BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
officials were not professionals per se, but were amateurs serving one-year terms; that
they would leverage their own social relations could only help them be more effective. 69
Here I would like to point out three different areas in which specific social configurations
pertained in politics so that we can get a better idea of the kinds of transactions that could
have been used to negotiate those relationships.
Of the relatively few elected officials in Athens, frequently those dealing with
foreign policy—like military generals (stratēgoi) or ambassadors—were selected in part
because their personal relations might provide a strategic advantage for Athens. This
strategic advantage might entail securing resources, funds, or simply more favorable
negotiations. The stratēgos Alcibiades thus used Thracian men in his army—troops
whom he later called his philoi or ‘friends’—in order to besiege Byzantium in 409; and in
413 Nicias hoped to overthrow Syracuse specifically through insiders who knew him. 70
Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Philocrates were elected and re-elected as ambassadors to
the Macedonian King Philip in part because of the relationship they had and continued to
develop with him. 71 Examples can be multiplied. 72 To be sure, the Athenians realized
69 This principle is manifest in the selection of paredroi, two of which assisted each of the eponymous
archon, the archon basileus, and the polemarch: Dow (1976), Whitehead (1986: 301-5), Kapparis (1998).
AP 56.1 records that the three archons selected their paredroi on their own accord, meaning that their philoi
were likely the primary beneficiaries: Whitehead (1986: 304-5) collects the sources on this practice; cf.
Kapparis (1998: 388-9). Even if such an arrangement were simply a holdover from the archaic period—
so Rhodes (1981: 622 ad AP 56.1) and recently Kapparis (1998: 385-6)—it nevertheless made sense in the
democracy if the Athenians actually wanted the archons’ work to proceed smoothly and efficiently (a
necessity given the wide range of their tasks): cf. [Dem.] 59.81. So, for example, several sources attest
that an inexperienced archon should be balanced out by an experienced paredros: schol. ad Dem. 21.178,
schol. ad Aeschin. 1.158; Anecd. Bek. 288.16.
70 Philoi: Diod. 13.105.3, cf. Plut. Alc. 36.6-37.3. Nicias: Thuc. 7.48.2, 7.73.3, cf. Diod. 13.27.3.
71 Cf. Dem. 18.51-2, 18.284, 19.167. Conversely, foreign ambassadors were frequently invited to
institutionalize some kind of tie to the city through xenia: Dem. 19.234-5. On the preference for a
connection between an ambassador and the polis to which he would be sent, see especially Mosley (1973:
43-9, 55-62).
72 E.g. Dem. 19.166-7; cf. Dem. 18.50-2, 18.109, 18.284, 19.138-40 and generally Herman (1987) and
Mitchell (1997), who collect the sources. Note how Pericles confirms his xenia with the Spartan general
Archidamus, but explicitly mentions that this relationship had never brought any ill upon the polis (Thuc.
2.13.1).
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