BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Introduction
have a significant effect on how they regulated it. After all, we might be less inclined to
query the death of a traitor than that of a venal politician.
It is precisely on this point that Plutarch’s juxtaposition of Epicrates and
Timagoras becomes so instructive, for accounts of Epicrates’ embassy condemn him not
for treason, but for profiteering. With Epicrates, the excessive amount of the King’s gifts
seems to have been the only issue. In his comedy The Presbeis, Plato Comicus describes
in detail the range of different gold and silver cups that Epicrates took (Plato Com. frr.
119-21K). The comic poet even comments on how many of them there were (cf.
plei=sta, Pl. Com. fr. 119.2K) and notes that both ambassadors made off like thieves (cf.
e)klepte/thn, Pl. Com. fr. 120K; kle/yaj, Pl. Com. fr. 121K). Indeed, the entire anecdote
is framed around how Epicrates had profited, while the rest of the city remained poor
(Plut. Pelop. 30.7). Earlier, too, when Epicrates purportedly took dōra from Timocrates,
the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhyncia notes that the dōra themselves did not change
Epicrates’ mind; they were pure profit (Hell. Oxy. 2.2-5). Instead of being a traitor,
Epicrates seems to have been much closer to a thief.
In this way we can tease out of Plutarch’s account the idea that conceptions of
who the dōrodokos was actually changed throughout the democracy. This fundamental
point courses through Chapters Two through Four, which examine how and why political
narratives about the dōrodokos changed throughout the democracy. Building on the
relational model developed in Chapter One, these chapters explore how changing
economic and political circumstances, as well as patterns of social relations in politics all
shaped how the dōrodokos was conceived: he changed from a kind of disobedient citizen
in the fifth century (Chapter Two), to a thief in the early fourth century (Chapter Three),
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