BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

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Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven Already we can begin to see how in Athens, thinking of bribery as politics, albeit a ‘bad’ political outcome or process, went hand-in-hand with creating a formal space within the courts to discuss and legitimate which outcomes were ‘good’, which were ‘bad’, and by what criteria those assessments should be made. Even with the specific legal definition of dōrodokia as a kind of ‘harm’, we should keep in mind the possibility that this redefinition may have been added not so much as a deterrent to dōrodokia, but as a public guide to how the Athenians should conceptualize dōrodokia. What I suggest is that the law here played both a deliberative and an educational role within the polity: deliberative because the legal redefinition of dōrodokia fostered deliberation among litigants and jurors over what constituted dōrodokia; educational because it then broadcast that definition to the public at dōrodokia trials. The formal political space we have been uncovering, a space opened up within and by the law, could have been invaluable within a constantly changing polity like Athens’. Because of this space, political values could be consistently wed to law enforcement even as new ways of practicing politics developed and as popular ideas about the legitimate or ideal practice of politics were in constant flux. Assuming a handful of high profile bribery trials per year—that is, a consistent handful of instances in which a broad cross-section of the people could legitimate which political outcomes were beneficial, which were harmful to the city—bribery trials could have provided a novel supplement to the deliberative institutions of the democracy. 35 To discuss bribery at a trial was to discuss democracy, as we have seen, and accusations of bribery became in 35 Based on the above estimate that 5% of major public officials—stratēgoi, rhētores, and ambassadors— were prosecuted for dōrodokia: see the Introduction. I argued there that this was a conservative estimate; a more accurate assessment might be closer to 10%, which would be around 3 trials per year. 313
Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Seven this manner the prime vehicle for signaling disapproval of public policies or political outcomes. Simply by considering the results of frequent dōrodokia trials—some of which were publicized, others of which doubtless circulated around through informal channels—an Athenian could quickly gather a rough approximation of which emergent political practices were gaining legitimacy, which were consistently considered illegitimate. Considerations like these are often overlooked when bribery is treated as a cancer—an undesirable practice that is inherently foreign to the aims of politics and one that must be contained—yet readily appear as vital concerns if we think of bribery as a subset of politics. Thus, the Athenians may not have been effective in containing the ‘cancer’ of bribery, but they were unusually effective at leveraging accusations (and the practice) of dōrodokia for the greater good. Indeed, the next section will take up one case-study to explore this claim in more depth. As evinced by an examination of how the Athenians first instituted public accountability, the idea of ‘contesting the norm’, raised above in consideration of how dōrodokia was prosecuted in Athenian courts, spilled over into other Athenian deliberative institutions. ‘Bribery’ functioned like a paradigmatic anti-type, a metaphor used for thinking through which kinds of political processes were ‘democratic’, which were ‘undemocratic’. By making an accusation of bribery at a bribery trial, an Athenian implicitly offered a contrasting view of what constituted the legitimate practice of democratic politics, and this view both reflected and shaped political discourse within deliberative institutions. ‘Undemocratic’ political practices, by contrast, were labeled as bribery and were thus delegitimized by court decisions and, subsequently, public action. 314
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BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam
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© Copyright by Kellam McChesney Co
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legislating dōrodokia. Rather than
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encouragement that made me crazily
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and long-lasting patience were crit
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Athenian dōrodokia
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BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

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