BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
As the next three chapters will detail, during each of three different periods in the
democracy a different conception of the dōrodokos prevailed: the disobedient citizen, the
thief, and the traitor. Each one of these latter types, and the dōrodokos by extension, had
its own distinct characteristics, but we will find that the choice of which type or which
characteristics to assign to the dōrodokos was determined in large part by how dōrodokia
was conceptualized. At the end of the dissertation, we will return to the question of why
the Athenians treated the dōrodokos uniquely as an ideal type yet one which never had
any distinct features of its own. For now it is enough to note that the dōrodokos played
this role in the democracy and that the next chapters examine in greater detail how this
process actually worked.
So calling someone a dōrodokos identified him with a social type within the
democracy, although this type shifted over time along with changing conceptions of
dōrodokia. This brings us to the second point I would like to highlight about the
normative construction of narratives of bribery in the Athenian democracy. In public
discourse, the stereotype of the dōrodokos was used to tell a larger story about politics
and society at Athens. This idea will play a prominent role in the second half of the
dissertation, where we will see how distinct narratives of dōrodokia became legitimated
in public discourse through legal institutions. It is worth outlining the contours of this
claim here, however, so that in the chapters to follow the reader can glean hints of the
broader role played by narratives of dōrodokia.
We have been focusing on competing social frames, on the difference between an
insider’s and outsider’s potential framing of a sequence of events. To an outsider, the
monies used to negotiate a relationship of political collaboration could quickly blend into
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