BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
Given the difficulties of measuring the prevalence of bribery in any polity, let
alone in a historical society like Athens, it is ultimately impossible to assess the accuracy
of Lanni’s claim with respect to bribery in particular. There are, however, good reasons
to think that at least with dōrodokia the enforcement of norms in the courts played out a
bit differently than Lanni’s picture suggests. With dōrodokia, the Athenians used the
courts, I argue, not simply to leverage already legitimate norms, as Lanni proposes, but
especially to define which competing norms regarding dōrodokia should be legitimate.
The Athenians effectively shifted the problem of definition we encountered above: it was
up to an individual to define the offense, not according to some strict legal definition, but
according to broader community norms. 22 More often than not, litigants on both sides of
a trial thereby defined dōrodokia as a kind of harm to the people: prosecutors would
claim that the outcomes tied to the receipt of gifts had been detrimental to the city, while
defendants would claim that their actions had in fact benefited, not harmed, the
community. 23
In the case of dōrodokia, therefore, litigants offered their own conception of what
constituted “harm to the people,” and a jury of hundreds of citizens—with potentially
hundreds more looking on 24 —would cast their vote, effectively in favor of one definition
over another. This was not a contest between two equally legitimate norms, but a
22 It should be noted that dōrodokia may not have been the only offense for which this would have been
true: hubris (~arrogance) and likely asēbeia (impiety) also were not strictly defined in law. See further
Ostwald (1986: 528-36), Bauman (1990: 105-27), Carey (1994: 179), Cohen (1995: 143-62), Todd
(2000a). With these offenses, too, it is possible that the lack of a legal definition intentionally fostered
contestation of the norm itself.
23 Both Cimon (ad Plut. Cim. 14.3) and the unnamed magistrate in Lysias 21 defend themselves on the
grounds that they had benefited the polis. The juxtaposition of harm and benefit is particularly pronounced
in Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ mutual accusations of dōrodokia. Demosthenes, for example, proclaims
how his opponent’s harmful actions were due to dōrodokia, while his own actions were both beneficial and
unrelated to bribes: cf. Dem. 19.15-16, 18, 33, 45-6, 150-2 with 155 and 157, 205-8, 211-12, 223, 229-30.
24 Lanni (1997) on the bystanders at Athenian trials. Likewise, audience members, whether bystanders or
jury members, might create a roar (thorubos) of approval or disapproval: Bers (1985).
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