BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
citizen and authoritative juror: hence the involvement of more jurors in executing the
selection process, or the use of more props (pinakia, colored staffs) to dramatize the
jurors’ roles. The implementation of the lot at each step of the way may very well have
been a reminder of the profoundly religious character of the jurors’ office, as signaled by
the oath of the heliasts sworn by all potential jurors each year. 13 Inasmuch as the new,
more complicated allotment process was a kind of civic ritual, it is perhaps unsurprising
that the Athenians soon extended it to the selection of magistrates, as well.
The changes to the jury allotment procedures thus may have been geared more
towards both preventing jurors from self-assembling into blocks of voters and inculcating
a sense of civic identity than from preventing an external agent from bribing a jury en
masse. The difference is crucial. While the Athenians turned to the law to regulate how
an outsider could interface with a political body like a jury, they left the regulation of
jurors’ behavior to informal means like the heliastic oath or the process of allotment. No
doubt this distinction was partly necessary if the Athenians were to maintain secret ballot
voting in court cases. But one significant sociological consequence of these policies was
that elites would have been disproportionately punished in courts of law—whether for
giving or taking bribes—whereas the masses who sat on juries would have been
controlled through non-punitive measures. 14
What seems at first glance to have been an elaborate system set up to prevent
corruption appears, on closer examination, to have served a very different purpose,
indeed. What I suggest is that in both cases the desire to locate jurors or magistrates
13 So Bers (2000: 558-9) helpfully carves a middle path through the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ interpretations
of the lot, on which see, for example, Headlam (1933: 4-17), Demont (2003: 39-50).
14 On the social composition of juries, see Markle (1985). Taylor (2007) convincingly shows that
magistrates selected by lot were more likely to be drawn from a broader socio-economic and geographical
range than those elected.
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