BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
system is constituted by a different constellation of social relations, and each has its own
constellation of social obligations that inhere in those relations. As a result, wherever
there is politics, there is the possibility of dually-framed dōra and, consequently, the
possibility of bribery.
In those cases, trying to disentangle which dōra or services negotiated which
relationship is misguided, even impossible, because they can be construed as performing
relational work in both relationships. Themistocles’ actions at Artemisium helpfully
show the problems in trying to fix only one kind of social framing; instead, there as
elsewhere we should ask what is at stake in adopting one social frame, hence one
normative evaluation, over another when both really seem to apply simultaneously. In
terms of politics, certain practices are considered legitimate, others not, but ultimately
this evaluation hinges on how we frame the social relationships involved and on how we
define the social obligations entailed by those relations. So, I underscore, the normative
value of vote-swapping in the legislature, paying a public official to win a public
contract, or accepting money from an ally and redistributing it among friends is not
absolute, but is subject to contestation among competing social frames. This contestation
of frames is a crucial part of politics. In the next section, the last part of the relational
model of Athenian bribery we have been developing, we will examine how these
competing frames tied into broader political narratives within the democracy.
From Definition to Discourse: dōrodokia and the Commerce of Bad Friends
Any relational approach to bribery must begin with identifying configurations of
social relations within a society. From there, by examining the vocabulary of bribery, the
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