BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
prohibited giving money to anyone on a judicial body “for the sake of dōrodokia” (e)pi\
dwrodoki/a|, Dem. 46.26).
All of these contextual markers focused on the explicit return expected for the
dōra, thereby characterizing the transaction as quid pro quo compensation. In
Herodotus’ story of Themistocles at Artemisium, for example, the thirty talents given to
Themistocles are explicitly called a “payment” (e)pi\ misqw| = trih/konta tala/ntoisi)
given “on the condition that” (e)p’ w{ |) the Greek fleet stay and fight the Persians.
Similarly, the historian later juxtaposes the gifts to the Greek generals with the return (cf.
e)kexa/risto) given to the Euboeans (Hdt. 8.4-5). Such characterizations sometimes also
implied a negative evaluation of the scene. For instance, prepositional phrases denoting
“against X” or “against the interests of X” (e.g. kata/ + gen.) could be used, while
compounds derived from misthos always indicated the speaker’s disapproval. 52
Alternatively, Athenians might denounce a particular exchange by saying that its
outcome constituted some sort of bad (violation of norms). It should be noted that no
explicit condemnation can be found in Herodotus’ story.
Whereas commercial language and prepositional phrases differentiated the
transaction context, alimentary metaphors and the verb diaphtheirō (“to corrupt”) could
signal that some kind of norm violation had occurred. For the Athenians, alimentary
metaphors usually conveyed some negative value about a particular exchange. 53 We hear
of “gift-devouring” kings who judged cases unjustly (dwrafa/goi, Hes. WD 11, 202,
52 The use of kata/ + gen. implied both exchange and a bad outcome: taking gifts “against the dēmos’
interests” was shorthand for taking money in return for a specific outcome that ended up harming the
dēmos. Harvey (1985: 85) on the use of misthos compounds exclusively to connote censure and abuse:
e.g. mistharnia, misthōtos.
53 These metaphors recur throughout the Aristophanic corpus: see Taillardat (1962: 310-11, 414-18) and
generally Davidson (1993).
52