BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
When a defendant was brought to court, therefore, he was tried according to
whatever legal and extra-legal norms his opponent thought relevant. Note how this
means that his guilt or innocence in a court of law need not have hinged on whether he
had violated the particular legal statute under which he had been prosecuted. Frequently,
in fact, litigants made no mention of the ‘relevant’ law, and with one exception—to
which we will return momentarily—there was little effort to establish that the defendant
had committed an offense, as defined by the law in question. 21 Whereas the ‘rule of law’
would consistently and predictably enforce legal norms, the Athenian preference for
discretionary justice enforced formal and informal norms only irregularly.
Lanni’s view helpfully illuminates how the relationship between law and
legitimacy at Athens was not straightforward: even within the courts, there were multiple
sources of legitimacy—legal norms as well as communal norms, evidenced by statutes,
decrees, poetry, gossip, history, and sometimes even past trials—none necessarily more
authoritative than any other. In this way, jurors and litigants, alike, relied on multiple
sets of previously established norms by which to judge actions. These norms sometimes
conflicted, however, and were not always clearly defined. Again, this is understandable
in a context in which there were no legal experts, and there was no real concept of ‘legal
language’. Uncertainty over what, precisely, constituted bribery (“harm to the people”)
could have had the advantage of making citizens err on the side of safety; as a whole,
then, the destabilizing effect of vague statutes could have reduced the incidence of
bribery, as Lanni’s view suggests.
21 Christ (1998: 193-224). So Arist. Rhet. 1373b-1374a comments that it was up to litigants to define
clearly the nature of the wrongdoing, with or without reference to any legal statute.
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