intelligible. But we must call attention to the peculiar fact that in
the play Orestes is represented as having been tried not at Argos but at
Athens. If Orestes had slain his mother at Athens, his act would have
been, in Athenian law, a case of homicide between foreigners, and such an
act, though normally in Aeschylean Athens tried by the Palladium court,
could quite conceivably, in pre-Solonian times, have been tried by the
Areopagus. But Orestes did not slay his mother at Athens, and therefore
the case would not have come before any Athenian court, unless Orestes
intended to reside at Athens, and his right to reside at Athens was
challenged by the relatives of the slain. Now, in Greek extradition law
these relatives[66] had no right to object to the residence of the slayer
‘abroad’ unless he was guilty of wilful kin-slaying, as, for instance,
of wilful matricide: for the penalty for kin-slaying in historical
times was death, without the option of exile. It is precisely on such a
charge of wilful matricide that the Erinnyes, in this play, prosecute
Orestes. To that extent their prosecution was lawful. But the fact that
the prosecution took place at Athens implies that Orestes intended to
live in Athens as an exile, at least for a time. We have pointed out
that, according to Greek extradition law, the relatives of the slain
could have compelled the fellow-citizens of the slayer to try him or to
extradite him if he fled to them for refuge. But in cases of kin-slaying
it is probable that any State to which the slayer fled could have been
compelled to put him on trial before they received him as an exile, or
otherwise to expel or extradite him. Yet the avenging relatives were not
compelled to accept a verdict of acquittal in any court as a complete
restoration of the slayer to social and religious communion, just as in
certain cases of kin-slaying the relatives were not compelled to admit
the slayer to domestic communion, even when his own State court had
permitted his return from exile. Hence, in the Oresteia, a verdict of
acquittal brought in by the Athenian Areopagus in regard to a foreign
Argive kin-slayer was primarily intended to legalise the residence at
Athens of Orestes, but it could not have legalised his return to Argos
unless the relatives of the slain accepted the verdict of the Athenian
court as a final verdict of innocence, and ceased, of their own accord,
from further prosecution. Now, the legends of Orestes seem to differ in
their account of the ‘appeasement’ of the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra. In
some legends, as in that upon which is based the _Iphigenia Taurica_ of
Euripides, the Furies do not accept the verdict of the Areopagus, and
continue to pursue him over land and sea. The fact that they can drive
him out of Athens is due to their divine power. In law, ordinary human
relatives could not have done so. But it is clear that, in the absence
of unanimity in regard to the attitude of the Erinnyes to the Areopagus,
the Attic legend-makers who emphasised the connexion of Orestes with the
Areopagus must have assumed that Orestes intended to reside, at least
for a time, as a homicide-exile at Athens. Now there is no evidence in
Homer of such an intention on the part of Orestes. In Homer, Orestes went
to Athens _before_, not _after_, he slew his mother. Hence the whole
basis of the Attic legends of Orestes is a pure assumption, without any
historical foundation.
The main difficulty which the ancients found in the post-Homeric legends
of Orestes was the interpretation of the command which Apollo gave to
Orestes. Some legends, of course, such as that which we have called the
‘Argive legend,’[67] did not include any reference whatever to such a
command. But in the Attic legends, which represent this command as an
essential element in the story, there is no precise and definite answer
to the question: ‘Did this command justify the vengeance of Orestes
or was it a mere “extenuation” of his guilt?’ We have said that the
conception of this command as a complete justification predominates
in the _Eumenides_, though the Erinnyes naturally object to this
interpretation. But the command may also be regarded as an abnormal
psychic factor which would make it possible to interpret the act of
Orestes as ‘kin-slaying in a passion,’ or extenuated kin-slaying, which
is akin to involuntary homicide. It is only thus that we can explain
the reference in certain forms of the legend to a penalty of one year’s
exile: and to other details of punishment which are never associated with
voluntary homicide. The Furies, in the _Eumenides_,[68] find it difficult
to conceive that Orestes will ever return to his domestic religion. Now
Plato[69] asserts that a son who slew his parent in a passion could not,
unless the dying parent ‘forgave,’ return again to his domestic hearth,
even though he could return, after a period of exile, to his native
State. We cannot suppose that the Furies, in the _Eumenides_, represent
an attitude of ‘forgiveness’ on the part of Clytaemnestra, and hence
we could not expect them to accept the possibility of Orestes’ return
to his native home in Argos. But the mere mention of such a detail
suggests a plea of quasi-involuntary matricide. A verdict of acquittal
on a plea of justifiable slaying is precisely the verdict which the
Erinnyes in Aeschylus, before their ‘conversion,’ cannot recognise. But
they might have accepted as an alternative to their charge of wilful
matricide a charge of extenuated matricide. Such a charge, such a
conception of Orestes’ guilt, is very prominent in a form of the legend
which Euripides gives.[70] But even in Aeschylus this conception is not
altogether absent, though it is very much suppressed, perhaps because it
was inconsistent with the dominant viewpoint of the Aeschylean drama.
Thus, Orestes suggests that before he came to Athens to stand his trial
he had already atoned for any element of guilt which was involved in his
obedience to Apollo. He says to Athene, before the trial[71]:
Sovereign Athene, sped by Phoebus’ word,
I come. Do thou with clemency receive
The outcast—not red-handed nor unpurged,
But mellowed by long time and travel-worn.
Among new households, alien ways, o’er land
And beyond sea....
Taught wisdom in the school of misery,
I am learned in all atonement.... The stains
Of slaughter on my hands are dulled and pale.
The guilt of matricide is washed away,
For while quite recent, at Apollo’s hearth,
’Twas driven out and purged with death of swine,
And tedious were the number to tell o’er
Of men I have communed with without harm.
All-mellowing time makes old defilement pure.
Nothing can remove the inconsistency in this quotation. We seek merely
to explain it by attributing it to a confusion of two different legends,
which viewed the act of Orestes from two different legal standpoints.
In this passage Aeschylus happens to emphasise a standpoint which he
usually ignores, namely the conception of Orestes as a matricide of
partial guilt, or as an extenuated matricide, the conception which
underlies the stories of the wandering of Orestes and of his sojourn as
a homicide-exile in various lands. If Aeschylus does not consistently
exclude this conception from his drama, this must be attributed not only
to a certain legal affinity which exists between the conception[72] of
Orestes as justified, and the conception of him as partially guilty, but
also to a confusion of these conceptions in pre-existing legends.
This analysis which we have given indicates, at least, the value of
legal considerations for the complete intelligibility of this play. For
the history of law, also, we may infer from Aeschylus, or rather from
pre-Aeschylean legend, that the early Areopagus, and therefore the early
Ephetae courts, adjudicated in various kinds of homicide cases. The
division of labour which took place, we believe,[73] in pre-Solonian
times, and which left to the Areopagus exclusive jurisdiction in cases
of wilful murder, of malicious wounding, and of poisoning with intent to
kill, had obviously not yet appeared at the time when this Attic legend
took shape. There is thus no basis for Ridgeway’s hypothesis[74] that
the place of Orestes’ trial was not the Areopagus but the Palladium. The
image of Athene which Orestes embraces in the _Eumenides_ was not, as
Ridgeway thinks, the famous wooden image of the goddess at the Palladium,
but was rather, as Müller points out,[75] the image of Athene on the
Acropolis.
The relation between the legal and the dramatic aspects of the story
of Orestes may be indicated by the following useful, if fanciful,
hypothesis: Let us suppose, for the moment, that there existed in the
time of Aeschylus no other legends of Orestes except that which is found
in the Homeric poems. If Aeschylus wished to incorporate this legend, in
the form of a tragic drama, following we may assume in his dramatic art
the Horatian maxim[76]:
aut famam sequere aut sibi convenientia finge,
he could have followed one or other of two possible courses: On the one
hand he could have simply dramatised the Homeric story in its original
setting, thus giving us what would be called an ‘historical drama,’
or, on the other hand, he could have invented a ‘drama’ in which the
facts, the names and the characters alone were Homeric, but the ideas,
the viewpoints, the legal and religious atmosphere were derived from
contemporary life. If Aeschylus had chosen the former course he could
not have produced a trilogy such as we now possess: the _Eumenides_ at
least would have been impossible: he could, however, have written the
_Agamemnon_, and a _Choephoroe_ somewhat similar to, though also somewhat
different from, our present play, as both these dramas are Homeric
in their main outlook. Again, if we suppose that Aeschylus chose the
second course, the _Agamemnon_ would still have been possible: but the
_Choephoroe_ would have been unrecognisable—in fact, there could not
have been a _Choephoroe_ at all: Orestes could not have been regarded
as the sole or proper agent of execution: if he slew his mother without
trial, or without having given her the option of exile, he would
have been a State criminal, liable to prosecution as a matricide or a
violator of civic law. The _Eumenides_ would also, in this hypothesis,
have been very different. There could not have been any doubt regarding
Orestes’ guilt or the verdict of the court: there could not have been
any conflict between Apollo and the Erinnyes. There could, in short,
have been no _Eumenides_ drama worthy of the name. We may therefore, as
a result of this reasoning, and from the actual nature of the extant
Oresteian trilogy, infer that there must have existed a post-Homeric
pre-Aeschylean legend, or legends, of Orestes which predetermined the
Aeschylean presentation of the story. These legends, by combining very
different reflections in the course of legal and religious developments,
created the moral and the legal problems of the Oresteia. It was probably
these problems which constituted, for the litigiously minded Athenian
people, the main dramatic interest of the _Eumenides_, if not also of the
_Choephoroe_. But that interest was purchased at the cost of obscurity
and confusion. It is, for instance, quite inconsistent for Aeschylus to
have represented the trial of Orestes as the first Greek trial[77] of
homicide and at the same time to have conceived Orestes as guilty of
bloodshed: for it was at the precise moment at which State trial and
State execution came into being that Orestes became a criminal! Before
that moment he was simply the normal avenger of blood. This inconsistency
is, we think, a proof that the Aeschylean story was not his own
invention: for if Aeschylus had invented it, it would not have contained
so many inconsistencies. On the other hand, inconsistency would naturally
have characterised a legend which evolved through ages of legal and
religious transitions. When once it had become stereotyped in the story,
Aeschylus could not, even if he would, have thought it away.
Verrall therefore is right in saying[78] ‘That a legend gave the main
fact, the prosecution of Orestes by the Erinnyes before a tribunal at
Athens and his acquittal there, might safely be inferred from the play
and is beyond doubt.’ And Müller says[79]: ‘The transmutation of the
Erinnyes into Eumenides formed in Greece an essential appurtenance to the
legend of Orestes. The persecution of Orestes from country to country by
his mother’s Erinnyes, in the place of human vengeance, was no invention
of poet or priest but Greek national tradition.’
The ‘tragic’ Erinnyes, whom we have already encountered in the
_Choephoroe_,[80] find in the _Eumenides_ their real battle-ground. In
this drama they have received from the hands of Aeschylus an immortality
which no mere legend or even religious ritual could ever have bestowed.
In the dramatisation of those Titanic shapes the genius of Aeschylus
found congenial work: but what, if any, elements of the final product
were ‘invented’ by him is a matter of dispute. Miss Harrison thinks that
the Erinnyes, _qua_ Erinnyes, had no special cult in Greece. This view
implies that religion, or image-magic, had not created these monstrous
forms. Müller,[81] however, thinks that in a chasm near the temple of
the Semnai Theai beside the Areopagus there were, in all probability,
carved wooden images of the Erinnyes. But these images, he holds, did
not influence the Aeschylean picture. ‘In the outward and visible form
of the Erinnyes,’ he says, ‘Aeschylus seems to have drawn a good deal
on his invention, for the earlier poets had no definite image of the
goddesses before their eyes: and though there were in the Temple at
Athens old carved wooden images of the Semnai, still their figures could
not be adapted for dramatic purposes. Hence it is that the Pythian
priestess after having beheld the Erinnyes is only able to describe their
forms without being apprised thereby of the nature of the beings she
had seen.’ Pausanias[82] says that it was an innovation on the part of
Aeschylus to have represented the Furies ‘with snakes in their hair.’
Müller holds that this was not an innovation, but that it was borrowed
from the images of Gorgons.[83] The Furies are compared to Gorgons in
the _Choephoroe_.[84] We have elsewhere maintained[85] that it was from
the Gorgon images which, in the _Ion_ of Euripides,[86] are depicted
as sitting around the Omphalos at Delphi, that Aeschylus got his idea
of the ‘tragic’ Erinnyes. But in the _Eumenides_ the Pythian priestess
definitely states that though similar to the Gorgons they are not
identical with them. If they had been identical she would no doubt have
recognised them: moreover, they are not Harpies, she says, because they
have no wings.
Hence we are of the opinion that Aeschylus, feeling that he was not
bound by any definite traditional form, conceived the Erinnyes as
monsters-in-general, but with a predominantly human shape in order to
prepare the way for their subsequent transformation into Semnai Theai. In
a certain still extant vase-painting[87] which represents a scene from
the _Eumenides_, the figure of the Fury could be transformed into the
image of a respectable goddess by merely removing the snake which hisses
at Orestes, above her head! But the nature and function of the ‘tragic’
Erinnyes are not the invention of Aeschylus. Their form, indeed, his hand
defined, but their nature and their character had long been enshrined
in traditional legend. We have suggested[88] the social, legal, and
religious transitions which led to the birth of these quasi-diabolical
monsters. While the docile Pelasgian ghosts of primeval days have many
affinities with the Semnai Theai in whose forms Pausanias[89] could
discern nothing terrible or dreadful, the ‘tragic’ Erinnyes, which are
a product of post-Homeric times,[90] appear in the rôle of avengers so
savage and so implacable that they cannot be recognised by either ghosts
or gods. Thus Apollo says to Orestes[91]:
Even now thou see’st those Furies overtaken,
Their madness lost in sleep: maidens abhorred,
Aged, but ever crude, whom none that lives,
Man, god or beast e’er met in fellowship.
To evil they were born, evil the gloom
Of Tartarus, their haunt beneath the ground,
And hated both of men and gods in Heaven
The power they exercise.
We have already discussed[92] the problem involved in the refusal, on the
part of the Erinnyes in this play, to recognise the purgation of Orestes.
This purgation ceremony is quite naturally attributed by Aeschylus to
Apollo, who was the pioneer deity of the purgation-system. It could not
have been performed in historical times by priests or purifiers, since
the matricide had not been previously acquitted by a court. Hence the
purgation of an untried kin-slayer, which in Attic law would have been
invalid, was naturally rejected by the Erinnyes. They say[93]:
Such deeds the younger brood of gods will do,
Swaying all things by force beyond the right.
One sheet of gore, mantled from base to cope,
Earth’s midmost shrine is visibly beheld
Self-cloaked with horror-breathing guilt of blood.
O prophet-god! Thou hast stained thine own hearthstone
From thine own mind, moved by no just appeal,
Breaking the law of gods to honour man.
But Apollo regards them as Titan-rebels, as deities of a barbarous past.
He sees in them the avengers of the Dark Ages.[94]
Begone! I bid you, forth of mine abode!...
Profane not with your presence this fair shrine,
But go where headsmen execute the doom,
Where eyes are gouged, throats gashed, where robbed of prime,
Boys lose all hope of offspring, tender limbs
Are hacked or stoned: where men, impaled alive,
Moan long and bitterly.... Go,
Inhabit, as beseems such form, the den
Of some blood-lapping lion, nor infect
With touch accursed my oracular seat.
Go! herded by no goat-herd, ye fell flock,
Hated of all in Heaven. Away! Depart!
Yet the Erinnyes have not lost all traces of the ghost-cult of primitive
ancestor-worship and fertility-worship. We have already quoted[95] the
magnificent passage in which they promise their blessings to the Attic
land. We are reminded of primitive ancestral ghosts by the words which
Clytaemnestra (herself a ghost) speaks to the Erinnyes[96]:
Much wealth of mine ye have glutted, drink offerings,
Unmixed with wine, tempered to soothe your heart;
And rich burnt offerings at dead of night,
That hour of dread, avoided by all gods.
The conception of the Erinnyes as Titans is established by comparing
their frequent references in this play to Apollo and Athene as ‘younger
gods’[97] with their words applied by Prometheus, in another play, to the
Olympian gods[98]:
Yet who but I to these new deities
Gave and determined each prerogative?
and again[99]:
Young gods, young pride of unproved majesty.
We agree with Müller[100] that the ‘appeasement’ of the Furies and
their transmutation into Semnai Theai was an essential part of the
pre-Aeschylean legend. We have already suggested the forces which
probably contributed to the story of their ‘conversion.’ Beneath the
religious, mythical story of a transference of cult, beneath the story
of the adoption by the Erinnyes of the worship of the Semnai, lurks, we
believe, the echo if not the reality of legal and social evolution. The
‘conversion’ of the Erinnyes, which directly indicates the acceptance, on
the part of non-Athenian avengers, of the verdict of an Athenian homicide
court, symbolises also, in general, the acquiescence of rebellious
clans, which in the seventh century B.C. were deprived of material
retribution in cases of bloodshed, in the new system—the historical
system—of murder-penalties, which we have associated with Apollo and
political synoekism. The cult of the ‘Eumenides,’ who were probably
the ‘Semnai’ under a different name, we need not discuss here. It is a
religious rather than a legal matter. It has been discussed at length by
Verrall,[101] Miss Harrison,[102] Müller,[103] and others, and we do not
see that its elucidation affects in the least the intelligibility of this
play.
THE ‘SUPPLIANTS’ AND THE ‘SEVEN AGAINST THEBES’
In the remaining plays of Aeschylus there is little or nothing which is
worthy of comment from our present viewpoint. In the _Suppliants_, the
daughters of Danaus, in their efforts to avoid incestuous marriage, seek
asylum at Argos. They have some difficulty in obtaining refuge there, and
they feel it necessary to describe themselves thus:
Exiles from the sacred land
Bordering Syria’s meads, we flee,
Not for guilt of murder banned
By a people’s just decree.[104]
In this play the daughters of Danaus are not yet wedded nor have they
slain their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus. We believe, however, that
Aeschylus is thinking of their subsequent kin-slaying when he attributes
to them these words. In historical Greece, persons guilty of ordinary
homicide were legally entitled to reside as aliens abroad. It is only to
kin-slayers that we can properly apply an expression which suggests that
slayers could not be accorded the privilege of exile.
In the _Septem_ we read of the impossibility of cleansing
kin-slaughter—an idea which we have already explained.[105] The reference
is to the war of the ‘Seven against Thebes’ and to the death of Eteocles
and Polyneices[106]:
Enough that Argive and Cadmean came
To the issue: blood so shed hath power to cleanse.
But death of brothers, each by a brother’s hand,
That were a stain no time could purify.
Finally, the doctrine of the ancestral curse is applied to the guilt of
fratricide[107] in the lines:
What charm may purge the guilt
Of blood so foully spilt?
Whose hands shall bathe them? Oh! unhappy store
Of fresh woes for this House, blent with the woes before!
FOOTNOTES
[1] _A.P._ 119.
[2] _Supra_, p. 72 ff.
[3] Euripides, _Electra_, 1275, _Orestes_, 1647.
[4] Schol. ad Eur. _Orestes_, 1640.
[5] Eur. _Orestes_, 1654; Pausanias, iii. 1. 16.
[6] Eur. _Orestes_, 1660.
[7] _Supra_, p. 214.
[8] 1250, 1274.
[9] Eur. _Orestes_ (1645 ff.); _Iph. in Tauris_.
[10] _Infra_, p. 375 ff.
[11] _Supra_, p. 270 ff.
[12] See Jebb’s edition Soph. _Electra_, Introd. p. xxii.
[13] _Supra_, p. 122.
[14] _Orestes_, 990 ff.
[15] 1095 ff. (trans. L. Campbell).
[16] 1220 ff.
[17] 1495 ff.
[18] See Introduction, p. xii ff.
[19] 1520.
[20] 1410 ff.
[21] _Supra_, p. 238.
[22] _Supra_, pp. 2, 27, 65.
[23] ix. 7.
[24] See _infra_, p. 422.
[25] 1645 ff.
[26] 1413.
[27] 1555 ff.
[28] 268 ff.
[29] _Supra_, p. 156 ff.
[30] _Supra_, p. 174 ff.
[31] _Supra_, p. 180 ff.
[32] _Supra_, pp. 148, 178, 211.
[33] 285 ff.
[34] _Supra_, p. 285.
[35] 1046 ff.
[36] See Introduction to _Eumenides_.
[37] _Eum._ 685.
[38] _H. of G._ p. 348.
[39] See question discussed in Bury, _loc. cit._ and in Jevons, _Hist.
Gk. Lit._ pp. 194 ff.
[40] _Op. cit._ p. 194.
[41] That of the democrats was alliance with Argos.
[42] _Op. cit._ p. 195.
[43] _Ib._ p. 196.
[44] Introd. to _Eum._ p. xlix.
[45] _Eum._ 490.
[46] Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ chs. 3, 7, 63.
[47] _Supra_, p. 269 ff.
[48] 708.
[49] 661 ff.
[50] 740.
[51] Schol. ad Soph. _Oed. Col._ 489; Harrison, _Proleg._ p. 246.
[52] Harrison, _loc. cit._
[53] _Infra_, p. 300 f.
[54] 338, 424.
[55] 210, 212, 608.
[56] 644.
[57] 648 ff.
[58] _Orestes_, 1650.
[59] _In Aristoc._ 641, 27.
[60] Introd. p. xlvi.
[61] 474, 484.
[62] 612 ff.
[63] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9; _supra_, p. 215.
[64] _Supra_, p. 229.
[65] Cp. Dracon’s phrase αἴτιος φόνου, _supra_, p. 193.
[66] Dem. _In Aristoc._ 647, 24-648.
[67] _Supra_, p. 277.
[68] 660-665.
[69] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[70] See _infra_, pp. 341, 359.
[71] _Eum._ 236-240, 276-286.
[72] _Supra_, p. 214. It must be remembered that in strict law it was
not possible to plead extenuation in cases of deliberate parent-slaying
(Plato, _Laws_, ix. ch. 9). The command of Apollo, however, gives an
extra-legal aspect to the story.
[73] _Supra_, p. 272 f.
[74] See _Classical Review_, vol. xxi. p. 163 ff.
[75] _Eum._ p. 139.
[76] _A.P._ 119.
[77] _Eum._ 685.
[78] Introd. to _Eum._ p. 38.
[79] _Eum._ pp. 174-5.
[80] 1046 ff.
[81] _Eum._ p. 178.
[82] i. 28.
[83] _Op. cit._ p. 188.
[84] 1046; _supra_, p. 286.
[85] See Bayfield’s edition, and _supra_, p. 123.
[86] 224.
[87] The Orestes Vase in the British Museum.
[88] _Supra_, p. 120 ff.
[89] i. 28.
[90] _Supra_, p. 122.
[91] _Eum._ 67 ff.
[92] _Supra_, pp. 112, 120.
[93] _Eum._ 162 ff.
[94] _Eum._ 179 ff.
[95] _Supra_, p. 97 f.
[96] _Eum._ 106 ff.
[97] _Eum._ 162, 781, 811.
[98] _Prom._ 440.
[99] _Prom._ 953.
[100] _Eum._ pp. 174-5.
[101] Introd. to _Eumenides_, pp. xxxv-vi.
[102] _Proleg._ pp. 253-6.
[103] _Eum._ p. 173 ff.
[104] 4-7.
[105] _Supra_, p. 238.
[106] 666 ff.
[107] 725 ff.
CHAPTER II
SOPHOCLES
‘Greek drama,’ says Jevons,[1] ‘owes its origin to religion and its
development to art. It is but another way of stating this fact to say
that one sign of the growth of the Greek drama was the diminution of its
religious significance.’ The drama of Sophocles compared with that of
Aeschylus is less theological and celestial, more human and terrestrial.
From the artistic point of view it not only obeys the first alternative
in the Horatian maxim[2] which we have already quoted and which
prescribes adherence to traditional story; it also follows, even more
closely than Aeschylean drama, the second alternative, which exalts the
merit of consistency. Aristotle[3] has attributed to Sophocles a piece
of self-criticism in which he asserts that he depicted his characters,
‘not as they are, but as they must be’ (οἵους δεῖ). We shall not attempt
to enter into the controversy which this simple statement has evoked,[4]
but we may suggest as a probable interpretation of the words that certain
ideal criteria guided the characterisations of Sophocles. These criteria
were, in our opinion,[5] consistency and tradition. ‘The characters of
Sophocles,’ says Jevons,[6] ‘are bound up with his plots in an artistic
and harmonious whole ... it is equally true that his characters depend
upon his plots.’ But the plots and the characters of Sophocles were
not, we think, his own invention. They were derived from pre-existing
legend and tradition. If, then, Sophocles did not always represent his
characters precisely as legend described them, the reason is that there
were inconsistencies in the legends. To escape such inconsistencies,
Sophocles sometimes had recourse to what we may term eclecticism. If,
for instance, in Homer, Oedipus, after slaying his father, is said to
have continued to rule over the Cadmeans,[7] Sophocles ignored this
tradition because it was inconsistent with the sequel which post-Homeric
legend indicated.[8] Euripides, on the contrary, often reproduced, in
one and the same drama, various mutually inconsistent legends, and then
introduced a _deus ex machina_[9] to cut the Gordian knot! Nevertheless
it remains true that not only in Sophocles, but also in Aeschylus and
in Euripides, the characters and the plots are to a great extent based
upon pre-existing legends, and these legends are often very difficult
to analyse because of the varying influences which were derived from
the ages through which they passed. If religion is less prominent
in Sophocles than in Aeschylus, the reason, we think, is that the
personality of the dramatist selected those varieties of legends which
emphasised the human element rather than the divine. But, for an Athenian
of the classical period, there was one aspect of human nature which was
always interesting and could never be ignored, namely the relation of man
to the laws of the society in which he lived. Fear of the laws and of
the penalties which they prescribed, a knowledge of the laws and their
administration, a habit of legal casuistry, an almost morbid delight in
legal problems, were essential elements of Athenian psychology. To say
this is to imply that the Sophoclean drama, like that of Aeschylus, has
an important legal interest, and cannot be made completely intelligible
without an analysis of its legal aspect. Of the seven extant tragedies,
six are concerned with themes of human bloodshed. These six plays we
shall now briefly examine, from the standpoint of homicide law. With the
_Philoctetes_ we have not any special concern.
THE ‘ELECTRA’
The plot of the _Electra_ corresponds, in the main, with that of the
_Choephoroe_ of Aeschylus. It is regrettable that we do not possess
the companion plays in which Sophocles represented, dramatically,
the murder of Agamemnon and the trial of Orestes, but we may infer
from the similarity of the _Electra_ to the _Choephoroe_ that these
plays followed the Aeschylean model. We have said[10] that the trial
of Orestes at Athens for the slaying of his mother at Argos is not
legally intelligible unless we assume that Orestes fled to Athens with
the intention of residing there, in the event of acquittal, until such
time as the avenging Erinnyes permitted his return to Argos. But there
is no evidence for this assumption in the Homeric story,[11] which
merely implies that Orestes came from Athens to avenge his father’s
death. Aeschylus, therefore, is following the Attic legend rather than
Homer when he suggests that Orestes went to Athens after, not before,
he slew his mother, and that it was from Phocis, not from Athens, that
the avenging Orestes came. In Sophocles also it is from Phocis that
Orestes comes. Moreover, we are definitely told that Phocis had been
the place of Orestes’ exile since his expulsion from Argos.[12] With
Athens, then, Orestes was not associated before he slew his mother!
Aeschylus is not quite so precise upon this point, but from the words
which Orestes utters when he arrives at Athens[13] after he had slain
Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, we cannot infer that he had ever been there
before. Sophocles, therefore, and Aeschylus seem equally to have ignored
an important element of the Homeric narrative in their close adhesion
to the Attic legends, in which the trial of the matricidal Orestes at
Athens was an outstanding essential fact. The only reason which we can
suggest for this strange omission is the fact that in post-Homeric times
the legend was so completely permeated by the dominant figure of Apollo
that Phocis, not Athens, came to be regarded by certain legend-makers
as the natural refuge and place of residence of Orestes before he slew
his mother. It is not, of course, altogether impossible to suppose that
Orestes had lived for a time in Phocis, and for a time at Athens. The
command of Apollo could have been issued to a pilgrim from Athens as
well as to a resident of Phocis. But it is strange that Aeschylus and
Sophocles do not emphasise this point. The story of Orestes’ trial at
Athens must, we think, have been based, if the legend-makers had any care
for legal issues, on the assumption that Orestes intended to reside
at Athens after he had slain his mother. This assumption is implied in
the story that an Apolline oracle directed him to Athens for trial. The
Homeric narrative does not justify though it is not inconsistent with
such an assumption. If therefore this narrative was ignored by Attic
legend-makers, it must have been because the prestige of Apollo had
obscured the Homeric story in a variant of the legend which we may call
the Phocian legend of Orestes, and because this variant, though not
originally identical with the Attic legend, became nevertheless at some
time fused with it.
If we happened to possess the non-extant drama which contained Sophocles’
account of the trial of Orestes, we feel sure that the plea of Orestes
would have been identical with the Aeschylean plea, namely that of
justifiable matricide. Thus, in the Sophoclean _Electra_ Orestes says[14]:
I, when I visited the Pythian shrine
Oracular that I might learn whereby
To punish home the murderers of my sire,
Had word from Phoebus which you straight shall hear:
‘No shielded host, but thine own craft, O King!
The righteous death-blow to thine arm shall bring.’
The post-Homeric doctrine of pollution appears in the following words of
Electra, who sees in the cohabitation, within her home, of two polluted
murderers a horrible crime which well-nigh obscures their incestuous
adultery.[15]
My mother—if she still must bear the name—
When resting in those arms—— Her shame is dead:
She harbours with bloodguiltiness and fears
No vengeance.
The atmosphere of ‘private execution’ which characterised the Homeric age
and the earliest stratum of the pollution era is faithfully retained.
Orestes is the sole avenger: without him there is little hope of
vengeance. Electra may strike, in the last resort, but not before she has
despaired of the return of Orestes. The deed of blood is calmly executed
by Orestes, whose conscience is salved by the command of Apollo. The
Chorus do not condemn the act. They have looked forward to it.[16] Thus
they say[17]:
Behold they come, they come!
His red hand dripping as he moves
With drops of sacrifice the war-god loves.
My ’wildered heart is dumb.
The desire of Electra that Aegisthus should not be buried is clearly
derived from the historical custom, for which Plato is our sole
authority,[18] of refusing burial to wilful murderers and especially to
kin-slayers[19] such as Aegisthus was. The Homeric account[20] is here of
necessity abandoned. Electra says[21]:
Kill him at once!
And, killed, expose him to such burial,
From dogs and vultures, as beseemeth such.
The Sophoclean Erinnyes are even more ‘Homeric,’ and therefore less
‘tragic,’[22] than the Aeschylean Erinnyes. In Sophocles we do not find
any reference to the Erinnyes of the slain Clytaemnestra. This is perhaps
because he conceived Orestes’ act as clearly and unmistakably the act of
a just avenger. Hence Electra prays[23]:
And ye, Erinnyes, of mortals feared,
Daughters of Heaven that ever see
Who die unjustly,
Avenge our father’s murder on his foe.
But Sophocles shares with his brother-dramatists two ideas which we have
ascribed[24] to post-Homeric times, namely the notion of an ancestral
curse and the notion of the blood-thirst of the dead, as is manifest from
the following lines[25]:
The curse hath found, and they in earth who lie
Are living powers to-day;
Long dead they drain away
The streaming blood of those who made them die.
To the post-Homeric period we have also ascribed[24] the custom of
μασχαλισμός, or mutilation of the limbs of the dead, which is mentioned
in this play,[26] as it also is in the _Choephoroe_ of Aeschylus.[27]
The ‘sacrifice’ of Iphigeneia is also referred to in the _Electra_. It
is not described in detail, nor is it boldly emphasised, as it is in
Aeschylus.[28] But it is mentioned as an argument by which Clytaemnestra
seeks to seduce Electra from her desire for vengeance.[29] Since
Agamemnon was a murderer, she argues, surely his death need not be
avenged. In her reply, Electra utters a sentiment which at first sight
seems inconsistent with her general attitude in the play; she says[30]:
But grant thy speech were sooth, and all were done
In aid of Menelaus: for this cause
Hast thou the right to slay him? What high law
Ordaining? Look to it, in establishing
Such precedent, thou dost not lay in store
Repentance for thyself. For if by right
One die for one, thou first wilt be destroyed
If Justice find thee.
What, we may ask, is the meaning of the ‘precedent’ to which Electra
refers? Does it mean that no individual should have the right to take
human life? Does it imply a condemnation of ‘private vengeance’ as
distinct from social justice? We do not think that the ‘precedent’
which Electra mentions refers to private vengeance. We have seen[31]
that, amongst the Homeric Achaeans, there was a distinction, vague and
unwritten, but none the less real, which was enshrined in a public
opinion of the caste, the distinction between murder and vengeance. The
act of Agamemnon in sacrificing Iphigeneia (if we suppose for the moment
that the sacrifice actually took place) would not have been regarded
by the Achaeans as an act of murder. But the act of Clytaemnestra in
slaying her husband would have been, and was, regarded as murder, and
Orestes was conceived as a just avenger. Hence, in this play, when
Clytaemnestra sets herself up as an isolated authority on questions of
right and wrong in matters of homicide, she is violating what must have
been an established precedent in the Achaean society. It is, we think,
to some such precedent as this that Electra here refers. To suppose that
Electra is referring to the precedent of ‘private vengeance’ would be to
attribute an inconsistent and illogical character to Electra, for is she
not whole-heartedly scheming to accomplish what, on this hypothesis, she
verbally condemned?
Finally, Sophocles does not attribute to Electra, or perhaps even to
Pylades, any actual share in the act of vengeance. In this he follows
Aeschylus, whose object it was to make Orestes the central figure in
the drama. Euripides, however, we shall see, suggests that the act of
vengeance was, so to speak, ‘partitioned’ amongst three avengers. Both
Electra and Pylades have to suffer punishment, as well as Orestes.
Perhaps Euripides is following a legend which, while admitting a degree
of guilt, sought to lessen the guilt by dividing it. This version
Sophocles does not follow, nor does Aeschylus. But Pylades had been too
long and too well established in the post-Homeric story to be omitted or
ignored. He had come into the story almost as early as Apollo, for he is
mentioned in a cyclic epic[32] by Agias of Troezen which belongs to the
middle of the eighth century B.C. The connexion of Orestes with Pylades
and with Phocis, rather than with Athens, belongs, probably, to the
Phocian variant of the Oresteian story. This version was older, we think,
than the Argive legend which we shall find in the _Orestes_ of Euripides,
and it was also probably older[33] than the Attic legends which
emphasised the trial of Orestes at the Areopagus. The Attic legend-makers
should at least have followed the Homeric saga which suggested the
connexion of Orestes with Athens before his act of vengeance; and if
neither they nor the Attic dramatists refer to such a connexion, this
must be attributed to the fact that the famous friendship of Pylades
and Orestes and the famous purgation of Orestes at Delphi had in course
of time obscured, in a fusion of legends, the previous association of
Orestes with Athens, a fact which Apollo had not forgotten when he
directed him to that State for trial and acquittal.
THE ‘KING OEDIPUS’
We have already mentioned[34] the Homeric legend of Oedipus, and the
difficulties which it presents to the legal analyst. Homer[35] appears
to think it strange that a parricide should have continued to rule in
his native land. He hints that the dreadful deed was punished in the
first instance by pain and suffering, and later by ‘pains full many’
such as the Erinnyes of a mother bring to pass. The story is complicated
by the addition of the crime of incest, just as the story of Orestes
is, to a less extent, complicated by the addition of adultery. We have
suggested[36] that in pre-Homeric times the deed of Oedipus was already
regarded, by Pelasgians, as at least involuntary parricide, and perhaps
also, because of the provocative action of Laius, as quasi-involuntary
homicide; and we have attributed the wonder which is expressed by Homer
at Oedipus’ continued rule in Thebes to the absence, amongst the Achaean
caste, of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying.
In post-Homeric times the notion of an ancestral curse was added to
the story, and also, if it was not already in the legend, the idea of
provocation on the part of Laius. Furthermore, the pollution doctrine
was applied to the legend, and Apollo was appealed to as the sole judge
of guilt, as he was, we think, appealed to in the Phocian legend of
Orestes.[37] It is strange that Attic legend-makers did not seek to
connect Oedipus with the Areopagus court, seeing that he was said[38] to
have been buried in Attica and to have been given a refuge there before
his death.
We have seen[39] that Orestes was tried by the Areopagus, on a plea
either of justifiable or of quasi-involuntary matricide, according to the
different versions of the Attic legends. In the ‘second Attic legend,’
which is based on the plea of quasi-involuntary matricide, for which
Orestes claimed that the penalty had already been paid, the Areopagus
functions as a ‘court of reconciliation’ rather than as an ordinary
homicide court. In the case of Oedipus there is a suggestion, in the
_Oedipus Coloneus_,[40] of an informal trial of Oedipus on the part
of Theseus, King of Athens. It was probably a legendary reference to
his trial by Theseus which prohibited any connexion of Oedipus with the
Areopagus.
In the present play Apollo threatens to send a plague upon Thebes if the
Thebans do not search for and punish the murderer of Laius. The penalty
which is mentioned by the oracle is of a general kind, that is, it does
not definitely imply that the crime was parricide—such an implication
would have militated against the development of the drama—but it assumes
that the slaying of Laius was an act of wilful murder. Thus Kreon
says[41]:
Sovereign Apollo clearly bids us drive
Forth from this region an accursèd thing
(For such is fostered in the land and stains
Our sacred clime), nor cherish it past cure ...
By exile or by purging blood with blood,
Since blood it is that shakes us with such storm.
It is of course possible to maintain that a penalty which permitted the
option of death or exile was the punishment of parricide in the early
stages of the ‘pollution system,’ though such an option was not permitted
for kin-slaying in Attic law. We have suggested[42] that it was not the
pollution doctrine which of itself abolished private execution, and exile
was permitted, as we think,[43] until private execution was abolished. It
is therefore legally possible that a legend of the early pollution era
contained such an oracular penalty for parricide, in days when political
synoekism had not yet established State execution. We might be inclined
to interpret in this way the description of the oracle which is given—but
only at the end of the play!—by Oedipus himself[44]:
His sacred utterance was express and clear,
The _parricide_, the unholy, should be slain;
and he requests Kreon to execute the penalty[45]:
Fling me with speediest swiftness from the land
Where nevermore I may converse with men.
But we cannot suppose that the word ‘parricide’ which is here used
by Oedipus was actually mentioned by the oracle, as, if it had been,
the greatest tragedy of ancient literature, the _King Oedipus_ of
Sophocles, could never have been written. The whole dramatic evolution
of the plot depends on the suppression of the murderer’s identity. The
Thebans would not have understood such a description, seeing that, so
far as they knew, Laius had no living child. Jevons refers to a dramatic
characteristic which may help to explain this difficulty, namely the
‘irony of Sophocles.’ He says[46]: ‘For the full appreciation of the
irony of Sophocles ... it must be remembered that whereas the torturing
contrast between the condition of Oedipus as he fancies it, and as
it really is, is only discovered by Oedipus at the last moment, this
contrast is perpetually present from the beginning to the spectator.’
Oedipus implies that Kreon had used the word ‘parricide’ when speaking to
him in connexion with the oracle. When Kreon replies[47] ‘Ay, so ’twas
spoken,’ are we to interpret the answer literally? If Kreon had known
the truth, he would have been compelled by religious fear to declare it.
The character of Kreon, as revealed in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ and in the
_Antigone_, is that of a loyal and religious citizen rather than that
of a loyal kinsman. Hence we must either suppose that this reference
to parricide is a dramatic slip, an instance in which the Sophoclean
‘irony’ overreached itself, or we must suppose that Oedipus and Kreon
have incorrectly interpreted the oracle in the tragic excitement brought
about by the dramatic developments of the plot. From the legal standpoint
we consider it most probable that the oracular declaration of the penalty
was of a non-committal character. Hence it is that when Kreon discovers
the true facts of the case he decides to consult the oracle again before
taking any action. To Oedipus’ request to drive him from the land, he
replies[48]:
Doubt not I would have done it, but the god
Must be inquired of, ere we act herein....
In such a time
We needs must be advised more perfectly.
Does Kreon then anticipate that the second consultation of the oracle
will elicit a severer penalty, namely death without the option of exile,
which was the historical penalty for parricide, or is he well aware that
the act of Oedipus, committed in ignorance of Laius’ identity, was,
at worst, wilful murder, and, if he hesitates to decree a penalty of
perpetual exile, is it because he is aware that the act was provoked by
Laius and was therefore quasi-involuntary? The answer to these questions
cannot be found in the _King Oedipus_ drama. The play ends while the
homicide penalty of Oedipus is still undecided. We do not connect with
the death of Laius the self-blinding of Oedipus or the suicide of
Jocasta. These events, which are referred to explicitly or implicitly by
Homer,[49] we connect rather with the crime of incest. The legal analysis
of the story is complicated not only by the presence of this crime, but
also by the post-Homeric doctrine of the ancestral curse in the house of
Laius. But we hope to elicit from the companion play, the _Oedipus at
Colonus_, a more satisfactory account of the legal aspect of the legend.
THE ‘OEDIPUS AT COLONUS’
Already, in the preceding play, we have been informed by Oedipus that his
act was not only not wilful parricide but was not even wilful homicide.
Describing the fatal scene, Oedipus said[50]:
When I drew near the cross-road of your tale
A herald, and a man upon a car
Like your description, there encountered me.
And he who led the car and he himself,
The greybeard, sought to thrust me from the path.
Then in mine angry mood I sharply struck
The driver-man who turned me from the way;
Which when the elder saw he watched for me
As I passed by, and from the chariot seat
Smote full upon my head with the fork’d goad;
But got more than he gave, for by a blow
From this right hand, smit with my staff, he fell,
Instantly rolled out of the car supine.
When the full revelation of his accursed destiny came home to Oedipus,
he was so overwhelmed with grief, remorse and terror that he became for
the time insane. But in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ he has once more regained
his reason. He argues[51] with himself and with others as a rational
Theban or Athenian of the historical era. What, he asks, was his crime?
The guilt lies with the Curse and the Fates who accomplished it. Has he
committed incest? No, for he did not know that his wife was his mother.
Why, therefore, should he be punished? One crime only has he committed,
yet not with malice and deliberation. He had slain an old man ‘with dark
locks just sprinkled o’er with grey,’[52] and this old man was no slave
or serf, but a free man and a prince. For this deed, according to Greek
law, Oedipus must become an exile. But was the exile to last for ever?
We have quoted from Plato[53] what we believe to have been the Greek
legal penalty for slaying in a passion, namely a period of exile which
sometimes extended to two, and sometimes to three, years, according to
the degree of malice in the act. But we have argued that in such cases
the duration of the exile depended in theory, if not in practice, on
the consent of the relatives of the slain. Now Plato says that in no
circumstances, not even in self-defence, was it lawful for persons to
slay their parents.[54] Hence the legal position of Oedipus is a complex
one. Objectively, he was guilty of wilful parricide; subjectively, he
pleaded guilty to extenuated homicide. Such complex issues were not
provided for in ancient law, not even in Plato’s penal code.
If therefore we find that Euripides[55] speaks of Oedipus as ‘imprisoned’
in Thebes, and that Sophocles speaks of Oedipus as an exile in Athens,
and mentions also a projected arrangement by which Oedipus might live
near Thebes—not in it, but just outside it[56]—may we not see in these
accounts the efforts of legend-makers to keep their creations in harmony
with legal facts, and may we not suppose that their failure to agree with
one another, and especially with the Homeric narrative, was due to the
twofold aspect, subjective and objective, of the deed of Oedipus? The
Homeric account of the subsequent rule of Oedipus at Thebes could only
be retained, in the ‘pollution’ era, by assuming that his act was not
parricide, but homicide, that it was not wilful, but quasi-involuntary,
and that the kinsmen of Laius unanimously consented to his return from
temporary exile. If his act was conceived, objectively, as parricide, it
would have been necessary to assume (1) that Laius ‘forgave’ him before
he died and (2) that his kinsmen consented to his return. But no legend
suggests that Laius forgave his slayer. Furthermore, the legends seem to
have emphasised the fact that the kinsmen of Laius were not unanimous
in consenting to the return of Oedipus. Hence the Homeric story of
his continued existence at Thebes had, in the ‘pollution’ era, to be
abandoned.
In the _Oedipus Coloneus_ Oedipus protests against his continued
banishment from home, because, he maintains, his deed was involuntary.
Thus, he says[57]:
If,
Born as I was to misery, I encountered
And killed my father in an angry fray,
Nought knowing of what I did or whom I slew,
What reason is’t to blame the unwitting deed?...
If to-day,
Here now, one struck at thee a murderous stroke,
At thee,[58] the righteous person,—wouldst thou ask
If such assailant were thy sire, or strike
Forthwith? Methinks, as one who cares to live,
You would strike before you questioned of the right,
Or reasoned of his kindred whom you slew.
Such was the net that snared me: such the woes
Heaven drew me to fulfil. My father’s spirit,
Came he to life, would not gainsay my word.[59]
Kreon, coming to Athens from Thebes, invites Oedipus to his home, not
only on his own behalf, but on behalf of the citizens of Thebes[60]:
But I am sent to bring
By fair persuasion to our Theban plain
The reverend form of him now present here....
All Cadmus’ people _rightfully_
Invite thee with one voice unto thy home.[61]
But Oedipus does not regard this attitude as sincere. Previously, Ismene,
his daughter, had warned him that Kreon would come:
To set thee near their land, that thou mayst be
Beyond their borders but within their power.[62]
In the opinion of Ismene, Oedipus can never return to his home; she
says[63]:
The blood of kindred cleaving to thy hand,
Father, forbids thee.
This statement interprets the act of Oedipus as parricide rather than as
homicide, for, assuming that the act was quasi-involuntary, the removal
of pollution required, in the former conception, the forgiveness of the
dying, whereas in the latter conception it required only the consent of
the relatives to ‘appeasement.’ Ismene implies that, whatever attitude
Kreon and the other relatives of Laius adopt, Oedipus can never return,
because Laius has not forgiven his slayer.
Kreon betrays a similar attitude of mind when he says[64] to Theseus
that he did not think the citizens of Athens would give refuge to ‘a man
incestuous and a parricide....’ He says:
Such was the mount of Ares that I knew ...
That suffers no such lawless runaways
To haunt within the borders of your realm.
We have seen that in international Greek law exile was not permitted
for wilful parricide or, more generally, for wilful kin-slaying, and
therefore no State could open its doors to such slayers. But for
involuntary or extenuated kin-slaying exile was recognised by law, and
therefore whenever a foreign kin-slayer applied to be admitted as an
exile into any State it was necessary to hold an inquiry, in order to
discover whether his deed of blood was voluntary or involuntary, before
admitting him to civic and religious communion. The attitude of Kreon in
the last speech is, we believe, a rhetorical exaggeration, for it implies
that in his opinion Oedipus was a wilful kin-slayer of full guilt, and it
is legally incompatible with his previous proposal to escort Oedipus to
his home. Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, promises[65] the same boon, if
Oedipus will only forgive him and help him in his conflict with Eteocles.
But Oedipus refuses to forgive his unfilial son and launches his curse
against him, because he and his brother and his uncle are the cause of
his continued exile[66]:
’Tis thou hast girt me round with misery;
’Tis thou didst drive me forth, and driven by thee
I beg my bread, a wandering sojourner.
Thus, if we make due allowances for rhetorical deceptions, we may
conclude that, except in the mind of Oedipus himself, his act was
regarded as voluntary rather than as involuntary: the oracle of Apollo
took, on the whole, the same view, but made some allowance for the
element of provocation in the act. Long before, it had foretold that
Oedipus would not return to reign in Thebes or to die there, but that in
Athens he would find rest and asylum. Oedipus quotes the oracle[67]:
When I should reach my bourne,
And find repose and refuge with the Powers
Of reverend name, my troubled life should end
With blessing to the men who sheltered me
And curses on their race who banished me.
There is reference in this quotation to a shrine of the Semnai Theai
in the deme Colonus. It was at this shrine that Oedipus appeared as
a suppliant for asylum and it was here that he had to submit to a
ceremonial of ‘cleansing’ which we have already referred to[68] as a
minor local purgation. This ceremonial was probably applied to all
foreign homicide exiles who claimed the privilege of residing in a State.
Orestes does not require it when he arrives at Athens, because he has
not yet been tried and convicted, because Apollo has commanded him to go
to Athens, and because Apollo has purged him of his guilt. The purgation
ceremony in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ was similar to that which Croesus
administered to the Phrygian kin-slayer, as Herodotus[69] records. We
have said[70] that, in cases of kin-slaying, some kind of inquiry, an
informal trial, was held to investigate the question of guilt. The
Athenians[71] here do not at first accept the plea of Oedipus, but refer
the matter to the decision of Theseus, King of Athens. It is ultimately
upon the word of Apollo that Theseus grants him protection.[72]
Within the precincts of the shrine of the Semnai Theai, there was, in
the time of Pausanias, a tomb which was called the tomb of Oedipus.
Pausanias[73] does not believe the story of Sophocles that Oedipus died
and was buried in Attic soil. Does not Homer,[74] he argues, prove that
Oedipus was buried at Thebes? Yet the tomb of Oedipus was to be seen
in the shrine of the Semnai! Pausanias inquired about this curious
contradiction, and he discovered, as he thinks, the solution. The bones
of Oedipus were, he says, transferred from Thebes to Athens! Nothing
could better illustrate the credulity of the ancients and their want of
historical logic. Oedipus was, in all probability, buried at Thebes.
According to Homer,[75] he never left that city. But the doctrine of
pollution, which was applied retrospectively to Oedipus, insisted that
he did leave Thebes and that he could never return to it. Plato implies
that a person who was stained with kindred bloodshed—even extenuated
kin-slaying—could never be buried in the tomb of his fathers. To Corinth
Oedipus did not return. To Phocis he could not go, for it was there
that the deed of blood was wrought, and we have seen[76] that a foreign
slayer could never return, whether his act was voluntary or involuntary,
to the State in which the act occurred. As a blind exile could not be
expected to go very far from home, the natural place for the exile of
Oedipus was the Attic land beyond Cithaeron. Thither legend brought him,
to constitute a further link in the eternal friendship between Thebes
and Athens! In the time of Demosthenes,[77] just before the battle of
Chaeronea, the Athenian reception of Oedipus was put forward as an
argument for the alliance of Thebes and Athens. In Attica legend said
that he was buried, and his tomb was there for everyone to see. But he
could not have been buried in Attica, since, according to Homer, he was
buried at Thebes. To reconcile Homer with later legend, it was necessary
therefore to suppose that the bones of Oedipus were transferred from
Thebes to Athens. Pausanias, however, unfortunately failed to see that,
according to this hypothesis, the whole structure which post-Homeric
legends of the ‘pollution’ era built round the name of Oedipus topples
to the ground. The explanation lies in the evolution of the legend. The
legend which Sophocles followed is absolutely incompatible with Homer;
and this was the ordinary and, so far as we know, the only legend of the
death of Oedipus which existed in post-Homeric days.
THE ‘ANTIGONE’
In the _Antigone_ drama, which is rightly famous not only for its
dramatic art, but also for the problems which it presents and the
conflicts of human passion which dominate it, there is no plain, direct
and obvious matter for the student of homicide law. But there are points
of interest on the borderland of homicide which cannot be entirely
omitted. It is easy for the adverse critic to assert that in this play
we find reference to civil war, to suicide, to judicial execution, and
to quarrels about burial, but we find no reference to homicide. We
venture to suggest that fratricide in civil war, judicial executions of
which the justice is called in question, and suicide, are very closely
related to homicide by the similarity, if not the community, of their
nature. Lysias[78] tells how, in the political crises at Athens, men
were prosecuted, sentenced, and executed as murderers who had merely
acted as informers, or as we should say ‘secret service’ agents, in
regard to that vague political crime which is called treason. According
to Pausanias,[79] the Athenians accepted as a foundation legend for the
Delphinium homicide-court the story that Theseus pleaded justification
for having slain, in civil war, Pallas and his sons who were his kinsmen.
Again, suicide and homicide, as they appear in drama, may be closely
related, since Teucer was punished by his father, Telamon, because of
the suicide of his half-brother, Ajax.[80] He was even said to have been
tried for this deed, for the story of his trial is solemnly told by
Pausanias[81] when he is describing the origin of the Attic murder-court
Phreatto. In the _Antigone_ the judicial execution of Antigone by Kreon
is assailed as murder by his son, Haemon. The messenger describes how
Haemon attempted to slay Kreon in revenge[82]:
But with savage eyes the youth
Glared scowling at him, and without a word
Plucked forth his two-edged blade. The father then
Fled and escaped: but the unhappy boy,
Wroth with himself, even where he stood, leant heavily
Upon his sword and plunged it in his side.
What, we may ask, caused Haemon to commit suicide? We admit that his
love for Antigone and the grief which he felt at her loss were essential
causative factors; but we also feel that there was present in his heart
an overwhelming fear that if he survived he would slay his father. We
think that it was partly in order to avoid this horrible deed that he
killed himself, just as in Homer,[83] Phoenix, through fear of parricide,
fled from his home, his country and his kindred. The fact that even for
Kreon the execution of Antigone was not merely repugnant to sentiment
but was actually a source of conscience-conflict may be inferred from
the extraordinary manner in which he caused her to die. He tells the
Chorus[84]:
Where human footstep shuns the ground
I’ll hide her in a cave-like vault,
With so much provender as may prevent
Pollution from o’ertaking the whole city.
He places Antigone in a cave and leaves with her a little food. In his
effort to avoid kin-bloodshed he proposes to starve the girl to death!
Nature and Fate can take the guilt. This procedure of Kreon cannot have
been entirely due to the aversion which human nature, even in very
primitive societies, felt towards the shedding of kindred blood.
In Sophocles, Kreon is more devoted to the city than to his kindred.
Otherwise he would have permitted the burial of the dead Polyneices
without waiting for the compulsion of circumstances. Yet we feel that if
the rebellious subject who sought to bury Polyneices had not been akin
in blood to Kreon, he would have been immediately executed.[85] Hence
we suggest that the starving to death of Antigone without bloodshed, in
order to avoid pollution, implies a latent fear in the mind of Kreon lest
her execution might be a judicial murder, for it was when the victim was
a kinsman that the religious aspect of execution was most formidable and
that the least doubt about its justice produced the greatest scruples.
It is of course open to us to suppose that we have in this story a
fusion of ideas which are derived from different atmospheres, and that
in course of time pollution ideas became grafted upon an earlier story
which represented the peculiar nature of this execution of Antigone as
entirely due to human psychology and tribal custom. But, in the absence
of any evidence for the existence of such a legend in early times, we may
conclude that the act of Kreon is presented in this drama as an act which
is open to the suspicion of being a judicial murder. For such murder
there was no penalty in law or custom while the perpetrator remained in
power, and the avenger was impotent to avenge. Teiresias the prophet
takes this view of the matter and forebodes a terrible reckoning. He
includes this execution in his recital of the crimes of Kreon when he
says[86]:
Not many courses of the racing sun
Shalt thou fulfil, ere of thine own true blood
Thou shalt have given a corpse in recompense
For one on earth whom thou hast cast beneath,
Entombing shamefully a living soul.
The whole plot of the _Antigone_ really turns on the question of the
burial of Polyneices, just as that of the _Ajax_ depends upon the
problem of the burial of Ajax. Eteocles and Polyneices had fallen in
mutual combat as leaders in a war between the Argives and the Thebans,
a combat which, from the existence of blood-relationship between the
leaders, assumed the external aspect of civil war. The problem of guilt
is obscured by political complications. If we inquire whether the mutual
slaughter of these two brothers was culpable fratricide, we must answer
that, in the circumstances of the case, it seems obvious that either
both slayers wore guilty or that both were justified. Theseus was
justified,[87] according to legend, in the slaying of the Pallantidae,
and, according to Kreon, in the _Antigone_, Eteocles was justified in
slaying Polyneices, for he commands that Eteocles should be buried with
full honours—and we know that culpable kin-slayers could not be buried.
Polyneices, however, was not, in Kreon’s view, justified in slaying
Eteocles. Here are Kreon’s words[88]:
... The man,
Eteocles—I mean—who died for Thebes ...
Shall be entombed with every sacred rite
That follows to the grave the lordliest dead.
But for his brother who, a banished man,
Returned to devastate and burn with fire
The land of his nativity, the shrine
Of his ancestral gods ... for Polyneices
This law hath been proclaimed concerning him:
He shall have no lament, no funeral,
But lie unburied for the carrion fowl
And dogs to eat his corse, a sight of shame.
The law which is here mentioned is not an archaic fossil recovered from
an antique past. It is the law of ‘the mortal lawgiver’ which Plato
gives and which we have already described.[89] Its application in this
context implies that Polyneices was guilty of culpable fratricide, which
in the special circumstances of the case has affinities with the crime
of treason. Plato[90] gives a law which confirms this supposition. ‘If a
brother,’ he says, ‘shall, in his own defence, during a fight occurring
in a sedition, kill a brother while warding off the party who first had
recourse to violence (τὸν ἄρχοντα), let him be considered free from
guilt as he is who kills an enemy.’ In the laws of Dracon, also, as we
know from the restored inscription and from Demosthenic quotations, the
category of justifiable homicide included the slaying of the ‘first’
aggressor and of the ‘unjust’ aggressor.[91] According to our theory
that Dracon codified existing laws but did not invent new laws, it would
follow that Plato here refers to a very ancient and for a long time
unwritten law of the Ephetae and the Exegetae. The attitude of Kreon to
Eteocles is precisely that of the Platonic legislator. His attitude to
Polyneices seems also, at first sight, to be legally correct, because
Polyneices was technically _the unjust aggressor_. But the tendency of
legislation concerning such cases is to condemn too swiftly, without
due consideration and with a superficial examination of the facts. Such
legislation assumes that a man must be either right or wrong, either
wholly innocent or wholly guilty. Now we find it very difficult to
conceive Polyneices as guilty of wilful fratricide. Before he became an
‘aggressor’ he had been banished from his country, because he refused
to divide the throne with his brother Eteocles. Was not his expulsion
a prior act of aggression? Perhaps therefore he can be regarded as
fully justified[92] if one goes far enough back in one’s analysis of
‘aggression.’ But on such questions ‘justice’ is frequently a crude
political hotchpotch even in the most civilised communities. We suggest
that it is against such political ‘justice’ that Antigone in the play
revolts. It is frequently asserted[93] that this play symbolises a
conflict between religion and civil power; that Antigone and Teiresias
champion the laws of the gods, while Kreon defends the laws of the State.
But in ancient Greece there was ordinarily no distinction between Church
and State. The State was identified with its gods. Treason was a kind
of sacrilege; sacrilege was a form of treason. Again, it may be argued
that the conflict between Kreon and Antigone symbolises an opposition
between the State law which refused to traitors the privilege of burial,
and the ancient Clan-law, according to which the burial of a dead kinsman
was a religious duty, and its neglect a dangerous ‘sin.’ We regard this
hypothesis as much more reasonable, but if it be pressed to its logical
conclusions it compels us to see in the _Antigone_ an exaltation of
tribalism over State power, or otherwise to attribute moral weakness
to Antigone. But we suggest that tribalism had evolved the custom of
refusing burial to traitors long before the advent of centralised civic
government. In this respect, therefore, tribal law and State law were in
unison, not in conflict. Hence this hypothesis compels us to assume that
in this play there is an exaltation of moral weakness. There are passages
in the play which support this interpretation. Thus Antigone says[94]:
But had I suffered my own mother’s child,
Fallen in blood, to be without a grave,
That were indeed a sorrow.
But, a few lines earlier,[95] she implies that there is something
hideously novel and unorthodox about the edict of Kreon:
Nor thought I thy commandment of such weight
That one who is mortal thus could overbear
The infallible unwritten laws of Heaven.
Haemon, too, implies[96] that there is something very arbitrary in
Kreon’s proclamation. All the citizens of Thebes, he says, repudiate the
guilt of Antigone:
She perishes for a most glorious deed,
Who when her own true brother on the earth
Lay weltering after combat in his gore,
Left him not graveless for the carrion fowl
And raw-devouring field-dogs to consume—
Hath she not merited a golden praise?
Hence we think that the conflict in this drama lies rather between human
nature and human reason on the one hand and the arbitrary tyranny of
civic governments in political legislation and administration on the
other. Antigone protests against the decree which declared her brother
at once a traitor and a fratricide of full guilt.[97] If Polyneices
had slain Eteocles and had become in his stead the ruler of Thebes,
how different would Kreon’s appreciation of the facts have been! It is
obvious that sedition, faction, and civil war, whether in ancient Greece
or in modern Ireland, produce a contempt for civic law because of the
despotic dogmatism which regards the same individual as now a patriot and
now a traitor, now a hero and now a villain, according to the momentary
swing of a political pendulum or the varying strength of political
parties.
Finally, we may point out that in this play there is a veritable
epidemic of suicide. But it is not suicide of the ordinary ignoble kind.
There is a clear distinction, in the mind of the dramatist, and in the
facts, which makes such self-slaughter more akin to sacrifice. Haemon,
Eurydice, and Antigone one by one put off ‘this mortal coil.’ It is only
when it is too late that Kreon is brought to see the selfish obstinacy of
his point of view. The play ends with a warning against impious pride.
But the gods have punished the humble with the proud! The legal analysis
of suicide of this kind is rather difficult and unsatisfactory, but we
shall offer some further remarks upon the subject in connexion with the
following play, the _Ajax_, in which suicide forms a prominent feature of
the plot.
THE ‘AJAX’
When the council of the Achaean chieftains on the plains of Troy decided
to bestow upon Odysseus the arms of Achilles as the prize of martial
valour, Ajax, the rival claimant for the prize, was overwhelmed with
jealousy and wounded pride, and he resolved to slay Odysseus and, with
him, other Achaean chieftains. This resolution he fortunately failed
to execute, not through any fear of the consequences of his act, nor
yet through moral or legal scruples, but simply as a result of the
intervention of Athene, who directed his murderous hand against a herd
of cattle and ‘mesmerised’ him into believing that those cattle were his
human enemies. This fictitious imaginary slaying of men cannot easily
be classified from the standpoint of historical law. Are we to regard
Ajax as a plotter of murder or a contriver of murder or as guilty of
‘attempted murder’?
We have already seen that in historical Greek law[98] the contriver of
murder and the actual murderer were more or less identical, and were
tried by the same Areopagus court. Now, plotting to kill which did not
succeed but which merely resulted in wounding would have been regarded
as ‘malicious wounding’ (τραῦμα ἐκ προνοίας), whereas such plotting
without wounding was ‘attempted murder’ (βούλευσις). From the probable
fact[99] that the Palladium court tried cases of βούλευσις in the time of
Aristotle, we have inferred that this offence was punished by temporary
banishment; for the connexion of βούλευσις with the Palladium implies
that the degree of guilt was regarded as more or less identical with
that of manslaughter, even though the nature of these offences is very
different. Now we have seen that amongst the Achaeans of the Homeric age
there was no discrimination in regard to the penalties for murder and for
manslaughter: but are we also to assume that there was no distinction
between murder and plotting-without-wounding (βούλευσις)? The act of
Ajax, as it is described in this Sophoclean drama, was, according to our
definition of the words, an instance of βούλευσις. Now it is possible
to maintain that in this play Ajax is regarded as a murderer, and that
he would have been punished as a murderer if his act of suicide had
not rendered it impossible to carry out such punishment. The fact that
he slew some herdmen, with the cattle, is not, we think, of any legal
importance, though the Chorus happen to mention it, for these herdmen
were either slaves or inferior serfs whose death was not regarded as
murder. In the _King Oedipus_ we are told[100] that Oedipus slew all
the attendants of Laius at the famous Phocian cross-roads, but their
death was unavenged and for their death the Delphic oracle demanded no
punishment. In the _Ajax_ the Chorus proclaim the death penalty for
Ajax[101]:
The man will die, disgraced in open day,
Whose dark-eyed steel hath dared through mad-brained error,
The mounted herdmen with their herds to slay.
Again it is possible to maintain that the attempt of Ajax was also, in
a certain sense, treasonable, for it was an insult and a danger to the
whole Achaean army. Now, the penalty for treason, we have seen,[102]
was ‘collective,’ that is, it applied to the family of the traitor, not
merely to himself, until the fourth century B.C. It is thus perhaps that
we must explain the attempt which was made by the Achaean army to slay
Teucer, the half-brother of Ajax, as the messenger records[103]:
They swarmed around him and with shouts of blame
From each side one and all assaulted him,
As brother to the man who had gone mad
And plotted ’gainst the host—threatening aloud
Spite of his strength he should be stoned and die.
But they did not slay Teucer, despite their threats, and this fact
suggests that βούλευσις (equated with murder) rather than treason was the
crime which they imputed to Ajax: for the penalty for murder was rarely
collective. In the following dialogue between Teucer and Menelaus, Ajax
is called a murderer[104]:
_Men._: Just, that my murderer have a peaceful end?
_Teu._: Thy murderer? Strange to have been slain and live!
_Men._: Yea, through Heaven’s mercy. By his will, I am dead.
Yet we cannot infer from the suggestion that the penalty of death
would have been inflicted upon Ajax had he lived to suffer it, that
such was the penalty for βούλευσις in historical Attic law. It is much
more probable that Sophocles is here attributing, by an archaism, an
absence of discrimination between murder and βούλευσις to the Homeric
society.[105]
Teucer foresees that when he returns to Salamis he will be banished by
his father, Telamon, because of the death of Ajax. Addressing the corpse
of Ajax, Teucer says[106]:
Will Telamon, my sire and thine, receive me ...
Returning without thee?
... I shall leave my land a castaway,
Thrust forth an exile and proclaimed a slave.
We have quoted[107] from Pausanias the legend that the Attic court of
Phreatto was first founded when Teucer pleaded innocence for the death
of Ajax. Apart from the impossibility of assuming any real historical
connexion between Teucer and Phreatto, we may naturally ask, why was
it that Teucer was presumed to have been guilty of bloodshed, and what
degree of guilt was attributed to him? We cannot very logically apply to
Teucer the principle which was enunciated by a Delphic oracle which we
have already mentioned[108]: ‘Thou, who standing near a comrade being
killed hast not defended him, hast gone not pure away.’
Yet such oracles suggest that Teucer incurred some guilt through not
having protected Ajax from himself. The only explanation which we can
offer for the facts is this: Teucer was regarded by Telamon as partially
culpable in regard to the death of Ajax. In Greek law, it was necessary
for the accused to prove his innocence, and Teucer could not prove it.
Ajax had died in a solitary place; but he was more or less insane, and he
should not have been left without a protecting escort.[109] The guilt of
Teucer, being of a minor kind, was connected with that of manslaughter.
The court of Phreatto was based on the principle that the slayer who was
guilty of involuntary homicide could not have returned to his native land
until he had appeased the relatives of the slain. Therefore Telamon,
the father of Ajax, was represented in legend as having refused to
permit Teucer to land in Salamis. The fact that Ajax was a kinsman of
Teucer causes further complications. But in the event of minor pollution
the legal aspect of such a case approximates to that of ordinary
manslaughter. We have seen that the Achaeans punished kin-slaying by
death and that they did not distinguish between major and minor degrees
of guilt. But this story of Teucer is not, we think, of Achaean origin:
it was attributed to an Achaean by post-Homeric legend. We have seen[110]
that in tribal society, before political synoekism, the penalty for
kin-slaying was exile, and that tribal law discriminated meticulously
between varying degrees of blood-guilt. Thus, the story of the banishment
of Teucer can only be made intelligible by being considered in its
obviously archaic atmosphere.
It remains for us to discuss the dispute which arose concerning the
burial of Ajax in this play. Ajax has committed suicide, but there are
different kinds of suicide. Plato[111] includes under the category of
kin-slaying the act of a person who ‘by violence deprives himself of
his lot of destiny, without being compelled either by a verdict of the
city which decrees it, or by a very painful and unavoidable misfortune
which has befallen him, or by being involved in a disgrace which cannot
otherwise be tolerable, but through sheer indolence, weakness and
cowardice.’ Such persons must not, says Plato, be buried in the family
tomb, or with funeral honours, or where anyone else has been buried. Now,
the case of Ajax might easily have been included in one or other of the
categories of suicide which Plato regards as honourable. Because of his
βούλευσις he probably regarded himself as under sentence of death: he was
insane with grief and wounded pride. No one could accuse him of cowardice
or weakness. Moreover, Plato admits that some kind of burial was accorded
to all suicides. In the _Ajax_ some Achaeans demand the burial of Ajax
with full military honours, but others object to any form of burial.
Moreover, in the whole course of the dispute between the chieftains the
word ‘suicide’ is not mentioned even once.
Hence we cannot with any probability attribute to the fact of Ajax’s
suicide the quarrel which arose about his burial. The quarrel arose, we
think, because he was a virtual murderer and, in a sense, a traitor.
We know that in ancient society persons who were convicted of treason
were not buried, and also that wilful murderers who had been ‘executed’
were not granted the rites of burial. In the course of the quarrel,
Ajax is called a murderer by Menelaus,[112] a traitor and a rebel by
Agamemnon.[113] It is only because of the intercession of Odysseus that
the other chiefs eventually permit Teucer to bury him. We feel that
Odysseus in this play acts as an intermediary who is used to bring the
dramatic story into harmony with Homeric facts. In the _Odyssey_[114]
Ajax is depicted as dwelling in Hades, the western Spirit-land which was
a place of repose for the Achaean dead but which could only be entered
when their bodies had been buried. If it had not been for this Homeric
reference we feel that the dead Ajax, who, by his suicide, had become his
own executioner, would, on account of treason and βούλευσις, have been
exposed to the wild birds and the dogs.
THE ‘TRACHINIAN MAIDENS’
This drama centres round the name of Hercules, and records his tragic
death under circumstances which to us suggest the presence, at the
birth of the story, of a morbid passion for legal problematising. As we
shall have to deal with the legends of Hercules at greater length when
we discuss the Euripidean dramas which are based upon them, we shall
postpone for the present our general remarks about this Hero-god. In
this play there is an incidental reference to the murder by Hercules of
Iphitus, the son of Eurytus, King of Oechalia, a deed which is mentioned
by Homer.[115] The herald says[116]:
When Iphitus to the Tirynthian height
Followed the track where his brood-mares had strayed,
He, while the thought and eye of the man by chance
Were sundered, threw him from the tower-crowned cliff.
In anger for which deed the Olympian king,
Father of gods and men, delivered him
To be a bond-slave.
Now, in Homer, the Olympian Zeus takes no such action. It is merely
stated that the act of Hercules was a violation of the etiquette of
hospitality![117] The act is censured, but not punished. But in later
times, when murder became a religious offence and legend-makers imported
the pollution-doctrine retrospectively into pre-existing legends,
Hercules could not have escaped the pollution which even Apollo was said
to have incurred when he slew the Python. And just as Apollo was said to
have served as a bondman with Admetus,[118] so Hercules had to endure
also a period of bondage. We cannot suppose that the penalty of servitude
in the ‘pollution’ religion was identical with the tribal penalty of
‘servitude’ which is sometimes found in primitive societies.[119] The
latter penalty was domestic and local, being regarded as a substitute for
wergeld; the former penalty could only have been served ‘abroad,’ and it
was, we think, really a consequence of the helpless poverty of an exile.
Thus it is quite in keeping with what we may call the ‘pollution’ bondage
of Hercules that Deianira should say[120]:
For since he quelled the might of Iphitus,
We here in Trachis[121] dwell, far from our home,
Dependent on a stranger, but where he
Is gone none knoweth....
These fifteen months he hath sent me not one word.
If it be objected that bondage or temporary exile was not the ‘pollution’
penalty for wilful murder, we may reply that while in Homer, and perhaps
also in Sophocles, the slaying of Iphitus is presented as wilful murder,
we learn from other sources that Hercules slew Iphitus under the
influence of frenzy. According to another version of the story, it was
in Lydia, not in Trachis, that Hercules went into bondage. Moreover,
Hercules was not an ordinary, real, historical man, and the multitudinous
legends which hang around him render him a very unsafe basis of
illustration for the operation of any law, human or divine!
The main theme of this play is the death of Hercules, which, by a tragic
irony, was caused by poison concealed in a garment which his spouse
Deianira had sent him in the belief that the garment would act as a
love-charm. Subjectively, the heart of Deianira was pure from guilt, and
ultimately, but too late, her innocence was vindicated by a discovery of
all the facts. The poison of the fatal garment[122] was traced to the
Centaur Nessus, who had assured Deianira that it was a charm for waning
love. The dying Hercules sees in the fatal gift the work of destiny, and
his son Hyllus proclaims the innocence of Deianira[123]:
She erred with good intent. The whole is said.
The suicide of Deianira prevents us from witnessing the ‘forgiveness’
of the dying Hercules, the ‘release,’ as it were, which the revelation
of her innocence would have evoked. Instead we hear him utter,[124]
while still he believes her guilty, a ‘curse’ such as in historical
Attica would have declared her ‘polluted’ by blood-guilt and would have
compelled her, if she did not prove her innocence, to become an exile or
to die:
O may I see her falling, even so
As she hath thrown me, to like depth of woe.
... She who hath done this deed shall feel my power.
Let her come near that, mastered by my might,
She may have this to tell the world, that, dying,
As living, I gave punishment to wrong.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Hist. Gk. Lit._ p. 213.
[2] _A.P._ 119; _supra_, p. 276.
[3] _Poetics_, 25, 1460 b 36.
[4] See Butcher _ad loc._
[5] See also Tyrrell, ed. of Eur. _Bacchae_, Introd. p. xxxii.
[6] _Op. cit._ pp. 213-14.
[7] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.
[8] See _infra_, p. 315.
[9] See Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 225.
[10] _Supra_, pp. 279, 292.
[11] _Od._ iii. 306-7.
[12] See _Electra_, 1073, 1353.
[13] _Eum._ 235 ff.
[14] _Electra_, 32 ff.
[15] _Ib._ 274 ff.
[16] 490 ff.
[17] 1415 ff.
[18] _Laws_, ix. ch. 11.
[19] _Ib._ ch. 12.
[20] _Od._ iii. 309 f.
[21] 1483 ff.
[22] _Supra_, p. 120 ff.
[23] 110 ff., _cf._ 490 and 1388.
[24] _Supra_, p. 122.
[25] 1419 ff.
[26] 445.
[27] 439.
[28] _Agamemnon_, 228 ff., 1527 ff.
[29] _Electra_, 525 ff.
[30] 575 ff.
[31] _Supra_, p. 76.
[32] _The Nostoi._
[33] See Verrall, Introd. to Aeschylus, _Choephoroe_, p. xxvi.
[34] _Supra_, p. 55.
[35] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.
[36] _Supra_, p. 171.
[37] _Supra_, p. 309.
[38] _Infra_, p. 318.
[39] _Supra_, p. 294.
[40] 280 ff., 550 ff.
[41] 98 ff.
[42] _Supra_, p. 229.
[43] _Supra_, p. 236 ff.
[44] 1440.
[45] 1436.
[46] _Op. cit._ p. 211.
[47] 1442.
[48] 1438 ff.
[49] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.
[50] _Oed. Rex_, 800 ff.
[51] See _O.C._ 965 ff.
[52] _O.R._ 741.
[53] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9; _supra_, p. 210.
[54] See _infra_, pp. 341 n.; 359 n.
[55] _Phoenissae_, 62.
[56] _Oed. Col._ 400 ff., 785 ff.
[57] 975 ff.
[58] _I.e._ Kreon.
[59] 992 ff.
[60] 732 ff.
[61] 741 ff.
[62] 400 ff.
[63] 407.
[64] 945.
[65] 1340.
[66] 1363 ff.
[67] 87 ff.
[68] _Supra_, p. 151.
[69] i. 35.
[70] _Supra_, pp. 292, 316.
[71] 295 ff.
[72] 665 ff.
[73] i. 28.
[74] _Il._ xxiii. 677.
[75] See _Od._ xi. 271 ff.
[76] _Supra_, p. 164.
[77] Dem. _De Corona_, 291, 187.
[78] See _C. Agorat._ 135, 56.
[79] i. 28.
[80] Sophocles, _Ajax_, 1006-20; _infra_, p. 327 f.
[81] i. 28.
[82] 1233 ff.
[83] _Il._ ix. 458 ff.
[84] 775 ff.
[85] 309.
[86] 1064 ff.
[87] _Supra_, p. 245.
[88] 195 ff.
[89] _Supra_, p. 231.
[90] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[91] _Supra_, pp. 193, 216.
[92] See Eur. _Phoenissae_, 300-445, 460-635.
[93] See Jebb’s edition, Introd. p. xxi ff.
[94] 466.
[95] 460 ff.
[96] 697.
[97] _E.g._ 20 ff.; 450 ff. For an interesting historical parallel
compare the conflict of opinion at Corinth in regard to the ‘fratricide’
of Timoleon. (Diodorus, xvi. 65; Plutarch, _Timoleon_, 1-8.)
[98] _Supra_, p. 223 ff.
[99] _Supra_, p. 251.
[100] 810 ff.
[101] 228 ff.
[102] _Supra_, pp. 188, 220.
[103] 724.
[104] 1127 ff.; see also 1060.
[105] The story of Ajax’s attempted murder and suicide is post-Homeric.
See Jebb’s _Ajax_, Introduction.
[106] 1007 ff.
[107] _Supra_, p. 248.
[108] _Supra_, p. 161.
[109] 905 ff.
[110] _Supra_, p. 238.
[111] _Laws_, ix. ch. 12.
[112] 1126 ff.
[113] 1240 ff.
[114] _Od._ xi. 543 ff.
[115] _Od._ xxi. 27 ff.
[116] 268 ff.
[117] _Od._ xxi. 28.
[118] Aeschylus, _Eum._ 726; Euripides, _Alcestis_, 1-10.
[119] _Supra_, p. 44.
[120] 40 ff.; see also λατρεύοντα (35).
[121] See also Pausanias, i. 32.
[122] 1140.
[123] 1136.
[124] 1003-4, 1110-14; 1133.
CHAPTER III
EURIPIDES
The extant dramas of Euripides are permeated with references to homicide.
It will be necessary to examine seventeen out of the nineteen extant
plays. We need not discuss the _Cyclops_ or the _Rhesus_. The Oresteian
dramas will be our first concern. In attempting a legal analysis of
Euripides we are confronted with a difficulty which is present only
in a minor degree in the case of Aeschylus and of Sophocles, namely
the difficulty of deciding how far Euripides followed mythological
tradition, or how far he ignored this tradition and invented characters
and plots which reflect mainly his own mental outlook and the ideas of
his time. Owing to the prominence which he gives to the prologue and to
the _deus ex machina_, and owing to the frequency of his allusions to
contemporary ideas and developments, it is often maintained that the main
elements of Euripidean drama are derived from fifth-century Athenian
life, and that, therefore, the plots and the scenes are incongruous and
impossible. Thus Jevons says[1]: ‘If Sophocles laid his scenes in “a
past which never was present,” he at any rate adhered to his imaginary
period with fidelity. But Euripides lays his scenes in a time which is
neither past nor present, but an incongruous and impossible epoch, in
which Theseus defends the republican institutions of Athens and Hecuba
regrets the high price of Sophists’ lectures’; and again[2]: ‘The motive
seems to have been to give as little time as possible to the myth as
traditionally related, in order to concentrate attention on the incidents
and situations of Euripides’ own making. Euripides could not throw
off the myths altogether, but he got rid of them as much as possible
by relegating them to the prologue and to the _deus ex machina_’....
‘Compelled[3] by the tradition of the tragic art to take his subjects
from mythology, Euripides was impelled by his instinct as an artist
to draw his characters from real life: and to present the heroes of
mythology acting from everyday motives and with everyday feelings was to
attempt in most cases an impossible fusion. The slaying of Clytaemnestra
by Orestes is a proper subject for the art of Sophocles or Aeschylus,
but is wholly unsuited to the new form of art which Euripides was making
for.... The discords[4] which exist in Euripides’ plays between his
character-drawing and his situations, between his sentiments and his
mythical subjects ... are discords which Sophocles avoided and Euripides
could not or would not convert into harmonies.’ On this subject, Verrall
also holds a similar view.[5]
It would be obviously impossible for us to discuss this matter with
any degree of completeness, but we must point out that we do not agree
with this interpretation of Euripides. In Attic drama, as we conceive
it, it was customary for the poet to derive the skeleton of his plots
and situations from traditional myth. In clothing that skeleton with
vitality and movement and with organic unity, the dramatist was compelled
to translate himself into the past, to reconstruct from his data the
details of speech, of action, and of character. In a word, he consciously
archaised. Now we admit that in this vital point of ancient dramatic
art Euripides is not so correct, so unimpeachable, as Sophocles or as
Aeschylus. He could not always shake off the influences of his time. But
to suggest that Euripides deliberately set himself to create a new form
of drama admittedly incongruous, unhistorical and unreal, seems to us,
as far as we can judge, as nonsensical as to suppose that Pheidias could
have created a statue of Olympian Zeus with an Asiatic turban on its head
and ‘barbarian slippers’[6] on its feet. In our view, Euripides followed
traditional legend not only in the prologue and in the epilogue, but also
in the dramatic ‘episodes.’ To depart from tradition, it would have been
necessary and, for a dramatist with new and advanced ideas, it would
have been easy to invent new characters, new names, new situations. In
such an event, Euripides could at least have been consistent. But since
in actual fact we find that he concerned himself less with questions
of consistency than with situations involving surprise and horror, with
problems of human passion, and with incidents of human interest, we
must attribute his inconsistencies to the fact that he was fettered by
traditional legend and that he overreached himself in his desire to give
to the characters of mythology a really living personality. He was, of
course, aware of variations in the legend. Like Sophocles and Aeschylus,
he had to become an ‘eclectic,’ to choose certain elements from different
stories for dramatic purposes, and to ignore other elements. But whereas
the eclecticism of Sophocles and also to a great extent of Aeschylus is
dominated by the canon of consistency, that of Euripides is dominated
mainly by a less orthodox canon which is more conducive to human interest
and which we may call the canon of psychic hedonism. Judged by the
criterion of the Horatian maxim
aut famam sequere aut sibi convenientia finge,[7]
Euripides stands condemned if the latter alternative is applicable to the
former. But if the maxim be interpreted to mean ‘Follow tradition and if
there are variations in the story do not trouble about consistency[8]
provided that every character and every situation has a traditional
basis, but if you abandon tradition consistency is absolutely necessary,’
then Euripides is canonical. Of the real meaning of this maxim we cannot
be certain, but to our mind it seems to mean: ‘Consistency is the aim of
all literary art, but tragedians must be guided by traditional myth, and
therefore in tragedy consistency, though desirable, is not indispensable,
whereas in all other domains of art consistency is essential.’ Miss
Harrison and Gilbert Murray[9] have suggested a theory of the origin of
Greek tragedy which supposes, in effect, that its forms or characteristic
‘events’ were derived from an ancient ritual of the Year Spirit, while
its actual ‘content,’ its characters, situations, episodes, were derived
from Homeric saga. This theory we need not now discuss, but we must point
out that Homer was not the only source of ancient mythology. When Horace
says[10]:
rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus
quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus,
he merely mentions the _Iliad_ as an example of traditional story, not
as the boundary of its extent. In many instances—as, for example, in the
case of Orestes—we have suggested that there were several variants in the
post-Homeric myths.
Aristotle says[11] of Sophocles and Euripides, Σοφοκλής ἔφη αὐτὸς μὲν
οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν, Εὐριπίδην δὲ οἷοι εἰσίν. This much-controverted
statement is usually interpreted to mean that Sophocles reproduced the
antique mythological atmosphere in his characters and in his plots,
whereas Euripides imported contemporary types into the legendary
background. But we find it very difficult to believe that Euripides
conceived Orestes, Hercules, Menelaus and other heroic characters as
ordinary fifth-century Athenians.[12] The context in which this statement
of Aristotle occurs is very obscure. Aristotle mentions three possible
ideals of characterisation: ἢ γὰρ οἷα ἦν ἢ ἔστιν, ἢ οἷά φασιν καὶ δοκεῖ,
ἢ οἷα εἶναι δεῖ, ‘Either as (things and people) were or are, or as they
assert that they are and as they seem to be, or as they must be.’ Now if
the criticism of Euripides which Aristotle attributes to Sophocles read
οἷοι ἦσαν instead of οἷοι εἰσίν, meaning ‘men as they were,’ _not_ ‘men
as they are,’ we should be more readily prepared to accept it. We hope to
show that the characters and situations in Euripides are often archaic,
and this archaism must be attributed either to the conscious archaising
of the dramatist or to the antiquity of the legends which he follows.
With this preamble we may proceed to discuss the references to
blood-vengeance in the dramas of Euripides. Once more we will begin
with the legend of Orestes. We do not possess a Euripidean play which
describes the actual murder of Agamemnon; but the deed is attributed to
Clytaemnestra and to Aegisthus in the prologue to the _Electra_.
THE ‘ELECTRA’
In the _Electra_ Euripides follows closely the lines which were laid
down by Aeschylus in his _Choephoroe_ and by Sophocles in his _Electra_.
There are certain minor divergencies which Verrall has indicated in the
Introduction to his edition of the _Choephoroe_, but there are also
very striking similarities, not only in the main plot, but even in the
arguments which appear in the dialogue. We are told that Orestes left
Argos while his father was still in Troy, and went to Phocis.[13] We do
not hear that at that period he was associated with Athens. Thus the
Homeric narrative[14] is ignored and we observe, once more, the strange
omission of a fact which rendered so natural the legendary assumption of
Orestes’ subsequent trial at Athens. But the omission is less flagrant
in Euripides than it is in Aeschylus or in Sophocles, because Euripides
follows in the main a legend which connected the trial of Orestes with
Argos and not with Athens, and though the dramatist cannot altogether
avoid a reference to a trial at the Areopagus, he refers to it in a
subordinate manner,[15] attributing, no doubt, any difficulty which he
found in understanding it to the inscrutable nature of Apolline decrees.
Once more we find Clytaemnestra pleading, as a justification for her act,
the ‘sacrifice’ of Iphigeneia. The peasant of the Prologue doubts the
justice of this plea[16] and the ordinary people are not in the least
deceived by it. Electra repudiates it as a dangerous fiction. She reveals
the insidious nature of the plea by pointing out, as she does also in the
_Electra_ of Sophocles, that if Clytaemnestra arrogates to herself the
right to decide whether the sacrifice of Iphigeneia was or was not an
act of murder, and whether, therefore, the death of Agamemnon was or was
not justified by this sacrifice, she must logically concede to Orestes a
similar right of decision regarding these issues, and therefore, also,
the right to slay Clytaemnestra if he considers it right to slay her!
If blood, in righteous retribution, calls
For blood, by me behoves it thou should’st bleed,
And by thy son, Orestes, to avenge
My father: there if this was just, alike
Is it just here.[17]
In reasoning of this kind, which we cannot suppose to have been included
in traditional saga, we see a deliberate effort at ‘conscious archaising’
on the part of Sophocles[18] and of Euripides. In the Homeric society
there existed, we have argued,[19] a distinction between murder and
righteous vengeance. If this distinction had not existed in the Achaean
caste the result would have been chaotic. Instead of a restricted
system of ‘private vengeance’ which is controlled by discipline and
by public opinion, we should find prevailing everywhere a barbarous
vendetta-system. The ‘sacrifice’ of his daughter by Agamemnon is not
mentioned in Homer, and there is no reason for assuming that such a
sacrifice ever took place. But if it had occurred, the Achaeans would not
have regarded it as an act of murder. In historical Athens such a plea
as that which Clytaemnestra here advances could never have been made,
as the legal and religious atmosphere was so entirely different. Hence,
in dramatising a legend of this kind the correct reproduction of such
arguments as those which we are discussing demanded considerable skill.
As this play of Euripides cannot be regarded as a mere servile imitation
of the corresponding Sophoclean drama, we must suppose that Euripides
had recourse to ‘conscious archaising.’ It so happens, as we think, that
in attributing this sentiment to Electra he has visualised correctly the
Achaean attitude to murder.
In the _Orestes_ we shall find an argument attributed to Tyndareus
which at first sight seems to resemble the reasoning of Electra in
this passage, but which is really very different. Tyndareus says of
Orestes[20]:
He ought t’ have called the laws, the righteous laws,
T’ avenge the blood, and by appeal to them
Have driven his mother from this royal house:
Thus ’midst his ills calm reason had borne rule,
Justice had held its course, and he been righteous.
We believe that this sentiment of Tyndareus was either included in or
suggested by an Argive variant of the Oresteian legend, and that it
is based on the assumption that trials for homicide existed _before_
Orestes slew his mother. The contrast which is drawn in the _Orestes_
passage is a contrast between social justice and private vengeance, but
the _Electra_ passage indicates a contrast between private vengeance and
vendetta. Now, in social justice such as existed in historical Greece,
from the seventh century onwards, the Achaean system of private vengeance
would have been regarded as a crime. Similarly in the Achaean system of
‘private vengeance’ uncontrolled and indiscriminate ‘vendetta’ was a
crime. In both cases the crime would have consisted in the violation of
the existing order. Now Euripides suggests (as we infer from these two
passages in the _Orestes_ and the _Electra_) that the consequence of such
a violation is identical in both circumstances, namely an indefinite
series of murders. As applied to vendetta we admit that this criticism is
true, but in regard to private vengeance it is false. We have seen[21]
that such a series of slayings did not characterise either the Achaean or
the Pelasgian system of ‘private vengeance.’ We shall have occasion to
refer to this topic again when we discuss the problems of the _Orestes_
drama.[22]
In the _Electra_ the Chorus approves of the long-expected vengeance
of Orestes. Speaking of the slain Aegisthus, they say to his slayer,
Orestes[23]:
His deeds were dreadful: dreadful hath he felt
Your vengeance. With great power is Justice armed.
Orestes tells Electra that, since Aegisthus was a murderer, his body
cannot be buried[24]:
... his lifeless corse
I bring thee: treat it as thy soul inclines;
Cast it by rav’nous beasts to be devoured,
Or to the birds, the children of the air;
Fix it, impaled, a prey.
We have already quoted Plato for the custom of refusing burial to
murderers. We presume that it was a legally prescribed custom in
historical Greece. The precise origin of the custom cannot be determined
with any degree of certainty, but we associate it with the doctrine of
pollution and the evolution of State power in the seventh century. In
Homer,[25] of course, Aegisthus was duly and formally buried, even though
the people of that age regarded burial as a passport to eternal repose
in the Spirit-land. It is perhaps because of this Homeric fact that,
at the end of the _Electra_,[26] the deities Castor and Pollux decree
that the body of Aegisthus must be buried. Thus we find Euripides making
use of the _deus ex machina_ to reconcile two divergent viewpoints, and
probably, therefore, two inconsistent legends.[27]
Euripides is distinctly non-Homeric in attributing to Orestes a
psychological conflict as the dread moment approached in which he was
to slay his mother and his cousin Aegisthus. Such a conflict would have
been natural, in Pelasgian tribalism, if a kin-slayer refused to go
into exile; but the conflict would not have been confined to a single
avenger: it would have been diminished by the group-consciousness of an
avenging clan. Nor could such a conflict have arisen in historical times,
for the punishment of kin-slayers had, as we maintain,[28] been assumed
by the State. Hence we must regard this tragic conflict as a piece of
unhistorical conscious archaising on the part of Euripides. The fact that
the picture is unhistorical is no doubt to be condoned in view of its
dramatic value.