BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
properly means. 67 Just as a lone public speaker might corrupt the Assembly by making
promises unasked, groups of private citizens, too, could work together to corrupt larger
political bodies, especially those with judicial functions. 68
The emphasis on judicial bodies was critical, for one of the underlying reasons for
these legislative changes was that citizens and officials, alike, were escaping
accountability for their actions. Clearly this fear underpinned the graphē which targeted
synēgoroi—whether public prosecutors or witnesses, it is unclear which the law intends
here—suspected of taking money for the sake of a judicial suit (e)pi\ tai=j di/kaij, [Dem.]
46.26). Contemporary sources, as well, describe how officials might use the courts to
avoid going to trial. In one case, dated to 419, a defendant describes how, during his
tenure in the Council, he discovered maladministration among various boards of financial
officials. When he tried to bring this wrongdoing to light, they banded together and
bribed one of his enemies to bring a suit against him (Ant. 6.49-50). Although the
officials were in the meantime found guilty, as were the people with whom they had
deposited the dōra (Ant. 6.50), the blatant misuse of the courts was troubling.
Read against the backdrop of the numerous setbacks of the Peloponnesian War
and the oligarchic revolutions of 411/10 and 404, this flurry of legal changes reveals a
persistent anxiety that political institutions were being corrupted en masse. Still more
troubling, therefore, was that dōrodokia could be associated with the most pernicious
breakdown of political institutions: the circumventing of public accountability. Certainly
political agents—public officials like stratēgoi or dēmarchs, jurors and councilmen—
67
On the political influence of the hetaireiai, Calhoun (1913) is still essential. Cf. Thuc. 8.54.4, Plato Tht.
173d, [Dem.] 54.31-7.
68
Calhoun (1913: 40-96, esp. 66-76) persuasively sets forth the evidence for the interconnection of
hetaireiai and dōrodokia involving the courts. See further Rubinstein (2000: 198-212).
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