BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
and biased towards preserving only the most serious court cases. Nevertheless, in
practice, if not in law, during the fourth century the Athenians apparently preferred to
expel permanently, rather than to reintegrate, rhētores whose actions threatened to
corrupt a political body via outright bribes or bad policy suggestions. 71 Framing this
phenomenon in terms of insiders and outsiders might tell us why: it was exactly at this
time that the dēmos was unwilling to tolerate any ‘outsider’-like behavior resembling the
oligarchic Thirty. Better to expel that threat permanently than to reintegrate someone
who truly wished to remain outside the moral community.
In this respect, there are three concurrent trends that I think we can tie together in
this series of legal innovations. First, the shift from bribe-taking to bribe-giving can be
framed in terms of the expansion of the law’s scope from public officials to regular
citizens interacting with the public sphere. Through dōrodokia regulations, which were
modeled off of prior dōrodokia laws and which focused on how individuals could
interface with the public sphere, the Athenians in fact expanded the domain of the
‘public’. But in that case, note how the bribe-givers who had formerly been ‘outside’ the
public sphere now were ‘insiders’ just like the officials they corrupted. At the very fringe
of this expanded public sphere, therefore, we find that the dōrodokos was not simply
‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the community; he was somehow both at once, precisely like the
(389) and Timotheus (356/5 or 355/4) were convicted probably of dōrodokia; Timotheus was nearly
sentenced to death, but was fined instead. The sources for each are catalogued, respectively, in Hansen
(1975: numbers 69-72, 82, 87, 109, 124). These trials are emblematic of a larger gravitation towards the
eisangelia over the euthyna process when prosecuting public officials in the fourth century. Hansen (1975:
75-9).
71 Outside the Harpalus Affair, the only attested example of a fine for dōrodokia in the fourth century is for
Timotheus’ eisangelia in 356/5, on a charge of treason and dōrodokia: Hansen (1975: number 101)
collects the sources. Timotheus was prosecuted together with two other stratēgoi from that year:
Iphicrates on a charge of treason and Menestheus for embezzlement, numbers 100 and 102 respectively in
Hansen (1975); both were acquitted. Upon Timotheus’ conviction, the death penalty was originally
proposed (Nep. Iph. 3.3), but a fine was eventually imposed instead (Isoc. 15.129, Din. 1.14, 3.17). Even
here, though, the extraordinary sum of the fine—100 talents, reportedly—forced Timotheus into exile, in
effect creating the same permanent expulsion as capital punishment (Plut. Mor. 605F).
286