Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity

Abstract

It is a commonplace of the literature on corruption that modern usage of the term — denoting the use of public office for private (pecuniary) gain — has substantially changed from Ancient Greek, Roman and Medieval usages. The Ancient Greeks and Romans certainly talked about the problems of bribery or buying judicial decisions, activities we would not hesitate to describe as acts of corruption, but they were often framed by concerns about moral corruption, something largely missing from late modern and contemporary discourse. Corruption for us represents a form of conduct, such as bribery, in which an individual or group acts in such a way as to exploit public office for personal gain.1 Corruption may also be applied to a whole regime or polity in which the principles of public office are systematically distorted to favour particular groups or factions. The connotation of moral degeneracy is certainly a feature or an implication of contemporary understandings of corruption, though it tends to be overshadowed by concerns about market distortion or lack of governmental probity and transparency. For the Ancient Greeks and Romans, however, the understanding of corruption also imbibed notions of utter destruction, perversion, decay or ruin.2 This imagery became even more striking when overlaid by Judeo-Christian associations between corruption and death, and by the pervasive influence of the metaphor of the body politic, as will be shown in the following chapters.