BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
investigate in Sophocles’ Antigone and Aristophanic comedy. Tracing these changes
through a character as ubiquitous, if marginal, as the dōrodokos will provide, it is hoped,
greater historical insight into why the democracy developed as it did.
Cimon and the Politics of Power:
Despite its idiosyncrasies, Cimon’s trial is representative of the handful of fifth-
century dōrodokia trials that survive in the historical record. The great majority of these
trials were of Athenian stratēgoi like Cimon: military generals elected ten per year to
command the polis’ navy and hoplite soldiers. 3 In part this preponderance reflects the
bias of our sources, which tend to focus on the most important political actors and
therefore are less inclined to report dōrodokia among minor public officials. Yet such
bias is nevertheless indicative of the crucial role played by stratēgoi in the fifth-century
democracy. Indeed, throughout the century Athens’ military leaders were also her policy
leaders, the very men who would persuade the Assembly of the best course of action. 4
Men like Cimon were the lynchpins of the democracy, and some of the more monumental
political changes in the fifth century thus focused on the delicate relationship they
maintained with the dēmos.
3 In addition to Cimon’s trial we hear of dōrodokia prosecutions of the stratēgoi Laches (Ar. V. 240-2, 894-
7, 960-1); Sophocles, Pythodorus, and Eurymedon (Thuc. 4.65.3-4, Philochorus FGrH 328 F 127); Pericles
(Per. 32.2); and Cleon (Ar. Ach. 5-8 with schol.). Dōrodokia trials are also attested, less securely, for the
stratēgoi Miltiades (Nep. Milt. 7.5); Phormio (Ar. Pax 347-8, Androtion FGrH 324 F 8); Themistocles (DS
11.27.3); Aristides (Plut. Arist. 26.2-5, Craterus FGrH 342 F 12); and Alcibiades (Nep. Alcib. 7). Nonstratēgoi
prosecuted for dōrodokia include the Hellēnotamiai (Ant. 5. 69-71), the unnamed magistrate of
Lysias 21, various minor officials in Ant. 6.49-50, and the ambassador Callias (Dem. 19.273) if the Peace
of Callias is not spurious.
4 It was only in the fourth century that we begin to see any significant separation of policy formation by
public speakers (rhētores) from policy execution by military generals (stratēgoi): Davies (1981: 124-31),
Hansen (1983). Still, as the career of the fourth-century politician Phocion witnesses, this trend was not a
hard-and-fast rule.
83