BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
networks of informal ties and formal associations, as in the case of the symmories.
Accordingly, we can posit that each area, too, would have admitted the giving and
receiving of dōra within its own specific configuration of relations. These dōra could
represent anything from well-defined shares of profit—that is, specific monetary sums—
to general charis (“thanks”) recognizing a contribution to a collaborative effort; or, in the
case where collaboration was itself a favor repaying a previous relational debt,
subsequent dōra may not even have been ‘earmarked’ as thanks for any specific gift.
Even without getting into any specifics, therefore, we can see how wide-ranging the
intent, use, and meaning of these dōra could be.
All of these dōra were essentially informal payments (or gifts) that both initiated
and sustained the collaboration entailed in the above political domains. Yet there were
also formal payments made, and these constitute our third area of politics in which
important social configurations might emerge. In contrast to the above situations in
which a pre-existing social relationship was leveraged in the interests of accomplishing
some political task, where there were regular, formal payments, we need not assume that
the transactors already knew each other. The social relationship negotiated in these cases
usually would have been merely an arms-length tie. Thus, even if a particular general,
say, did not know any of the leaders in a foreign city, he might still receive a payment
from them as compensation for defending the city. 80
This is precisely what seems to have happened with Themistocles and the Greek
fleet at Artemisium. Although Themistocles leveraged his own relationship with
80 Wallace (1974: 25n.8) on these payments; cf. Hdt. 7.158.4. Even if a payment from the Euboeans would
have been irregular, Themistocles’ contemporaries probably would have viewed his payments in light of
money from Athens to finance the expedition: Hdt. 8.5.3, Ephorus FGrH 70 F193. Certainly by the end of
the fifth century, when the Persian King was financing a number of Spartan expeditions, this practice had
become more regular: Lewis (1989).
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