BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
mechanics for assigning and contesting value, we can begin to uncover the patterns of
normative values generated by those social relations. But what happens when these
values are contested? What happens when the meaning of a relationship is negotiated, or
when competing social frames are brought to bear on the same actions? At that point,
people turn to broader cultural norms to guide how they should assess such competing
political claims—in short, people determine the narrative of a specific sequence of events
by looking to broader cultural narratives about how similar events are typically framed.
In this way, the frame of bribery interlocks with larger narratives about how politics is
conducted, at Athens as in any other polity. Exactly how this interlocking of social
frames and political narratives plays out will be the focus of this section, one that will lay
the groundwork for our relational approach. 91
In this last section, therefore, we must shift our focus from social relations to
political norms, with an eye towards understanding how political norms can change over
time. As we just saw, there were a number of different ways in which social relations
could be leveraged in Athenian politics, but one of the critical problems the Athenian
democracy faced was the inherent danger in allowing certain kinds of social relations to
pertain in politics. A well-connected general or ambassador was certainly in a good
position to obtain a favorable result for the community, but he was just as able to obtain a
less than favorable result, as well. There was, accordingly, a pressing need for the
91 Although bribery functions as a narrative about politics in practice in other cultures, too—see, e.g. Gupta
(1995), Ledeneva (1998), Sedlenieks (2004), cf. Thuc. 2.97.4 about the Odrysians in Thrace—it is
nevertheless remarkable that the Athenians adopted it. After all, the presumption of bribery can be a major
distortion of the causality of events. Even if there had been a long sequence of gift and counter-gift in the
transactors’ eyes, in which case no particular ‘bribe’ could be associated with the specific counter-gift of
the political service provided, within the frame of bribery this long sequence was narrowed down to a
single quid pro quo transaction, the exchange of bribe for service. Likewise, to presume that politics was
conducted through bribes entails a considerable amount of civic distrust: see especially Chapter Four
below.
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