BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
should we forget the suspected corruption in the prosecution and acquittal of Cimon.
What the AP might mean is that the legally defined practice of dekazein, whence the
name graphē dekasmou, was “first made public by Anytus” (prw/tou katadei/cantoj
0Anu/tou, AP 27.5). In other words, Anytus was acquitted at his eisangelia and was
publicly rumored to have bribed the jury, yet presumably never was prosecuted for it. 65
Following the AP, we should therefore date the institution of the graphē dekasmou to
sometime between the 440’s and 409, probably closer to Anytus’ trial in 409.
Little attention has been paid to the other graphai cited alongside the graphē
dekasmou, but these laws actually provide crucial context for understanding the import of
the legislation. After all, why would the Athenians group together laws on conspiring,
bribing jurors, forming a political faction, and taking bribes for being a public prosecutor
or witness? 66 The conjunction of conspiracy and bribery suggests that all of these
offenses entailed concerted corruption of one form or another: groups of citizens, who
were not magistrates, coming together to affect the outcomes of political processes. To
be sure, at this time the hetaireiai, or political clubs, were a major force in Athenian
politics in large part because they could pack the Assembly to help sway the dēmos’
opinion. So, too, were their members suspected of helping each other out in court by
providing false testimony or by “joining in bribing” the jury, as the verb sundeka/zein
were smaller. Likewise, when in a speech dated to 403, Isocrates remarks that one Xenotimus was known
to have bribed juries, his reference to dekazein makes it clear that the practice was already quite familiar in
Athens (Isoc. 18.11). Both uses of the verb dekazein strongly suggest that Anytus did not develop a
particular method of ‘tenning’ a jury: Calhoun (1913: 66-7), and recall from Chapter One that the folk
derivation of dekazein from dekas (“ten”) has little grounding in reality.
65 On this meaning of the verb katadei/knumi, see also Hdt. 1.163, 4.42. Similarly, the friends of Ergocles
were rumored to have gone around saying that they had bribed 2100 jurors during his trial (Lys. 29.12).
Ergocles was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death.
66 Accordingly, Thalheim’s emendations, discussed above, effectively remove the first clause on
conspiracy. Similarly, Gernet (1957: 185) goes so far as to delete the clause on setting up a hetaireia to
overthrow the dēmos—presumably because it has nothing to do with judicial bribery, and MacDowell takes
issue with “why the Boule is added to the list of courts” (1983a: 66-7, quote on 66).
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