[17]
Secondly, they provided in the laws
for indictments for bribery, and this is the only offence for which they imposed
a payment equal to ten times the assessment of damages,1in
the belief that one who is ready to be paid for the opinions which he is going
to express in the Assembly has at heart, when he is speaking, not the interests
of the people but the welfare of those who have paid him. Now the council has
reported Aristogiton as guilty of this. Moreover, when choosing a man for public
office they used to ask what his personal character was, whether he treated his
parents well, whether he had served the city in the field, whether he had an
ancestral cult or paid taxes.
1 Cf. note on Din. 1.60. Aristotle (Aristot. Const. Ath. 54) states that theft was punished in the same way.
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