BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
than the Persian King would have offered—and kept the rest for himself. So the Greeks
remained at Artemisium. 25
The details of this story are bizarre and defy interpretation under the standard
view. If we think of the thirty talents and subsequent payments as bribes given and
received by rational actors, we are left with a few puzzling facts. First, if Eurybiades
could be bribed by Themistocles for only five talents, why were the Euboeans unable to
persuade him? Why did they not simply offer the Spartan general five—or thirty!—
talents from the beginning? Second, if the Persian King would have paid Adimantus less
than three talents to betray the fleet, then we would expect that three talents would have
been the going price for treason in this case. So why would it have taken a full five
talents to persuade Eurybiades? And third, why was Themistocles’ price so high? Why
did he require 22 talents, when the others required only 3 or 5 talents? Why did the
Euboeans not pay him, instead, a more modest bribe of, say, 20 talents, or even 15?
In theory, if Eurybiades, Adimantus, and Themistocles were rational rent-seeking
politicians, we would expect that their bribe-price would have been set at a market-
clearing price just above whatever the Persian King would have paid. Anything below
such a price would have been irrational for themselves because they could have always
received more money from the King; anything above such a price, though, would have
been irrational for the Euboeans, since theoretically they should always desire the lowest
price possible. Neither the bribe prices nor the eventual series of payments seems
‘rational’ under the standard model. Thus, even if these details have little historicity, at
25 Hdt. 8.4.2-8.5.3; cf. Plut. Them. 7.5-6=Phanias fr. 24 Wehrli.
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