BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
contestation of which definition of a norm should become legitimate. Here, in the case of
anti-bribery legislation, the Athenians appear to have actively used the courts as a locus
for creating and contesting the legitimacy of certain public norms. It should be noted
that, if what constituted dōrodokia was contested by individuals and was decided
ultimately by the people, not by the law per se, any legal definition of dōrodokia need not
have acted as a deterrent.
Two features of the Athenian laws on dōrodokia support this interpretation: as
the previous chapter traced, the legal history of dōrodokia entailed both a legal
redefinition of dōrodokia and frequent changes in which judicial body would hear
dōrodokia cases. Around the end of the fifth century, the original law against bribery
was changed from “If someone is bribed…” to “If someone gives or receives…to the
harm of the people…”; similar wording can be found in other anti-bribery legislation that
was created around the same time. Such a modification to the original law seems to have
incorporated a generally accepted, albeit still quite vague, definition of dōrodokia. Prior
to this re-definition, Athenians frequently defined dōrodokia in roughly similar terms as a
general ‘bad’ to the community 25 ; remarkably, after this legal redefinition, in the fourth
century it was defined by litigants not as a general ‘bad’ but specifically as a ‘harm’. 26
This is the only example in all of Athenian law in which there is a strong correlation
25
So, in Sophocles’ Antigone money is said to re-teach the minds of good men so that they take to
“shameful” deeds (ai0sxra/, 299); in this respect, it is a “bad” institution (kako/n, 296). Similarly, the
Rhodian poet Timocrates twice lambastes Themistocles for being ‘unjust’ in having taken bribes to break
his promise to restore the poet: Plut. Them. 21.1-3. When Callias was (perhaps?) condemned for bribery at
a euthyna after serving as an ambassador, he was condemned purportedly for being “hateful and not useful”
to the polis (e)xqro\n…kai\ a)lusitele/j th| = po/lei, Dem. 19.275).
26
This argument is partial, at best, for we simply do not have enough forensic evidence prior to the
adoption of the law, and afterwards we have primarily only forensic evidence.
307