BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
colored staff that matched the color of a lintel on the doorway to the court where he
would serve; this court also had a letter matching the acorn he was given (AP 64.4-65.2).
Matching letters, randomization, colored lintels, colored wands and acorns: the purpose
of most of these changes, according to Aristotle and numerous scholars since? To
prevent corruption. 9
Some recent scholars have rightly questioned Aristotle’s judgment here, however,
by claiming that it is unlikely that dōrodokia was the sole, or even primary, motivation
for institutional change. 10 After all, it is difficult to imagine how, even in the late fifth
century, a litigant could successfully rig the system by assembling and bribing enough
jurors to secure a favorable outcome. Because jury panels were randomly assigned to
courts at the beginning of each morning, a litigant would have had to bribe a critical mass
of jurors in each panel to ensure the outcome of his trial. The only feasible way this
could have happened—and recall that, despite the implausibility of judicial bribery, the
Athenians strongly suspected that it did occur—was if the jurors, themselves, were
banding together into groups. This was a concern not so much about bribery—money
exchanged for votes—as about collusion; the relationship at issue was that between
jurors, not between some outside bribe-giver and the jury. Indeed, the other offenses
grouped together with the graphē dekasmou, like the prohibitions against conspiracy or
9 AP 64.2 (ticket-drawer chosen by lot to prevent mischief), 64.4 (drawing of acorns prevents packing of
jury panels), 65.1 (colored sticks and lintels prevent juror from purposely going into the wrong jury court),
66.2 (men chosen by lot to work the water clock to prevent dishonest arrangements), cf. AP 66.1 (archons
assigned to courts by lot to prevent prior knowledge of assignment). Cf. Eubulus fr. 74 K on the sale of
jury allotments. AP is followed in the main by Staveley (1972: 61ff.), MacDowell (1973: 35-40), Rhodes
(1981: ad loc), Todd (1993: 87).
10 Taylor (2007), Bers (2000). In particular, as Bers (2000) points out, if the sole purpose was to prevent
corruption, the Athenians could have achieved that goal with a less complex, less timely process. For the
allotment of magistrates, too, Whitehead (1986: 290) notes that AP’s attribution of the change to fears of
corruption “may be open to doubt.”
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