BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
exchange for something bad”=“receive as a bribe”), just like cognates of dōrodokia. 47
How, then, did dekhomai come to acquire such an association with bad outcomes? One
likely source of influence was the law. Early codification of dekhomai in law could have
subsequently conditioned, though not caused, the word’s semantic shift outside of legal
contexts. 48 Whatever the reason, by the time of the classical period, the verb dekhomai
and its cognates—like dōrodokeō and dekazō—were used, on their own, to denote
“receive in exchange for something bad.” Likewise, dōrodokia should be translated
literally as “the receipt of dōra in exchange for something bad”, i.e. “bribery.” In this
way, the Athenians’ main vocabulary for bribery all indicated quid pro quo compensation
and normative violation.
Dōrodokeō and dekazō represent distinct ways of using a single verb to signal the
frame of bribery; by contrast, if the regular verbs of giving, receiving, or persuading were
used, an Athenian could still signal ‘bribery’ by indicating both that the dōra were a kind
of compensation and that this compensation had caused some bad result. In those cases,
commercial metaphors and prepositional phrases could be used for the former, while the
verb diaphtheirō (“corrupt”) and alimentary metaphors could be used to indicate the
47 Cf. Harvey (1985: 83). There are two notable exceptions to this rule: Harvey (1985: 83n.30) notes how
at Ar. EN 1163b11 dōrodokos refers to someone who receives gifts, not bribes, but see also Ar. Eq. 403, Pl.
Rep. 390d7, Dem. 18.61; similarly, Sosiades lists in his Maxims of the Seven Sages that one should
“usefully receive gifts that demand a return” (Dwrodo/kei xrhsi/mwj, Phil. Sent. 215.27). In all likelihood,
however, this is a late fabrication. A few examples where dw=ra + de/xomai does not appear to indicate
bribery can be found at Xen. Cyrop. 8.5.18 and in Plato’s Laws, where taking gifts from good sources is
contrasted with taking gifts from bad sources or with an eye to bad results: para\ de\ miarou=
dw=ra…de/xesqai, Leg. 716e3; w(j e)p’ a)gaqoi=j me\n dei= de/xesqai dw=ra, e)pi\ de\ flau/roij ou!, Leg.
955c8; cf. Leg. 905d4. This distinction helps affirm the Athenian focus on outcomes.
48 For the (early sixth century) use of de/xomai in Athenian law, see below Chapter Six. In the same vein,
deka/zw might represent a similar crystallization of semantic meaning due to its codification in the law
governing the graphē dekasmou: cf. Dem. 46.26 for the text of a compilation of laws including that for the
graphē dekasmou, with discussion in Chapter Six below. Ultimately, it is impossible to prove these kinds of
correlations. If this reconstruction is correct, it would be a rare instance in which explicitly legal language
at Athens influenced the semantic field of a word used in popular contexts: so Todd (2000a: 26-31) and
see further discussion in Chapter Seven.
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