BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Conclusion
explicitly served this purpose, as they were used to delegitimize political outcomes,
processes, and players, alike.
In this way the dōrodokos, that curious chameleon of a social type in Athens,
became a conceptual bogeyman of the democracy. He frequently entered public
discourse at the precise moment someone wished to cast a particular practice, person, or
outcome outside Athens’ moral community: what was not ‘inside’ the democracy was
‘outside’, and what was ‘outside’ was dōrodokia. Crucially, therefore, in configuring
who was ‘outside’ the community, accusations of dōrodokia also defined the contours of
that community. In effect, the image of the dōrodokos isolated the offender from the
dēmos and thereby negatively revealed the moral boundaries of the community, itself.
The formal oaths and curses sworn in the Council, Assembly, and jury courts are a good
example of this process at work. In swearing an oath together, participants in these
political bodies were bound to each other within the framework of the polity, and they
swore to rise up as a community to drive out anyone guilty of dōrodokia. 6 The inside of
the community itself was reaffirmed by extirpating the dōrodokos.
Accusations of bribery were rampant—in literature, at public venues like the
Assembly or the courts, and of course at dōrodokia trials—but this was only because the
Athenians constantly policed the borders of acceptable practices within their democracy
and continually tweaked the democracy in practice for the greater good. 7 Thus, these
accusations were more than descriptive claims about the conduct of an individual; they
6 Rhodes (1972, 2007), Sommerstein and Fletcher (2007). In this respect, it is crucial that in the stoning of
Lycides, suspected of dōrodokia after he proposed to listen to a Persian herald during the Persian Wars
(Hdt. 9.3-5), although it was the Council members who stoned him, they acted as citizens, not magistrates,
by first removing the crowns signaling their political office (Lyc. 1.122).
7 For a different view on the widespread condemnation of dōrodokia, see Mastrocinque (1996: 16-18),
Taylor (2001).
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