BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
whether or not the ‘potential trajectory’ constituted by his actions was, in fact, a desirable
path for the democracy.
Judging by the rates of bribery trials in the democracy, the Athenians apparently
thought that a lot of just such ‘potential trajectories’ in their democracy had been bad; in
this sense, the outright presumption of bribery was perhaps not entirely unwarranted.
Scholarly estimates of the prevalence of Athenian bribery have varied considerably, but
the number of bribery prosecutions and convictions, to say nothing of instances that never
came to trial, is enormously high by Western standards. 25 Even with considerable gaps in
our evidence, we have attested 32 different prosecutions of bribery with an additional 22
cases of varying degrees of certainty; all but a handful of these cases fall during the
period 430-322, the best-attested period of the democracy. 26 At least 36 of these 54 trials
resulted in conviction. 27 Although extrapolating from our evidence is hazardous, we can
plausibly estimate that roughly 6-10% of major public officials would have been brought
to trial on accusations of bribery, and roughly half of these officials would have been
convicted. 28
25
Kulesza (1995: 39-40) rightly remarks that, given the tremendous gaps in our sources, the unusually
high prevalence of bribery attested in our sources is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. Scholarly
estimates run the gamut from positing widespread peculation—MacDowell (1983), Cargill (1985), Strauss
(1985)—to claiming that dōrodokia was “more [frequent] than would be regarded as acceptable in our own
society” (Harvey [1985]) or, in the exceptional view of Perlman (1976: 231), “not very widespread.”
Estimating the prevalence of bribery is notoriously difficult even in non-historical societies and cannot be
our aim here. Still, it is worth considering that, by the standards defined by political scientists—on which
see Chapter One—bribery was probably a regular occurrence in the democracy: cf. Cargill (1985: 79).
26
For the catalog of bribery trials, see Kulesza (1995: 85-90) and, for a slightly modified list in English,
Taylor (2001).
27
For the 34 known dōrodokia trials (32 known plus 2 for which dōrodokia is mentioned in our sources but
not at the trial), 19 resulted in conviction, 4 resulted in acquittal, 6 presumably resulted in acquittal, and the
result for 5 is unknown. Of the remaining 20 trials, 17 resulted in conviction, 1 probably did so, there was
1 acquittal, and 1 with unknown outcome. Of these latter 17 convictions, however, 9 come from the trial of
the Treasurers of Hellas (Hellēnotamiai), who reportedly were convicted unjustly; the tenth was saved from
certain death when proof of their innocence was discovered during his trial (Ant. 5.69-71).
28
The vast majority of our attested bribery trials are prosecutions of generals, public speakers (rhētores),
or ambassadors (the latter two categories after 411). If we assume roughly 100 rhētores during the 90 or so
years after the introduction of an eisangelia for bribe-taking by a rhētor and, on average, a total of roughly
21