BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
character of something. 56 Given that the emergence of diaphtheirō (“bribe”) was
contemporary with this shift towards the destruction of character, I suggest that this is the
conceptual link between the two meanings of diaphtheirō as “to bribe” and “to
destroy.” 57 What ‘corruption’ (diaphtheirō) does, therefore, is to change the character of
an outcome so that it is bad; when a payment is the source of this corruption, we have
bribery.
So the Athenians used a relational vocabulary for bribery, couching descriptions
of politics in the language of social relations. We can push this point even further,
however, and this brings us to the second reason why a relational approach is particularly
well-suited to the study of Athenian bribery. For the Athenians, describing politics in the
vocabulary of gift exchange and persuasion belied a close conceptual affinity between
56 I find this meaning of diaphtheirein more likely a product of late fifth-century nomos-physis debates.
Just prior to this time, in Sophocles’ Antigone dated to around 440, Creon complains of the potential evil
that money can cause: “by its teaching perverts men’s good minds so that they take to evil actions!” (to/d’
e)kdida/skei kai\ paralla/ssei fre/naj/xrhsta\j pro\j ai)sxra\ pra/gmat’ i3stasqai brotw=n, Soph. An.
298-9). The concern that something might change one’s nature or character emerges later in the play when
erōs, too, smashes men’s wits unto ruin (Soph. An. 791-2). Euripides likewise talks of ‘corrupting’ the
name or physis of something: Hec. 398, Or. 297, fr. 377.3, 411.1, 526.2; cf. Aesch. Ag. 932; Isoc. Paneg.
151, Areo. 47, Panath. 32, 196. In the fourth century, we often find mention of ‘corrupting’ the nature of
something, including archai (Lys. 30.28), the polis (Pl. Rep. 415c5), legal documents (Isoc. Trap. 23, 24,
31, 33), and the laws (Isoc. In Call. 11, Pl. Crito 50b5, 53b7, Leg. 788b6, 864d2, 891b5, 913c6).
Harvey (1985: 87n.44) rightly points out that ideas of ‘impurity’ may have something to do with
the extension of the semantic field of diaptheirein to bribery: see Thuc. 7.84.5, Lys. 30.28; Aristotle’s
explicit comparison of political corruption and the muddying of water at Pol.1286a31-5; and instances
where the character of someone or something is so corrupted, e.g. Isoc. Antid. 30, Xen. Mem. 1.2.8, Pl. Ap.
25d5, Men. 89b6, Rep. 421d1, Leg. 894a7. I would note, in addition, that in other vocabulary for bribery we
find this same idea of ‘changing’ the status or outcome of something. The verb anapeithein, for instance,
literally means to persuade someone to do ‘the reverse’ of what might be expected or intended: LSJ s.v.
a)na/ F2 with Harvey (1985: 83n.32).
57 Harvey (1985: 86-7), followed by Hashiba (2006: 70n.31), has claimed that the use of diaptheirein at
Hdt. 5.51 implies that the meaning “corrupt by bribes” was current in the mid-fifth century, but I find this
unlikely. The passage could simply intend that Aristagoras would “corrupt” or “change” Cleomenes’ mind
or character; that money was the reason for this change was implicit and need not have been explicit in the
verb diaphtheirein (as we would need for it to signify “corrupt by bribes”). The meaning “corrupt [by
bribery]” is not again attested until the fourth century, and then frequently at that: Lys. 2.29, 28.9; Xen.
Hell. 7.3.8; Isoc. 8.50, 17.12; Pl. Leg. 768b; Theopompus FGrH 115 F81; and twenty times in
Demosthenes and Aeschines. Cf. Lys. 20.38. The absence from Old Comedy is striking, and Harvey
unsatisfactorily suggests that the verb was originally slang of a sort, at first used only in spoken discourse;
yet such an explanation would make its absence from comedy all the more unexpected.
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