Corruption occupies the minds of many at present. Not that this implies harmony of thought. Disagreements are often fiercest on fundamental points: on definitions of corruption, or who (or what) corrupts and is corrupted. Unsurprisingly, uncertainty on first principles obscures corruption as both concept and phenomenon. More to the point, if those investigating modernity struggle to find their footing on the subject, what hope have students of antiquity?

The volume’s editors have established a new book series – Twisted Transfers, Studies on Ancient Corruption – to address such challenges and promote ancient studies’ contributions to these conversations. The work under review, the series’ first, stems from public lectures of an associated Anglo-European project (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/hi-altertum/twisted-transfers). This is an ambitious undertaking, and an auspicious one if this first volume portends the strengths of future offerings.

The volume’s preface and thirteen chapters address corruption from fourth-century Athens to the court of Justinian. Coverage is nevertheless uneven. Rome, especially the late Republic, predominates, while late antiquity’s limited coverage is surprising and keenly felt. As the subtitle suggests, essays centre on rereading sources to rethink and reframe ancient corruption. The contributors largely succeed in their efforts, with each chapter offering insights of varying profundity and utility. The volume’s greatest value, however, lies in its guiding methodological framework, which the editors lay out in the preface (Faber) and the first chapter (Carlà-Uhink).

Faber begins with the perils facing all corruption-related studies. While allegations of corruption are common, definitions vary not only ‘cross-culturally and across time’ but even contemporaneously. Corruption ‘may even be an “empty signifier” … waiting to be filled with meaning constructed both within and by discourse’ (p. ix). Scholars, then, would do well to abandon the search for a universally applicable definition of corruption. More fruitful (and feasible) is the close study of corruption’s discursive construction and what it suggests about Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Part 1 establishes the volume’s methodological framework by focusing on the language, metaphors and narrative strategies deployed in corruption discourse. In this regard, Carlà-Uhink’s opening chapter is foundational. Carlà-Uhink, like others, notes the powerful – but complex – relationship between political corruption and moral degeneration in antiquity, which rendered corruption less a single act than an ongoing process of decline. Yet not all immorality constituted corruption. Carlà-Uhink – by analysing late Republican texts – narrows the phenomenon to four ‘spheres and areas of action’ (judicial, electoral, political, sexual) (p. 24) and, within them, to transfers of (im)material wealth. Corruption occurred when participants and observers judged transfers as illegitimate. To systematise this evaluative process, Carlà-Uhink adopts Alain Testart’s tripartite model for transfers, which uses legal compulsion to differentiate between gifts (no reciprocity required), exchanges (compulsory reciprocity) and transfers of a third type (t3t, one party compels another to give). For Carlà-Uhink these ideal types need not be objective descriptions of reality but rather narrative frames: the same transfer could be reinterpreted (and represented) as gift, exchange or t3t depending on observers’ perspectives or motives. Corruption (twisted transfer) occurs when ‘expectations and framing between parties or between parties and external observers mismatch’, as when someone ‘[sells] goods that should not be commodified’ (citizens selling votes, women paid to abort their foetus) (p. 26), or blur perniciously the boundaries between transfer types (magistrates compelling undesired sales). As Carlà-Uhink demonstrates, corruption allegations commonly implicated multiple spheres in narratives of decline, reinforcing the notion that corruption was rather a multilayered, ongoing process than a discrete act.

What is missing are robust engagements with potential critics/critiques of Testart’s framework. M. Lentano, for instance, has presented a compelling case for Roman gifts (beneficia) as always already coercive, debt-laden and asymmetrical (M. Lentano, ‘Il dono e il debito. Verso un’antropologia del beneficio nella cultura romana’, in: A. Haltenhoff, A. Heil and F. Mutschler [edd.], Römische Werte als Gegenstand der Altertumswissenschaft [2005]). Even gifts of life – for example from fathers, saviours of wartime comrades, conquering generals – virtually enslave beneficiaries. These (culturally contingent) conditions undermine Testart’s framework by collapsing boundaries between ostensibly distinct types of compulsion (juridical, moral, socio-cultural or otherwise). If beneficia meaningfully and knowingly coerce, endanger libertas and inspire resentment, what distinguishes a twisted gift from a normal one?

C. Rosillo-López examines how conversations facilitated corruption in late Republican Rome. For electoral bribery schemes to succeed, candidates must be present and active in discussions with bribery-agents (divisores, sequestres). As Cicero reveals, conversations followed patterns recognisable from mafia-related media, with actors employing vague, guarded language to initiate plots and strategise. A notable insight emerges from Cicero’s depiction of Bulbus as behaving blandissime and therefore as a flattering subordinate. For Rosillo-López this represents a rhetorical strategy for assigning status roles. One wonders, then, what to make of Crassus, an expert flatterer and easy prey to others’ flattery (Plut. Crass. 6.7).

S. Malik’s chapter problematises imperial benefaction in Tacitus’ Histories. For Tacitus acquiring and distributing money are essential to imperial rule but also powerful corrupting agents. Corruption, Malik argues, is therefore more act than effect in the Histories, an inversion of Sallust’s schema, wherein corruption resulted from exposure to luxuries. Yet, later, Malik has to acknowledge corruption (of soldiers) can result from luxury (Tac. Hist. 2.69). Safer, then, to follow Rosenblitt: ‘a poisoned political culture is bound up, in circles of cause and effect’ (J.A. Rosenblitt, ‘Sallust’, in: V. Arena, A. Stiles and J. Prag [edd.], A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic [2022]).

I. Leonardis focuses on late Republican discourse surrounding the degeneration (corruptio) of Rome’s body politic. Leonardis laments being unable to engage with J. Mebane’s recent, related monograph. No matter, for a signal contribution lies in a singular observation: Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Menenius Agrippa delivers two speeches – one each to Senate and People – whose variations expose the competing ideological and rhetorical positions (and posturing) of optimates and populares. Optimates, Leonardis asserts, called for amputation of gangrenous tissue (fractious citizens) to save an ailing Republic; populares, in reaction, proposed double-headed/-bodied scenarios, with decapitation as a remedy for rot. Cicero’s beheading is therefore a poignant metaphor – and metric – for the Republic’s fall, as the ruling Senate-qua-head was replaced first with three, and finally with one, caput (principis).

Part 2 seeks corruption ‘at another level than (Roman) politics’ (p. xiii), though this seems somewhat arbitrary, given C. Degelmann’s politics-heavy opening chapter on corruption rhetoric in democratic Athens. Degelmann argues that, because reputation and rumour outweighed (modern notions of) evidence in Attic courts – and because jurors feared appearing ignorant of public affairs –, orators resorted to ‘everyone knows’ tropes to bolster allegations of corruption. As Degelmann acknowledges, limited evidence conceals this trope’s success, though ubiquity may hint at efficacy.

P. Sänger usefully surveys papyrological evidence for corruption in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Sänger employs papyri to construct a narrative from below largely aligning with literary sources: corruption proliferates in second-century bce Ptolemaic Egypt, becomes ‘quantitatively less noticeable’ (p. 142) under Roman rule and (perhaps) increases in late antiquity. Missing, though much desired, is the quantitative analysis needed to support such conclusions.

E. Mataix Ferrándiz discusses twisted transfers and their remedies in Roman Imperial ports. Mataix Ferrándiz offers an erudite, theoretically informed analysis of the standards and tools designed to mitigate corruption, highlighting Romans’ ‘accentuated metrological particularism’ (p. 150) in establishing the trust upon which proper market functioning depended. As Mataix Ferrándiz aptly notes, reactions against corruption – for example collective action against maladministration – suggest Romans believed twisted transfers could be combatted.

M. García Morcillo, surveying suspect inheritances in Rome, makes excellent use of Testart’s model and the volume’s discursive framework. As García Morcillo notes, because the pejorative captatio testamenti is missing from legal and epigraphical texts, it must have been discursively constructed elsewhere. Analysis of the term’s usage – for example literary comparisons of legacy hunters with marginal groups like prostitutes – reveals elite anxieties over captatores’ social mobility and a dangerous rejection of traditional ‘relationships based on generosity, reciprocity and honor’ (p. 180). García Morcillo concludes by emphasising corruption’s constructedness in testamentary practice: one (wo)man’s corrupt circumvention of law was another’s morally justified reaction against an encroaching, rent-seeking state.

M. Patzelt’s stimulating chapter transitions to late antiquity and Salvian’s critiques of contemporary inheritance practices. Salvian’s Ad ecclesiam identifies corruption as moral degeneration proceeding from avarice, which manifested most visibly in not bequeathing to the church. Salvian portrays God as paterfamilias of a domus (humankind and its possessions), with bishops as his agents (dispensatores). Obedience to these representatives was therefore obedience to God-qua-pater; bequeathing one’s possessions to bishops likewise constituted returning to God what is God’s. This framework, Patzelt argues, was profoundly innovative, not least in establishing obedience to episcopal authority as a precondition for harmony with God (with disobedience foretelling corruption and imperial decline).

Part 3 turns to international relations. Y. Gershon’s dense, complicated chapter examines the discursive construction of C. Fabricius Luscinus’ exemplarity within especially the Greek literary tradition. Gershon emphasises the ‘contextual discourse of “anti-corruption” ’ wherein Fabricius’ incorruptibility – epitomised by his rejection of Pyrrhus’ largesse – ‘informs the definition of corruption itself’ (p. 224). Fabricius’ rejection, in other words, is what discursively casts Pyrrhus’ gift as a corrupt bribe. Gershon usefully traces the mutability of Fabricius’ exemplum across authors: Plutarch, for instance, being more sympathetic to Pyrrhus, is consequently more nuanced in assigning moral superiority to Fabricius.

S. Lacorte, following Sallust, recasts M. Aemilius Scaurus – rags-to-riches princeps senatus and defender of Roman virtue – as a more scurrilous, or at least more ordinary, late Republican politician. For Lacorte prosecutions of Scaurus for ambitus and repetundae reveal much about the era’s political landscape: both practices were justifiable given structural pressures (especially on Scaurus, whose unconventional background enhanced fears of [re-]marginalisation following electoral defeats). Prosecutions (and allegations) were in any case strategies for undermining opponents’ dignitas and enhancing one’s own. Lacorte errs, however, in describing such cases as ‘apparently harmless legal battle(s)’ (p. 282) – much, after all, was at stake (as Rutilius Rufus’ conviction and exile suggest).

A. Raggi shifts to corruption and institutional processes by examining the usurpation of Roman citizenship. Raggi helpfully narrates its development from the exploitation of colonisation schemes to falsifications (corrumpere) of data, the latter by Roman magistrates (for a fee – a twisted transfer) and wealthy Eastern Greeks alike.

C. Rollinger concludes with a valuable study on diplomatic corruption in Justinianic Rome. Rollinger focuses on Byzantine discourses surrounding diplomatic subsidies to menacing foreign powers: depending on author, context and diplomatic situation, such gifts might be construed as legitimate alternatives to war or shameful, corrupting abasements of the state. Rollinger persuasively connects contemporary views on elderly infirmity with such assessments: once old age corrupted an emperor’s mind and body, the rot naturally spread to state policy and its agents.

This first volume is proof of concept for the methods and models the editors eloquently espouse. Political corruption is inseparable from moral decay, and corruption is discursively constructed and thus continuously redefined. There is much to appreciate here but even more to anticipate once this framework is further refined, reapplied and defended.