BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
straightforwardly follows this derivation and posits that the word literally meant ‘the
receipt of gifts’. This etymology is dangerously simplistic, however, and overlooks
crucial details about the peculiar morphology of dōrodokia and its cognates. In fact, the
morphology of dōrodokia suggests strong affinity to the verb dokeō. To make matters a
bit more confusing, dokeō, like dekhomai, was also derived from IE*dek̂-, albeit in the
form IE*dek̂-eye (cf. Gr. dokeuō). 41
So was dōrodokia derived from dokeō? Not exactly. Dokeō is actually a
relatively late verb formed in the classical period. Even before the archaic period, the
early Greek verb *dekmai began to split into two verbs: dekomai (dekhomai in the Attic
dialect), from which dōrodokia is usually taken, and a group of iterative forms that would
eventually converge in the verb dokeō. In other words, in the archaic period the forms
39 For the sake of clarity, throughout this discussion I transliterate x as ‘kh’.
40 Throughout this discussion, I use the standard linguistic convention of an asterisk (*) to indicate a form
that is unattested yet hypothesized. Gr. *de/kmai comes from an Indo-European root *dek̂- or *dēk̂-, but the
precise meaning of this original root has been hotly contested. There is still no consensus on how to
sequence the subsequent morphological and semantic change. At issue are how and why the athematic,
acrodynamic Greek verb *de/kmai transformed into the thematic verb de/komai, or de/xomai in the Attic
dialect. Were the latter formed from a root aorist which became generalized and lost its aspect (cf. García
Ramón [2004: 506n.40])? Or do they represent subjunctive forms—de/ketai > *dék̂-e-toi, an IE
subjunctive—which later became a thematic present (cf. Tichy [1976])? Amid semantic shifts in
reduplicated forms, aorists that work like presents and presents that look like aorists, to say nothing of the
semantic swamp of dek̂- verbs ranging in meaning from “wait” or “honor” to “receive” and “watch”—the
linguistic problems behind dōrodokia are thorny indeed. For a guide through the quagmire, see Szemerényi
(1964: 170-6), Chantraine s.v. de/xomai, Frisk s.v. de/xomai, with treatments of various aspects of the
problem by Tichy (1976), Forssman (1978), García Ramón (2004), and Ruijgh (2005). I offer here a
plausible new alternative, although I am not qualified to explain precisely how it may have arisen.
41 LSJ s.v. doke/w I, Chantraine s.v. doka/w II, Frisk s.v. doke/w. With the sole exception of dōrodokia and
its cognates, for every compound formed from the e-grade de/xomai (“receive”), there is a combination of
aspirated and unaspirated forms based on the –dek root: nouns end in –doki/a or –doxi/a, adjectives appear
as –do/koj or –do/xoj, and compound verbs end in –doke/w or –doxe/w. So we find cenodoxi/a,
cenodo/xoj, cenodoxe/w with cenodo/koj and cenodoke/w; qewrodo/xoj with qewrodo/koj and
qewrodoke/w; oi)nodoxei=on and oi)nodo/xoj with oi)nodo/koj. For all forms related to dōrodokia, however,
there is never any aspiration, as every compound retains –dok–: dwrodoki/a, dwrodoke/w, dwrodo/koj,
dwrodo/khma, a)dwrodo/khtoj. Strikingly, these latter compounds have a morphology identical to that of
compounds derived from the classical o-grade verb doke/w (“expect, await”): thus karadoke/w (“eagerly
expect”), karadoki/a, a)karado/khtoj and prosdoke/w (“expect”), a)prosdoki/a, prosdokh/toj, and
especially a)prosdo/khtoj next to a)pro/sdektoj from prosde/xomai (“receive favorably”).
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