus was acquitted at an eisangelia on
a charge of treason after bribing the jury. 63 But we cannot take the AP literally here:
already a couple decades before Anytus was stratēgos, the Old Oligarch remarks that
much business in the Assembly and Council was conducted “through money” (a)po\
xrhma/twn, [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.3), and he suggests that juries may already have been
bribed—at the very least, the word for bribing collective bodies already existed. 64 Nor
60
Following Wolf’s emendation of the coddices’ sundika/zh| to sundeka/zh|, a common manuscript error:
cf. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.7.
61
Isoc. 8.50, Aeschin. 1.86-7. Aeschines claims that both the person who bribed (e)de/kaze) and the juror
who was bribed (e)deka/zeto) were subject to the same penalty of death, as fixed by the law (1.87), but
nowhere else is this formal penalty attested for bribed jurors. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how the
Athenians could have enforced such a law, given that jurors voted secretly. I am inclined to think, contra
MacDowell (1983a: 66-7), that the punishment for a bribed juror was fabricated to help support Aeschines’
claim that it is unreasonable to expect witnesses to come forth and claim that they had hired Aeschines’
opponent Timarchus for prostitution.
62
This is a loose estimate, given that the word dwrodoki/a is not attested until the early fourth century
(Andoc. 4.30). That said, dwrodoke/w appears in the last third of the fifth century: Hdt. 6.82; Cratinus frr.
128, 244K; Ar. Eq. 66, 802, 834 and compare dwrodokisti/ at Ar. Eq. 996 and dwrodo/koisin at Ar. Eq.
403.
63
AP 27.5, Diod. 13.64.6, Plut. Cor. 14.6, Schol. Aeschin. 1.87, Harpocration s.v. deka/zwn, 86.7. Hashiba
(2006: 64n.11), following MacDowell (1983a: 66-7), dates it to 409, while Calhoun (1913: 67) and
Bonner and Smith (1938: 2.10-11) date it to 404/3 or later. For the charge and procedure: Hansen (1975:
number 65) helpfully collects the sources. Despite the fact that Lex. Seg. 236.6 describes the process as a
euthyna—cf. ta\j eu)qu/naj didou\j th=j e)n Pu/lh| strathgi/aj—given the dēmos’ involvement in the trial
(Diod. 13.64.6), I follow Hansen’s assignment to his list of eisangeliai.
64
Note how he claims that, if juries were smaller, it would be easier to bribe them (r(a|/dion e1stai pro\j
o)li/gouj dikasta\j kai\ sundeka/sai, [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.7), not that juries would be bribable only if they
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