BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven
the law and see that the prevailing norm was, merely, a general ‘harm’ to the people. As
a result, bribery trials became a popular means of contesting the legitimacy of political
outcomes: practically any bad political outcome could be considered a ‘harm’ and was,
accordingly, blamed on dōrodokia. 31 With each trial, the appropriate body, with
authority within that particular domain, would signal whether or not an outcome should
be deemed a ‘harm’ or a benefit to the community; indeed, it would decide between two
competing ideas of how that ‘harm’ or benefit should be defined.
Take, for instance, the series of late-fifth-century accountability measures
designed to ensure that public speakers would not simply follow the money or pander to
the masses. With both the graphē paranomōn and the creation of an eisangelia for
prosecuting rhētores, public speakers would be held accountable for the laws, decrees,
and proposals they recommended. The graphē paranomōn, or public suit against
‘unconstitutional’ proposals, was used against any speaker who had proposed a law or
decree that conflicted with other laws or decrees. 32 In the fourth century, it was used
frequently, and often the basis for prosecuting a public speaker was that his proposal had
been against the city’s interests. 33 The penalty was a sometimes considerable fine, and
disfranchisement if convicted three times. Similarly, an eisangelia, as explored in
31 A point nicely brought out by Harvey (1985: 112-13). Hyperides 4.3 makes a similar claim about how
in his day the impeachment law (nomos eisangeltikos) was being abused to enable prosecutions for trivial
offenses, like hiring out flute-girls at a price higher than that fixed by law, that had nothing to do with the
impeachment law itself.
32 In 403/2, the distinction between nomoi (laws) and psēphismata (public decrees, which were ad hoc
measures) became formalized with different processes for enacting each: Hansen (1983: 161-76). At this
point, the Athenians created a graphē nomon mē epitēdeion theinai (public suit for enacting an inexpedient
nomos) to deal with unconstitutional laws, while the graphē paranomōn continued to be used for
unconstitutional decrees.
33 E.g. Dem. 22.35-78, 23.100-214; Aeschin. 3.49-200. Wolff (1970: 45-67). As catalogued in Hansen
(1974), we have at least 35 attested examples of the graphē paranomōn dating to the second half of the
democracy (403-322 BCE), from which Hansen (1991: 208-9) plausibly extrapolates that the “vast
majority” of Athenian political leaders would have been prosecuted under the graphē at one point or
another in their career.
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