BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
should be conducted. Whereas the dōrodokos might have thought his actions were
legitimate, even downright beneficial to the polity, his opponents called them dōrodokia
and corruptive of the democracy.
It is in this sense that discursive shifts in the figure of the dōrodokos reflected
changes in broader political narratives about the democracy. As the polity developed,
new monies were used to negotiate new social relations within politics, and these new
monies reflected new ways to conceptualize the ideal relationship between citizen and
community. What we will discover in these chapters, though, is that the Athenians
essentially thought through such discursive shifts by thinking with the figure of the
dōrodokos. Bribe monies signaled illegitimate relations, processes or outcomes; by
articulating what constituted such illegitimate monies, the Athenians implicitly outlined
the contours of the legitimate practice of politics.
In detailing how the Athenians conceptualized dōrodokia, the first four chapters
illustrate just how far removed we are from intent-based, rational actor approaches to
bribery. Indeed, the Athenians focused on outcomes, and they located bribery squarely
within the framework of gift exchange and the relationships it negotiates. The relevant
questions they would have posed of Timagoras would have been: “was the outcome of
his actions good?” and “what made him think he was successfully negotiating his
relationship with the community?” Answering these questions would have answered, for
an Athenian, whether Timagoras’ actions constituted dōrodokia, and what his ultimate
motivation was. Again, accusing someone like Timagoras of dōrodokia was a way to
signal that a given political outcome was bad. It opened up public discussion about
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