BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
Athenian dōrodokia Legislation in Practice:
Civic Education, Legitimization, and the Athenian Democracy
Understanding the relationship between law and society is about much more than
mere statues or legal norms; it is about how these norms are intertwined with legal
practices, as well. Norm and practice, law in the books and the law in action, are always
in a dialectical relationship: a norm establishes a practice that is then taken to be
indicative of the norm itself and used to underpin various other practices that establish
that norm. 1 Whereas the previous chapter examined how the legal norms regulating
dōrodokia changed over time, this chapter will locate those norms within the twin
contexts of the law and political institutions in action. We are thus building on the
argument we have been developing, namely, that the Athenians articulated the hallmarks
of their democracy in opposition to the figure of the dōrodokos. Here we will see how,
within the legal space created for the dōrodokos, the Athenians devised ways to learn
about, debate, and ultimately legitimate the practice of democratic politics. Tracing this
story will help us see more clearly how Athenian laws on, and institutional changes
concerning, dōrodokia might have shaped public discourse more generally and the way
individual Athenians practiced politics, specifically.
Necessarily this kind of dialectical investigation entails moving past thinking
about the law merely as a deterrent and opens up the question of the broader effects of
dōrodokia legislation on Athenian society and polity. After all, the moment we begin to
1 For a thought-provoking look at legal regulation in ancient Athens from the perspective of a legal
anthropologist, see Comaroff (2002). The idea that legal rules are constitutive of and constituted by local
practices underpins recent cultural approaches to the law: see Silbey (1992, 2005), Sarat and Austin
(2001), Ewick and Silbey (2003), Mezey (2003). Allen (2000) fruitfully applies many of these ideas to her
study of Athenian punishment; see also Papakonstantinou (2007) on archaic Greek law.
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