BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
This dissertation seeks to recover Timagoras and countless others like him from
the shadows of the democracy: to restore to mind the significance, for Athenians then as
for us now, of viewing bribery as a foil to the desired course of political history. I aim
here to uncover how someone like Timagoras understood his own actions: not simply
whether they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but how they were envisioned as fitting into the
workings of the democracy. Such an inquiry certainly entails examining what the
Athenians thought about bribery. Yet in bringing to light the significance of bribery as an
alternate trajectory for democracy—an alternate path for conceptualizing and practicing
politics, an alternative that the people could always choose to legitimate at any given
time—I am especially interested in uncovering how the Athenians thought with and
through bribery. In essence, this dissertation hopes to rid our minds forever of the
assumed familiarity of Athenian bribery. My hope is that, for every mention of bribery,
we might take to heart both why an Athenian in that position chose to take dōra and why
Athens in that context responded as she did.
Rescuing Timagoras from the murky shadows of Athenian history is a difficult
endeavor, for we must thereby confront our own preconceived ideas about why he might
have taken bribes or how Athens should have responded. The more we peer into the
story, picking out the details that give it such distinct color—the lingering illness, the in-
fighting with Leon, the extensive list of dōra, the death sentence—the more bizarre and
alarming it becomes. Specifically, two glaring incongruities emerge: why, after all, did
Timagoras take the King’s gifts, and why did the Athenians kill (!) him for doing so?
Our sources note that certain other ambassadors refused to take gifts (Xen. Hell.
7.1.38) while even the Theban Pelopidas limited himself in what he took home (Plut.
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