BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Six
process. The local bodies whose domain included enrollment decisions were still deemed
authoritative, but they were given another chance to make the right judgments.
Like the diapsēphisis of 346/5, which repeated the dokimasia for all Athenian
residents, the Athenians created the graphē dōroxenias procedure, which gave a jury
court a second chance to authorize the justice of a resident’s claim to citizenship. The
procedure was used “if someone secured an acquittal at a citizenship trial (graphē xenias)
by giving dōra” (dwroceni/aj a1n tij dw=ra dou\ \j a)pofu/gh| th\n ceni/an, AP 59.3). 75
More telling are the comments of Hyperides, who adds that any citizen could bring forth
a graphē dōroxenias suit if it seemed that someone’s acquittal at a citizenship trial had
been unjust (e0a\n mh\ dokw=si dikai/wj to\ prw=ton a)popefeuge/nai, Hyp. Fr. 28.2
Blass=Harpocration s.v. dwroceni/a). One seemingly peculiar aspect of the procedure is
how little it differed from a graphē xenias: both were jury trials held before the
thesmothetai, and, as Hyperides’ comment suggests, both hinged on whether or not the
defendant was a citizen. In effect, the graphē dōroxenias was a safeguard against an
unjust acquittal at a graphē xenias, a new opportunity for a new jury to cast the correct
judgment on someone’s citizenship status. Again, a jury still was the proper domain for
deciding disputes over citizenship; it simply needed an occasional second chance to reach
the right outcome. Although we have no indication of what the penalty in such a
procedure would have been, we can tentatively conjecture that it would have been atimia,
or permanent expulsion from the community. 76 If this hypothesis is correct, then in the
75 The AP’s testimony is our only indication of what the law governing the graphē dōroxenias may have
stated. During the citizen registration process, if someone’s candidacy for citizenship was questioned, he
underwent a graphē xenias before a jury who would then determine whether or not he met the requirements
of citizenship. On the citizenship enrollment procedure and the graphē xenias, see especially Haussoullier
(1979: 15-19), Whitehead (1986: 97-109), Robertson (2000).
76 On the one hand, the penalty probably was not public enslavement, as it was for a graphē xenias (Dem.
24.131). Even if the graphē dōroxenias were intended solely to correct the prior acquittal, having an
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