of the legends with that of his own day, we can only say that here the
contrast is so obvious that it need not have been indicated at all. But
is such a contrast really indicated? Does the futile protest of the
Chorus represent the Athens of Euripides, and does the action of Aegeus
typify the Athens of a barbarous past? If not, how do we explain the
facts of the drama? In our view, it is Jason, not Medea, who is the
villain of this play. Medea had left her home, her kindred, everything
that life held dear, for the love of a Greek adventurer. Jason never
taunts Medea with the slaying of his father. He had commanded it.
Driven forth as an exile from the land of Thessaly, she clings to her
blood-stained mate. In Corinth he deserts her, and she is ordered to go
away—anywhere, somewhere, into the great unknown. To the distracted mind
of a desperate woman who sees herself deserted in a friendless world
comes then the image of a two-edged sword, begotten of slighted love
and sexual jealousy. Love rejected, love transferred, transforms Medea
from a faithful friend into a dangerous enemy. Her children, erstwhile
the sweetest pledges of affection, are now so many goads which stimulate
her vengeance. The conflict of passions which rages in Medea’s breast
is depicted by Euripides with matchless skill. It proclaims her at once
human and insane. Subjectively therefore she need only plead guilty to
extenuated homicide, to slaying in a passion; and if such a plea were
accepted she would be entitled in Greek law[277] to the sanctuary of
exile. Why then does she bind Aegeus by an oath? We suggest that the
explanation is to be found in the distinction between the objective or
legal aspect of an act and its subjective or psychological aspect. It
would have been difficult for Medea to have established her plea in any
court, formal or informal. Aegeus might not have given her the benefit
of the doubt, as Theseus did to Oedipus, and Medea could take no risks.
Furthermore, this legend has an archaic setting, and portrays a Greek
story of a period which was antecedent to the establishment of regular
State courts of justice and to codified international law. This explains
why Aegeus observed his oath. There was no authority of an international
religion to declare that it was not binding. Viewed in this light, the
protest of the Chorus in our last quotation is a confirmation of our
hypothesis. They actually approve of the slaying of Kreon and of his
daughter, though they regret that they should have suffered for Jason’s
infamy. They say[278]:
Heaven its collected store of evil seems
This day resolved with justice to pour down
On perjured Jason. Thy untimely fate
How do we pity, O thou wretched daughter
Of Kreon, who in Pluto’s mansions go’st
To celebrate thy nuptial feast.
When the Chorus urge Medea not to slay her children, we feel that they
are prompted by feelings of pity and humanity, rather than by any sense
of legal or religious guilt. In the following passage in which we see the
strongest and most emphatic instance of their disapproval of Medea’s act,
their main objection is that her act is unusual! Only one woman, they
say, has ever been known to do such a deed before![279]
Art thou a rock, O wretch, or steel to slay
With thine own hand that generous race of sons
Whom thou didst bear? I hitherto have heard
But of one woman who, in ancient days,
Smote her own children, Ino, by the gods
With frenzy stung....
But she, yet reeking with the impious gore
Of her own progeny, into the waves
Plunged headlong from the ocean’s craggy beach.
Can there be deeds more horrible than these
Left for succeeding ages to produce?
Thus, in this play we have no Euripidean contrast of barbarous with
civilised morality. Euripides favours Medea; so does the Chorus; so does
the plot. So strong is her passion, so conscious is she of her own moral
rectitude, so magnanimous is her soul, that, if Aegeus had not come,
she would have carried out her plans, and if Aegeus had not sworn, she
would have done the same. But with her blood-stained hands she would have
driven into her heart the sword which had just drained the life blood of
her children.
THE ‘HIPPOLYTUS’
The scene of the _Hippolytus_ is laid in Troizen, in S.E. Argolis, the
realm of Pittheus, the maternal grandfather of Theseus, King of Athens.
Thither Theseus has come, because, says Euripides, he was sentenced
to one year’s exile for the slaying of Pallas and his sons. Aphrodite
says[280]:
But from Cecropia’s realm since Theseus fled
To expiate his pollution, with the blood
Of Pallas’ sons distained, and with his queen
Sailed for this coast, to punishment of exile
Submitting for one year.
Now Pausanias informs us[281] that ‘justifiable homicide was the plea of
Theseus when he was acquitted for killing Pallas and his sons.’ We have
pointed out[282] that Pallas and his sons were slain in a civil war in
Attica. As they were technically rebels, and unjust aggressors, seeking
to dethrone Aegeus (the father of Theseus), who was the reigning monarch,
it was quite natural that from one point of view the act of Theseus
should have been morally regarded as justifiable homicide. It would not
have required a court of justice to have established the validity of
such a plea. Had not Eteocles been automatically ‘acquitted’ for the
slaying of Polyneices? But why does Euripides speak of a sentence of
one year’s exile? This penalty in relation to kin-slaying (Pallas was a
brother of Aegeus) can only have one meaning. Plato assures us[283] that
if a kinsman slays a kinsman in a passion, and if the deceased before he
expires shall have ‘forgiven’ him and absolved him from blood-guiltiness,
the deed shall be regarded as involuntary homicide for which the normal
penalty was one year’s exile. To explain this reference in Euripides,
therefore, Theseus must be conceived as guilty of extenuated kin-slaying
which was ‘forgiven.’ But we are nowhere told that the Pallantidae
forgave their slayer! We have said[284] that there was a legal affinity
between the conceptions of justifiable and of extenuated slaying. Yet
the two kinds of homicide were never identified, and it would be all the
more difficult to identify them when the deed concerned a King of Athens.
Hence we must suppose either (1) that Euripides has here abandoned the
tradition mentioned by Pausanias, or (2) that the legal aspect of the
slaying of the Pallantidae had become confused in the legends, before
Euripides, with the legal aspect of some other deed of blood with which
the name of Theseus was associated.
During the sojourn of Theseus at Troizen, where his son Hippolytus
was being brought up, Phaedra, the second wife of Theseus, sought to
seduce into adulterous intercourse her step-son, Hippolytus. Euripides
represents Hippolytus as an Orphic votary,[285] and we will condone the
anachronism[286] because it emphasises the probability of Hippolytus’
repudiation of Phaedra’s suggestions. Phaedra, in shame and anger,
committed suicide,[287] but in revenge for the puritan’s rejection of her
love, she left behind her a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of
forcible violation.[288] Such an accusation, followed by suicide, would
be sufficient to convict Hippolytus in either ancient or modern times.
It would have convicted him of attempting an ‘indecent assault,’ and of
attempted adultery. But would it have convicted him of having caused the
death of Phaedra? Theseus believed him guilty of all these crimes, and
decided to banish him from Troizen, pronouncing against him, in addition,
a virulent curse which, in the religious atmosphere of the ancient world,
was as dangerous to the life of Hippolytus as the σήματα λυγρά were which
were sent, in analogous circumstances, by Proitus to the King of Lydia,
in the legend of Bellerophon.[289] He says[290]:
O Neptune, O my sire,
Since thou hast firmly promised that thou thrice
Wouldst grant me what I prayed for, now fulfil
One vow, and slay my son, nor let him ’scape
This single day, if thou with me design
To ratify the compact thou hast made....
Moreover I will drive him from the land:
For of these twofold fates, or this or that
Must smite him: Neptune, when he hears my curses,
Will plunge the miscreant to the shades of hell;
Else, cast forth from this region, and ordained
To wander in some foreign land, a life
Of the profoundest misery shall he drag.
The crimes which Theseus attributes to Hippolytus are so many and so
various that it is impossible to connect this penalty of banishment with
the homicidal aspect of Phaedra’s death. The penalty is too severe, as
his action in causing Phaedra’s death could hardly have been regarded
even as manslaughter.
It is to be noted that Hippolytus was banished from Athens as well as
from Troizen.[291] After leaving Troizen, as he was travelling along
the coast, he was assailed by a sea-monster which was sent by Poseidon,
within sight of the Scironian rocks[292] (this point, we shall see,
is important for the correct analysis of the legend): the horses
took fright, and Hippolytus was dragged behind the chariot until he
was mortally injured. He was brought back to Theseus; and as Artemis
miraculously revealed to Theseus his innocence of the crime which had
been alleged against him, the father and the son became reconciled;
and, before he died, Hippolytus absolved his father from the guilt of
blood.[293] Thus the play ends.
We have said[294] that in early Greece, and even amongst the Achaean
caste, adultery was not punishable by death. Hence the curse of Theseus
renders him liable to blood-guilt. He ‘contrives’ death, he is αἴτιος
φόνου,[295] even if he does not actually slay Hippolytus. He confesses
his guilt in the closing scene. Now the ‘forgiveness’ of a dying
kinsman did not absolve the slayer from all punishment. He had still,
in historical Greece, to endure a penalty of one year’s exile from his
home-land. Is it not strange, therefore, that in this play Theseus
suffers no punishment for the death of Hippolytus? Troizen was reputed
to have been the birth-place of Theseus; Athens was the birth-place of
Hippolytus. Euripides remembers the latter fact when he represents the
exiled Hippolytus as debarred from Athens. But he forgets the former
fact when he makes Troizen a place of exile for Theseus! Pausanias
says[296] that Theseus went to Troizen to be purified for the slaying of
Pallas and his sons, and that at Troizen Phaedra accomplished the death
of Hippolytus. Moreover, Pausanias tells us[297] that over the royal
portico of the Athenian Prytaneum there was an earthenware statue which
represented Theseus in the act of hurling into the sea a certain brigand
named Sciron. For Euripides, Sciron is the name of a sea boulder in the
Saronic gulf. But Plutarch assures[298] us that Sciron was a kinsman of
Theseus, that Theseus slew him, and that as an atonement he instituted
the sacred Isthmian games!
It seems obvious that Euripides has either adopted an eclectic attitude
to these various legends of Theseus, or that they had become ‘fused’
before his time. But he is not concerned with legal accuracy or
consistency, so much as with the construction of an intelligible plot
of intense human interest. To Euripides it must have appeared improbable
that the temporary sojourn of Theseus at Troizen was connected, as
Pausanias alleges, with purgation rites, since these rites would normally
have been performed at Athens. Moreover, the brief period of time
which such rites would have necessitated does not afford a sufficient
explanation of his ‘exile’ for the space of one year. Again, it was
absolutely necessary to suppose that Theseus returned to Athens. But, for
this, it was necessary to assume that he was ‘forgiven’ by Hippolytus
whom he, directly and immediately, and Phaedra indirectly,[299] caused to
be killed. But we have not yet discovered the secret of that one year’s
sojourn at Troizen. We believe that it is in the legend of Sciron, which
Euripides ignores, that we must seek the real origin of the tradition
concerning a ‘forgiveness’ and a period of one year’s exile, in the life
of Theseus. We have already[300] pointed out how closely these two ideas
may be correlated. We suggest that the real legends of Theseus presented
some such facts as the following:
1. Theseus slew Pallas and his sons, was acquitted by the Delphinium
court,[301] and was purged at Athens.
2. Phaedra, not Theseus, caused the death of Hippolytus.[302]
3. Theseus slew a kinsman,[303] named Sciron, in Attica, but Sciron,
before dying, forgave his slayer. Theseus therefore went into exile for
one year—not to Troizen—but to the Isthmus where he instituted a sacred
festival. He could not have gone into exile to Troizen, for this realm
belonged to him (since he was the grandson of Pittheus[304]), and in
Euripides he claims the right to banish Hippolytus from Troizen.[305] He
was certainly a citizen of Troizen since in legend he was born there.
We must suppose, therefore, according to this hypothesis, either that
Euripides selected different elements from these legends and joined
them together, or that they had been confused in some one legend before
his time. In this fusion the forgiveness was shifted from Sciron to
Hippolytus. Theseus was conceived as the cause of Hippolytus’ death;
Sciron was ignored and the slaying of Pallas was regarded as extenuated
but not as justifiable homicide.
THE ‘ION’
The most important incident in the _Ion_ is the attempted murder
(βούλευσις) of Ion, the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians, by his mother
Creusa, who does not know that he is her son. Thus we meet once more
a homicide problem forming the basis of a drama, and a solution of
that problem which requires for its intelligibility the application of
homicide-law. Euripides is deliberately pandering to Athenian national
pride when he represents Ion, by repute the son of Xuthus, as really
the son of Apollo and Creusa.[306] In the temple of Delphi he is reared
as a minister of the god. Creusa has almost forgotten the issue of her
ancient amour, and by a tragic irony comes with Xuthus to Delphi, to
consult Apollo as to the causes of her childlessness. Apollo informs
Xuthus that he will give him a son and heir, and Xuthus is led to believe
that his newly found ‘son,’ Ion, is the offspring of some intrigue of
his youth. When Creusa hears about this ‘stranger,’ she regards him with
hostile feelings, and decides to kill him by poison. In this design,
however, she does not succeed. Have we here, then, a ‘plot to kill’ or
attempted murder? The legal essence of the former, we have seen,[307] is
the realisation of the plot. Therefore, the guilt of Creusa is that of
attempted murder or βούλευσις. No one except Apollo is supposed to be
aware until the end of the play of the real relationship which exists
between Ion and Creusa. Hence, we have here a suggestion of an act which,
like that of Oedipus, is objectively related to kin-slaying, but which,
subjectively, must be regarded as ordinary ‘attempted murder.’ We have
seen[308] that in early Greece attempts to kill and actual slayings were
accorded equal punishment. But we find in the _Ion_ that Creusa is not
punished at all! The explanation of this problem is the main object of
our present inquiry.
When the attempted murder of a minister of Apollo is discovered and
reported, the whole civic machinery of the Delphian State is put in
motion.[309] A court is held at which Ion is the accuser. He charges his
mother with attempted murder, but there is a subtle suggestion of the
additional guilt of attempted sacrilege. This court of Delphian nobles
condemns Creusa to death. Creusa’s servant says[310]:
Delphi’s rulers have decreed
My queen shall be thrown headlong from the rock,
Nor hath one single voice, but the consent
Of all, adjudged her death, because she strove
E’en in the temple to have slain the priest.
Pursued by the whole city, hither bend
Her inauspicious steps. She through a wish
For children to Apollo came: but now
She perishes with all her hoped-for race.
The Chorus recommend Creusa to take refuge in a sanctuary.[311] She
answers that sanctuary is valueless as a refuge against the sentence of
death. The Chorus comfort her with the assurance that while she remains
in the sanctuary she cannot be slain.[312] But Ion, who by a tragic irony
leads the executioners, leaves no doubt that her refuge will not avail
her. He says[313]:
Behold
The sorceress, what a complicated scene
Of treachery hath she framed, yet trembles not
The altar of Apollo to approach.
As if Heaven’s vengeance could not reach her crimes.
But neither shall this altar nor the temple
Of Phoebus save thy life.
Creusa in the ensuing dialogue advances a plea of justification. She
argues that if Ion came to Athens, sooner or later he would have slain
her through dynastic rivalry:
I sought
To take away the life of you, a foe
To me and to my house....[314]
Lest I should perish if your life was spared.[315]
But this was also the plea of Eurystheus when he sought the lives of the
Heracleidae. In Greek law the plea has no validity. Ion commands his
mother to leave the altar,[316] saying
Shalt thou ’scape unpunished
For thy attempt to slay me?[317]
At this critical moment the Pythian priestess intervenes, and requests
Ion to desist. She holds that the attempt of Creusa was mitigated by
‘passion’—and that therefore she did not deserve to die. She says[318]:
Wives with inveterate hatred ever view
Their husbands’ sons sprung from another bed.
Thus does Apollo override the verdict of his priests! But he goes
farther. Creusa, according to the oracular interpretation of her act, was
guilty of an ‘extenuated’ attempt to kill, and should therefore in strict
law[319] have been punished by a penalty of temporary exile. Yet she
is permitted to return forthwith to Athens, her native country! In the
following verses Ion is urged to ‘forgive’:
Banish from thy soul
This rancour, now the temple thou art leaving,
And on thy journey to thy native land.[320]
But we have not yet rendered the _dénouement_ legally intelligible.
We think that it can only be explained by one hypothesis, namely, by
assuming that Apollo takes upon himself the responsibility for Creusa’s
act. It was he who, by concealing the true facts, had provoked Creusa
to attempted murder. It was he, therefore, who must take the blame.
We have seen that there is no doubt that otherwise Creusa would have
suffered death. That penalty is an archaic one, being based, as we
think, on the notion of the absence of discrimination in early Greece
between degrees of homicide-guilt. In the more subtle analysis of Apollo
we may see perhaps a suggestion of Euripides as to the evolution of
such distinctions, which characterised the historical period. But it is
possible that such distinctions existed in Pelasgian groups, though not
in Achaean or quasi-Achaean societies. If there is anything legally
improbable in this legend, it is obscured by the dramatic interest
which attaches to the recognition scene between the mother and the
son. Moreover Euripides and therefore the legend which he follows were
compelled to indicate the important fact that Creusa _did_ return with
Ion to Athens, and that the glorious mother of the Ionian race had not
been stained by the guilt of kindred bloodshed.
THE ‘ANDROMACHE’
In the _Andromache_ there are two events of a homicidal character which
we must discuss: (1) the attempted murder of Andromache, who was then a
war-captive in the home of Neoptolemus, and that of her son, by Hermione,
the wife of Neoptolemus, and by her father Menelaus: (2) the slaying of
Neoptolemus, at Delphi, by the Apolline priests and magistrates on a
false charge of sacrilege which was urged against him by Orestes. The
first event is clearly a case of attempted murder, because the plot
failed to materialise owing to the arrival of Peleus. The second event
is more difficult to define. Objectively, it points to the execution
of a normal penalty for an alleged sacrilegious attempt to despoil
the temple and for a previous actual spoliation: but, subjectively,
Orestes was guilty of contriving the death of Neoptolemus, and he
advances, in private, a sham plea of justification, when he says that
he regards Neoptolemus, who had married Hermione, his own fiancée, as
a virtual adulterer.[321] From the words which are addressed by Thetis
to Peleus at the end of the play,[322] we may infer that the plot of
Orestes was viewed with disapproval by the gods. But, legally, he must
escape punishment because the actual slayers could plead sufficient
justification, and his private motives were not publicly proclaimed. Let
us give some details of both episodes. Hermione, when her attempt to kill
is discovered and frustrated, meditates suicide, because, we are told,
she fears that her husband will slay her or send her into exile. Thus, a
nurse in Hermione’s service says[323]:
Within these doors
Hermione, my mistress, by her sire
Forsaken, and grown conscious of the guilt
She hath incurred by that attempt to murder
Andromache and her unhappy son,
Resolves to die, because she dreads lest, fired
With indignation at her guilt, her lord
Should cast her forth with scorn, or take away
Her life because she purposed to have slain
The innocent. The servants who attend
Can hardly by their vigilance prevent her
From fixing round her neck the deadly noose
Or snatch the dagger from her hand, so great
Is her affliction, and she now confesses
That she has done amiss.
In this passage death appears as the archaic penalty for attempted
murder. If Neoptolemus, the husband of Hermione, permits an option of
exile, it is perhaps because such an option was permitted for actual
murder in historical times, and the penalties were supposed to have been
identical, in cases of attempted and of actual murder, in prehistoric
days. It is also possible to explain the option by reference to the fact
that Andromache was a captive and that therefore her master had the
right to forgo the full penalty. We have seen[324] that the Achaeans
did not discriminate between voluntary and involuntary homicide, and we
may regard the reference to this penalty here as a case of historical
archaising, which attributed to the Achaean Neoptolemus an ignorance of
the distinction between attempted murder and actual murder. But we may
also suppose that there was a legend which originally contained all these
details and retained them as an unadulterated tradition down the ages. In
historical times attempted slaying could not have been punished by a more
severe penalty than that of exile, the duration of which depended perhaps
on some form of ‘appeasement.’ That such was the historical penalty may
be inferred from the fact that the Palladium court tried such cases in
the time of Aristotle and, we think, from Solon’s time onwards.[325] When
the ‘attempt’ (βούλευσις) resulted in actual wounding or in physical
injury, as in cases of attempted poisoning, the case was probably[326]
tried by the Areopagus, and the sentence was perpetual exile without
confiscation of property.[327] In this play, however, as in the _Ion_,
the attempted murder of Andromache was unpunished; Neoptolemus, the
natural punitive agent, did not live to hear of the attempt. Andromache
herself warned Menelaus that the people of the district would put him and
Hermione on trial and punish them. She says[328]:
O Menelaus, be it now supposed
I by thy daughter am already slain.
’Twill be impossible for her to ’scape
From the pollution ruthless murder brings;
Thou, too, by many tongues wilt be accused[329]
Of this vile deed, with her will they confound
Thee, the abettor.
Do we not seem to have here a legend which evolved? First of all we have
private vengeance. Everything depends on Neoptolemus. Then pollution
enters the story and the people have a religious interest in homicide.
Yet the main fact could not be got rid of, namely that Hermione
escaped punishment. If Euripides is archaising, could he not have been
consistent? Or is he thinking of that vaguely defined post-Homeric age
in which the conception of murder as a pollution existed, but in which
homicide is still, as amongst the Hebrews, a matter for the avenger of
blood? But why, then, does he mention the people? Is he thinking of the
pressure of public opinion, such as was already gathering in Achaean
times? Andromache seems to take a different view from that of Hermione.
The issue of the plot confirms Hermione’s outlook, which is Achaean. Is
it not more natural to suppose that an Achaean story became partially
‘Apollinised’ in later times than to suppose that Euripides gives us two
different archaisms side by side?
Andromache’s attack on Spartan homicide becomes intelligible if we
remember the anti-Spartan sentiments of the democrat Euripides. ‘Is
not murder abundant at Sparta?’ asks Andromache.[330] When, we ask,
was it abundant? Is this statement merely a retort to Hermione’s
assertion that murder was common in barbarian Troy?[331] Or is Euripides
deliberately asserting that Sparta was inferior even to barbarians?
According to the latter hypothesis we must assume that he is speaking of
historical Sparta, and his opinions are to be attributed to anti-Spartan
prejudice.[332]
In the second homicide episode of this drama, Neoptolemus is slain at
Delphi. Orestes who plots and in part executes his death escapes all
punishment, for reasons which we have already indicated. The Delphians
who are prepared, in the _Ion_, to condemn to death a person guilty of
attempted murder, are here themselves engaged in slaying a visitor to
their temple. But Neoptolemus was an enemy. He has already despoiled
the temple. His life is therefore forfeit. To slay him was, like the
projected execution of Creusa, a just revenge. Yet Fate has dealt harshly
with Neoptolemus. He now visits the temple not to despoil it, as Orestes
falsely alleges, but to make atonement for a previous offence which he
had committed against Apollo.[333] Despite the false evidence of Orestes,
Apollo, the prophet who knows all things, should have intervened. Thus
the messenger utters a criticism which suggests the sentiments of
Euripides and of fifth-century Athens[334]:
Thus Phoebus,
Who prophesies to others, mighty King,
And deals out justice to the admiring world,
Hath on Achilles’ son revenged himself,
And like some worthless human foe, revived
An ancient grudge: how then can he be wise?
Thetis declares that the death of Neoptolemus is a disgrace to the
Delphians and, is for Orestes, a murderous crime.[335] Though slain
on grounds of sacrilege, Neoptolemus is buried near the shrine of
Phoebus![336] The existence of such a tomb at Delphi would naturally have
begotten the story of his death there: the fact that Hermione was, in
one legend, the wife of Orestes, in another the wife of Neoptolemus, and
the close connexion of Orestes with Delphi in post-Homeric story, may
explain his association with the death of Neoptolemus. But the murderous
plot which is here attributed to Orestes we believe to be Euripidean. It
has no proper sequel: it does not harmonise with anything antecedent or
subsequent: it is just a novel, thrilling episode introduced by Euripides
to give an artistic interest to an otherwise dull and lifeless drama.
THE ‘HECUBA’
A deed of blood and its avenging forms the subject of the _Hecuba_.
The scene is laid at Troy and the atmosphere is predominantly Homeric.
Polymestor, King of Thrace, having consented to act as the guardian and
protector of Polydorus, the son of Priam, King of Troy, murdered his
ward and cast his body unburied on the sea-shore. The mode of vengeance
which is put in force against Polymestor is peculiarly archaic. The
avengers are exclusively women, and are led by Hecuba, the mother of
Polydorus. The punishment which is exacted is not the death or the exile
of Polymestor, but the death of his two sons, and the destruction of his
eyes. Here we have an instance of physical torture such as was prohibited
by a law of Dracon[337] in the case of a convicted murderer caught _en
rupture de ban_. We have also an instance of hereditary punishment
which Greek law had abolished for homicide in the seventh century, and
had retained for treason alone in the historical era,[338] in the form
of a civic degradation of the traitor’s posterity. Polymestor has no
consciousness of guilt after the slaying of Polydorus, as he regards his
act as justified in political self-defence, and therefore he proceeds to
avenge himself on Hecuba and the Trojan women whom he now regards as the
murderers of his children. At this stage Agamemnon is requested by Hecuba
to act as an arbitrator.[339] In his presence Polymestor says[340]:
But hear my motives for the deed, to prove
How justly and how prudently I acted:
Your enemy, that boy, if he survived
The ruin of his country, might, I feared,
Collect the scattered citizens of Troy,
And there again reside. I also feared
That when the Greeks knew one of Priam’s line
Was living, with a second fleet invading
The shores of Phrygia, they again might drain
Of their inhabitants the Thracian fields,
Involving us, their neighbours, in the vengeance
They on their foes at Ilion wreak. To us
Already hath such neighbourhood, O King,
Proved baneful.
The Chorus, however, imply that Polymestor has been justly punished[341]:
Hapless man,
How art thou visited by woes too grievous
To be endured: but by dread Jove, thy foe,
On him whose deeds are base, it is ordained
That the severest punishments await.
This passage suggests that the poet is reproducing an archaic atmosphere.
Now the Achaeans, we have seen,[342] ordinarily held no trials for
homicide. The pleadings before Agamemnon, which we find here, do not,
strictly speaking, constitute such a trial. We have seen[343] that the
Achaeans recognised a distinction between murder and just revenge.
Athene upholds that distinction in the _Odyssey_. Agamemnon upholds
that distinction here. He decides in favour of Hecuba, saying to
Polymestor[344]:
Know, then, to me thou seem’st not to have slain
Thy guest through an attachment to my cause,
Nor yet to that of Greece, but that his gold
Thou might’st retain: though in this wretched state
Thou speak to serve thy interests. Among you
Perhaps the murder of your guests seems light;
We Greeks esteem it base. If I acquit thee,
How shall I ’scape reproach? Indeed, I cannot:
Since thou hast dared to perpetrate the crime,
Endure the consequence.
The acceptance by Polymestor of Agamemnon’s decision suggests to us
the potency of Achaean military discipline in matters of homicide. Was
this acceptance indicated in an ancient legend, which was preserved in
Thrace, and which was transmitted without adulteration, or is Euripides
correctly archaising from his general knowledge of Achaean procedure as
revealed by Homer? The former alternative seems to us the more probable
in view of the consistently archaic atmosphere of this play. There is no
reference to homicide as a ‘pollution,’ to purgation, to Apollo, to State
trial. A certain degree of divine anger against Polymestor is indicated,
but this was caused by the violation of hospitality and by the act of
deprivation of burial, both of which acts are religious offences in
Homer. Hecuba says to the Chorus[345]:
O, ’twas a deed
Unutterable, a deed without a name,
Surpassing all astonishment, unholy,
And not to be endured. Where now the laws
Of hospitality? Accurséd man,
How cruelly hast thou with reeking sword
Transpierced this unresisting boy, nor heard
The gentle voice of pity!
Again she says to Agamemnon[346]:
Avenge
My wrongs upon the man who ’gainst his guest
Such treachery could commit, who, nor the gods
Of Erebus beneath, nor those who rule
In Heaven above regarding, this vile deed
Did perpetrate, e’en he with whom I oft
Partook the feast, on whom I showered each bounty,
Esteeming him the first of all my friends:
Yet, when at Ilion’s palace with respect
He had been treated, a deliberate scheme
Of murder forming, he destroyed my son,
On whom he deigned not to bestow a tomb,
But threw his corse into the briny deep.
In the scepticism of Talthybius regarding the existence of the gods, we
have an anachronism which is strictly applicable only to the rationalists
of fifth-century Athens. The comparative indifference of the Achaeans
to religion left the road open for this anachronism on the part of
Euripides.
When the son of Achilles is sacrificing Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles,
he says to the spirit of Achilles[347]:
Son of Peleus,
My father, the propitiatory drops
Of these libations which invite the dead
Accept. O come and quaff the crimson blood
Of this pure virgin whom to thee all Greece
And I devote.
For this placation of the dead by human sacrifice we have perhaps a
precedent in the sacrifice by Achilles of twelve Trojan youths to the
shade of Patroclus. But the suggestion that the dead man came to the
tomb to drink the blood offering indicates a fusion of Pelasgian and
Achaean beliefs such as Ridgeway assumes to have taken place before
the time of Aeschylus.[348] Already in the _Odyssey_, however, there
is evidence of the tendency to a fusion of ritual and beliefs, which
reached maturity before the historical period.[348] Such words as
Euripides here attributes to Achilles could never have been spoken by
the Homeric Achilles. For the Achaeans, the dead, once they were buried,
could never leave Hades, and they did not, like Pelasgian ghosts, drink
blood offerings at the tomb. This, then, is an anachronism, which was
perhaps derived from a misinterpretation by Euripides of the Nekuia
in the _Odyssey_. Hecuba naturally objects to the sacrifice of her
daughter,[349] but incidentally she objects to human sacrifice in
general, save in the case of a real enemy. Polyxena, she argues, was not
an enemy to Achilles. His ghost therefore could not be placated by her
sacrifice. This attitude of Hecuba suggests that a post-Homeric Thracian
legend contained a reference to a barbarous blood-thirst on the part
of the dead, which we have attributed to the Hesiodic age of chaos.
Euripides elsewhere attributes the sacrifice of Polyxena to the expressed
desire of the ghost of Achilles![350] We cannot be certain whether a
post-Homeric legend embodied these conceptions, or whether Euripides
invented them in his desire to add to the horrors of the story another
grim idea.
THE ‘BACCHAE’
On the first introduction, into Thebes, of the worship of Bacchus, or of
what may be termed the orgiastic cult of Dionysus, Pentheus, the reigning
King, opposed the new religion, declared Bacchus an impostor,[351] and
threatened him with death.[352] Hence the chorus of Bacchanals, inspired
with prophetic foresight, approve in advance the death of Pentheus whom
they regard as an enemy or a traitor.[353] By a tragic irony, Agave,
the mother of Pentheus, who has joined the Bacchic worshippers and is
mesmerised by Bacchic influence, is the actual perpetrator of the death
of Pentheus. She is deluded by Bacchic frenzy into believing that she is
slaying a lion, and returns to Thebes carrying what she believes to be a
lion’s head. She says[354]:
Ye that within the high-towered Theban city
Dwell, come and gaze ye all upon our prey,
The mighty beast by Cadmus’ daughter ta’en;
Nor with Thessalian sharp-pointed javelins,
Nor nets, but with the white and delicate palms
Of our own hands. Go ye and make your boast,
Trusting to the spear-maker’s useless craft:
We with these hands have ta’en our prey, and rent
The mangled limbs of this grim beast asunder.
Where is mine aged sire? Let him draw near!
And where is my son Pentheus? Let him mount
On the broad stairs that rise before our house;
And on the triglyph nail this lion’s head
That I have brought him from our splendid chase.
Her position, then, differs from that of Ajax,[355] in that the deed
really takes place and that she did not intend it. The act is, we shall
find, analogous to, but less culpable than, that of Oedipus when he slew
his father.
Cadmus, father of Agave, refers the ultimate guilt to Bacchus[356]:
Justly—too justly hath King Bromius
Destroyed us, fatal kindred to our house.
Agave adopts a similar attitude when she realises the nature of the deed
which she has wrought.[357] But she cannot escape all punishment. At the
end of the play Dionysus propounds an oracle of Zeus which declares[358]
that Cadmus shall become a dragon, and his wife Harmonia shall become a
serpent, but that they will nevertheless conquer many barbarian cities
and will be borne ultimately to the land of the blessed gods. Yet they
must leave Thebes now because of their impious attitude to Dionysus! Is
this decree an instance of ‘collective’ punishment? Is it necessary that
the entire family of Cadmus should suffer for the impiety of Pentheus
which he has already atoned for by an ignominious death? It may be an
explanation of this obscure punishment to say that it is collective.
But what shall we say of Agave? She also has to leave Thebes. Is her
exile to be regarded as a penalty for ‘impiety’ in regard to Dionysus?
Surely she has already been sufficiently pious and to her cost! She
was actually one of the Bacchic worshippers, in the play. Moreover, in
going into exile she bids farewell to her father![359] They are all sent
into exile together, yet she cannot go with her father.[360] Surely, if
impiety were the offence, and the penalty were collective exile, all the
offenders could have gone in conjunction. Why is Agave exiled, then,
if she is condemned to separate exile? We suggest that this penalty is
inflicted because of kin-slaying in religious frenzy, that is to say, in
legal language, ‘in a passion.’ Plato assures us[361] that kin-slaying
extenuated by passion prohibited the slayer from any further intercourse
with her family. ‘If a father or mother in a passion kill their son or
daughter by blows or in any other violent manner ... let them remain in
exile for three years and on returning let the husband be divorced from
the wife and the wife from the husband, and let them never afterwards
beget children together nor dwell in fellowship with those whom they have
deprived of child or brother, or have a share in their sacred rites.’ But
Agave goes into exile with her sisters Autonoe and Ino, who had shared in
the death of Pentheus. They too are separated from Cadmus. The reason is
perhaps that Cadmus symbolises the domestic religion of their home. From
him, as from their home, they must be exiled for ever.
THE ‘ALCESTIS’
Neither the _Alcestis_ nor the other two plays of Euripides which remain
for discussion are of very much importance from the point of view of
homicide-law. In the prologue[362] Apollo tells how he slew the Cyclops
who forged the thunder-bolt by which Zeus slew Aesculapius, Apollo’s
son, and how in consequence he went into bondage with Admetus of Pherae
for a period of one year. Thus Zeus plots the death of his grandson and
punishes his son for avenging it! The reason is that Zeus regards the
death of Aesculapius as justified, and therefore, as Apollo’s vengeance
is unjust, he must be punished. The penalty of bondage which is here
referred to may be the Pelasgian servitude which we have discussed in an
early part of this work,[363] or it may be a form of that same penalty
which was retained under the pollution-system, in pre-Draconian days when
it was indispensably connected with exile. There is here, however, no
reference to pollution or to purgation. Apollo was purified for slaying
the Python[364] but not for the slaying of the Cyclops! We cannot apply
to the Olympian Apollo the laws which were made for mortal men. Apollo,
unlike Hercules, could not be conceived as a man. It was from Olympus,
the abode of the Olympian gods, that he was banished. The obvious motive
for the legend is the association of Apollo with Admetus. Some reason had
to be assigned for this ‘exile’ of Apollo. We may suppose that a deed
of homicide was invented to explain this ‘exile,’ but that its details
were not worked out. The only real importance of such a legend is that it
affords a certain amount of evidence for the existence of servitude as a
homicide-penalty in early Greece.
Admetus is permitted by the Fates to live if he can find a substitute.
His wife Alcestis voluntarily dies in his stead. Was her death
attributable to Admetus? Was he her murderer? His father, Pheres, seems
to think so![365]
I go: thou shalt entomb her, as thyself
Her murderer. Look for vengeance from her friends.
Acastus is no man if his hands fail
Dearly t’avenge on thee his sister’s blood.
As Hercules, in this play, raises to life the dead Alcestis, we are freed
from the necessity of discussing the legal aspects of such a problem.
The whole plot of this play belongs to the supernatural rather than to
the natural order. The murder laws of Greece made no provision for such
contingencies.
THE ‘TROADES’
In the _Troades_ Cassandra foresees the murder of Agamemnon and the
vengeance of Orestes, and connects these tragic misfortunes with the woes
which were brought by the Atreidae upon the house of Priam. Aeschylus
has a suggestion of this sentiment in the _Agamemnon_.[366] To represent
Clytaemnestra and Orestes as mere instruments in the hands of Destiny may
be religiously orthodox to a superstitious people, especially in the Dark
Ages of prehistoric Greece, but it has no legal validity. Such sentiments
are really antagonistic to legal sanctions. Applied to Achaeans, they
are, we think, anachronistic. Murder is distinct from war, and murder
is not conceived as begetting murder, in the course of Destiny, until
post-Homeric times. In the decision of the Greeks to slay Astyanax, the
son of Andromache, as a reprisal for the adultery of Paris,[367] we
see an instance of hyper-vengeance, which is characteristic of hostile
belligerents. We cannot infer that amongst the Achaeans the punishment
for adultery was more severe than amongst the Pelasgians.[368] Astyanax
was not an adulterer! His punishment was a reprisal, and has therefore
no legal significance. Talthybius refers to a strange proposal on the
part of the Greeks, namely a proposal to set up a spear in the tomb of
Astyanax.[369] Now this spear is a symbol of future vengeance. It is
strange that such a symbol should have been set up by the party who
deserve and anticipate punishment. Moreover, we have seen[370] that this
custom was probably post-Homeric. The Achaeans did not credit their dead
spirits, after burial, with any local habitation in the tomb or with
any effective desire for vengeance. Here, the suggestion is clearly
intended by Talthybius, and possibly by Euripides, to bring some slight
comfort to Hecuba, the bereaved mother. We have referred to a passage
in Demosthenes,[371] in which a plaintiff, who was debarred from a
prosecution for bloodshed, because of his not having been akin in blood
to the deceased, was advised by the Exegetae to carry a spear at the
funeral. It was therefore rather a cruel piece of irony for Euripides
to suggest that by the setting up of this symbol—which had come, in
historical times, to indicate the absence of avengers—the Greeks intended
to express at once to Hecuba the hope of retaliation and to themselves
the hope of immunity from vengeance.
THE ‘HELEN’
The scene of the _Helen_ is laid in Egypt. We are told that the
ubiquitous Helen escapes with Menelaus from Egypt, having deceived by
a stratagem her amorous protector, Theoclymenus. She was aided in her
plans by Theonoe, the sister of Theoclymenus, and he, therefore, in
the anger of disappointed passion, proceeded to slay his sister. The
Dioscuri intervened in time to prevent the realisation of his purpose,
and all ends happily! Technically, Theoclymenus is guilty of attempted
kin-slaying, but the poet leads us to suppose that an ungovernable fit of
passion would, in such a case, be regarded as a complete extenuation. We
may infer from the words of the Chorus that the slaying of one’s kindred
was regarded with horror by races which were outside Greece. The Chorus
will not permit the death of Theonoe, even though they intervene at their
peril. They say to Theoclymenus[372]:
Kill me. Your sister you with my consent
Shall never slay: I rather would yield up
My life on her behalf. It is most glorious
To generous servants for their lords to die.
Euripides also makes the barbarian Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese,
gasp with horror when Iphigeneia, the priestess of Artemis, informs him
of the arrival of the matricide Orestes. When Iphigeneia says[373]:
They came polluted with domestic blood,
he answers[374]:
O Phoebus! This hath no barbarian dared.
Euripides, then, did not believe that the conception of kin-slaying as
a horrible and revolting act was an exclusively Grecian sentiment. When
therefore in the _Andromache_ he makes Hermione say[375]:
Such is the whole abhorred barbarian race:
The father with his daughter, the vile son
With his own mother, with her brother too
The sister sins; friends by their dearest friends
Are murdered: deeds like these no wholesome law
Prohibits: introduce not among us
Such crimes....
we may attribute such an assertion to a mind inflamed with the jealousy
which a wife feels towards a concubine rather than suppose Euripides not
to have known that the horror of kin-slaying is an aboriginal universal
sentiment of the human race when once it has abandoned the cave of the
cannibal.
* * * * *
We have now concluded our inquiry into the problem of blood-vengeance
in Attic tragedy. Nothing has been revealed by this inquiry which is
in conflict with the hypotheses which we have sought to establish in
this work, as to the various systems of blood-vengeance which existed
in Greece, from Pelasgian times to the age of the orators. While Attic
tragedy does not in itself contribute anything to our knowledge of these
various systems, there can be little doubt that an attempt, however
imperfect, to investigate the origin and nature of these systems is
indispensable for a proper appreciation of these dramatic masterpieces.
If our analysis of blood-vengeance in the works of the three great Attic
tragedians has not, in many cases, succeeded in establishing definite
clear-cut conclusions, this, we hope, will be attributed to the intrinsic
difficulty and obscurity of the subject. We can never be quite certain
whether any particular drama gives us (_a_) an antique unadulterated
legend; or (_b_) an antique legend which in course of evolution has taken
on new forms without any regard to the consistency or the historicity of
the tradition; or (_c_) whether the drama is based upon a late invention
which owing to skilful archaising takes on the garb and appearance of an
antique story, betraying perhaps, here and there, by its anachronisms,
the mind and atmosphere of its creator. It so happens that the attitude
to homicide or to religion which the Achaeans reveal was also taken up
by many individual Athenians of the Periclean age. Thus the indifference
to the gods which Sophocles attributes to Ajax was common to Achaeans
and to many Periclean Athenians. So the conception of homicide as a
matter for ‘private settlement’ which is found in Demosthenes, and the
survival, in outlying places, such as Macedonia, of family vendettas,
fierce and lawless, would have suggested to the mind of the dramatist
that there was no very wide gulf between the primitive and the historical
Greeks. Such a fact almost invites anachronisms. Nevertheless, we
frequently find in dramatic legends an atmosphere so antique, so unlike
that of fifth-century Athens, that we may assume, as the most probable
hypothesis, that these legends are not inventions, but have behind them a
long and, often, a chequered past.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Hist. Gk. Lit._ p. 224.
[2] _Ib._ p. 225.
[3] _Ib._ 228.
[4] P. 229.
[5] See _Euripides the Rationalist_ (_passim_) and Introduction to
Aeschylus, _Choephoroe_, p. xxxvii ff.
[6] Eur. _Orestes_, 1370.
[7] _A.P._ 119.
[8] See _A.P._ 131-5.
[9] See _Themis_, 341 ff.
[10] _A.P._ 129.
[11] _Poetics_, 25.
[12] See Wedd, Introd. to _Orestes_, p. xvii ff.
[13] 15 ff.
[14] _Od._ iii. 307.
[15] _Electra_, 1254 ff.; _Orestes_, 1648 ff.
[16] 29-30.
[17] 1093-6.
[18] See _supra_, p. 308.
[19] _Supra_, p. 58 ff.
[20] 500 ff.; _infra_, p. 348.
[21] _Supra_, Book I.
[22] _Infra_, p. 348 ff.
[23] 957-8.
[24] 895 ff.
[25] _Od._ iii. 310.
[26] 1277.
[27] _Cf._ Soph. _Electra_, 1483.
[28] _Supra_, p. 236 ff.
[29] 1230.
[30] 1250.
[31] 840 ff.
[32] 1244 ff.
[33] _Supra_, p. 282.
[34] 1266 ff.
[35] _Supra_, p. 294. Such a conception is rendered possible by the
command of Apollo, which gives an extra-legal complexion to the case. In
strict law such a plea was probably inadmissible (Plato, _Laws_, ix. ch.
9).
[36] 1644 ff.
[37] _Laws_, ix. ch. 8.
[38] v. 67.
[39] _Supra_, p. 145 ff.
[40] See _infra_, p. 368.
[41] 445 ff.
[42] See 1664-5.
[43] Schol. ad Eur. _Orest._ 1640.
[44] _Electra_, 1254-75; _Orestes_, 1643 ff.
[45] 46-50.
[46] 75-6.
[47] 1292-7.
[48] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[49] See 268 ff., 390 ff., 545 ff., 776, 1229.
[50] 414-416.
[51] 591-9.
[52] 492-506.
[53] 507-517.
[54] _Supra_, p. 76.
[55] _Supra_, pp. 122, 132.
[56] _Eum._ 685.
[57] See _supra_, p. 308.
[58] 256-7.
[59] 884 ff.
[60] Plato, _Apologia Socratis_, 36-42.
[61] _Supra_, p. 258 ff.
[62] _Ajax_, 749 ff.
[63] Eur. _Troades_, 900.
[64] Eur. _Hecuba_, 119 ff.
[65] _Troades_, 715, 780.
[66] viii. 117.
[67] 892-3.
[68] _Eum._ 212, 608.
[69] _Works and Days_, 180 ff.
[70] 898 ff.
[71] See _supra_, p. 225 ff.
[72] _Supra_, pp. 9, 47.
[73] 903-6. ὡσεὶ ἔλεγε νόθος πολίτης (Schol.)
[74] Cleophon was of Thracian descent. (Schol. ad v. 772.)
[75] 915.
[76] 914-15.
[77] 944-6.
[78] _Laws_, ix. ch. 12; _supra_, p. 231.
[79] 917 ff.
[80] _Supra_, p. 74.
[81] _Supra_, p. 59.
[82] 923-30.
[83] 932-42.
[84] _Supra_, pp. 58 ff.; 217.
[85] ix. 36.
[86] 941.
[87] 1300. Her miraculous translation to ‘heaven’ is not inconsistent
with, but rather, we think, confirms our opinion that she was slain.
[88] See, _e.g._, Herodotus ii. 113 ff.; Eur. _Helen_, 1640 ff.;
_Troades_, 875 ff.
[89] 1140.
[90] 1625.
[91] 1645.
[92] _Laws_, ix. chs. 8, 9.
[93] See _supra_, p. 256. The command of Apollo was an extra-legal
extenuation of Orestes’ act. This act therefore merited, though it did
not actually receive, the ‘forgiveness’ of Clytaemnestra.
[94] 1648 ff.
[95] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[96] 1650.
[97] _In Aristoc._ 641, 27.
[98] _Infra_, p. 370 ff.
[99] _Supra_, p. 124.
[100] Schol. ad Eur. _Orest._ 1640.
[101] _Supra_, p. 163.
[102] See Plato, _Laws_, ix. ch. 8.
[103] 1643-1652.
[104] 1660-5.
[105] 765.
[106] _Supra_, p. 223 f.
[107] 765.
[108] _Supra_, p. 196.
[109] 1249 and 1285.
[110] 771.
[111] _Supra_, p. 163.
[112] _In Aristoc._ 635; see also Plato, _Laws_, ix. ch. 8.
[113] 1074.
[114] 1591 ff.
[115] _Supra_, p. 103.
[116] _Infra_, p. 375 ff.
[117] See Introduction to _Orestes_, p. xxvi ff.
[118] _Supra_, p. 332 f.
[119] _Supra_, pp. 309, 345, 348.
[120] 1625 ff.
[121] _Supra_, p. 344.
[122] 285 ff.
[123] _Supra_, pp. 123 ff.; 298 ff.
[124] _Eum._ 338-41.
[125] _Orestes_, 255-7.
[126] _Orestes_, 260-1.
[127] _Ib._ 580-84.
[128] _Iph. Taur._ 285-291.
[129] Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 45.
[130] _Iph. in T._ 1580 ff.
[131] _Iph. Aul._ 1615-20.
[132] _Supra_, p. 336.
[133] _Agamemnon_, 194 ff.
[134] See England, Introd. to _Iph. in T._ p. xii.
[135] iv. 103.
[136] See England, _op. cit._ p. xviii.
[137] _Op. cit._ p. xxi.
[138] 1020 ff.
[139] 1190 ff.
[140] 940 ff.
[141] _Supra_, pp. 337, 349.
[142] _Supra_, p. 360.
[143] _Supra_, pp. 193, 213.
[144] 940-946.
[145] 961-972.
[146] 976-982.
[147] See Callimachus, _Hymn to Artemis_, 173 ff.; England, _op. cit._ p.
xiii.
[148] _Supra_, p. 117 ff.
[149] _Supra_, p. 148.
[150] Eur. _Medea_, 1380 ff.
[151] 1223-5.
[152] Eur. _Androm._ 173-6.
[153] _Infra_, p. 421.
[154] 947-960.
[155] x. 49.
[156] _s.v._ χόες.
[157] _Ancient City_ (trans.), p. 78 ff.
[158] _Supra_, p. 87.
[159] _Supra_, pp. 175, 347.
[160] _Proleg._ p. 41.
[161] 955.
[162] _Loc. cit._
[163] _Supra_, p. 367.
[164] _Phoen._ 1585 ff.
[165] _Supra_, p. 323.
[166] _Ant._ 1012-1017.
[167] _Ant._ 1035-62.
[168] _Ib._ 1080 ff.
[169] Eur. _Supp._ 113 ff.
[170] _Ib._ 940 ff.
[171] 16-19 (trans. A. S. Way); _cf._ 310 ff.
[172] 524-7; _cf._ 560 ff.
[173] 669-72.
[174] Eur. _Supp._ 1207; _cf._ Pausanias, ix. 18.
[175] _Phoenissae_, 774-7 (trans. Woodhull); _cf._ 1646.
[176] _Ib._ 1447-50.
[177] See 360 ff. and 465 ff.
[178] _Supra_, pp. 216, 323.
[179] _Supra_, pp. 311, 317.
[180] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.; _supra_, p. 55.
[181] _Homer and History_, p. 52.
[182] _Supra_, p. 21.
[183] See _supra_, p. 143.
[184] _Supra_, pp. 193, 213.
[185] _O.C._ 1255-1345; _ib._ 1341.
[186] _Phoenissae_, 1585-94.
[187] _O.C._ 87 ff.
[188] _Phoen._ 1703-5.
[189] _Phoen._ 59-68.
[190] _Supra_, p. 376.
[191] _Supra_, pp. 195, 258.
[192] _Phoen._ 1705 ff.
[193] Pausanias, i. 28.
[194] i. 28.
[195] _Phoen._ 64.
[196] _Ib._ 1593.
[197] _Od._ xi.
[198] _Il._ ii. 660 ff.
[199] _Dorians_, i. 411 ff.
[200] v. 67.
[201] 977 ff.
[202] 840-75.
[203] 1146-52.
[204] 1253-80; 1310-1364.
[205] 1229 ff.
[206] 462, 1285.
[207] _Supra_, p. 163.
[208] _Il._ xix. 98-9.
[209] _H.F._ 1285.
[210] _Supra_, p. 234 ff.
[211] 1281-90.
[212] Soph. _O.C._ 490-660; _supra_, p. 317.
[213] 1311-12 (attributed to Theseus by the MSS.).
[214] 1322-5.
[215] Note _ad loc._
[216] _Laws_, ix. ch. 8; _supra_, p. 163.
[217] See 1422.
[218] 1333.
[219] 15 ff.
[220] _Supra_, p. 163.
[221] ix. 41.
[222] Eur. _H.F._ 19.
[223] _Ib._ 13.
[224] _H.F._ 567, 754.
[225] _Supra_, p. 327.
[226] _Supra_, pp. 20, 283.
[227] 732.
[228] 755-6.
[229] i. 32.
[230] _i.e._ when he died.
[231] 50 ff.
[232] Pausanias, i. 29.
[233] 997 ff.
[234] 238 ff.
[235] i. 28.
[236] _Supra_, p. 251.
[237] 250-252.
[238] δίκης κυρήσειν.
[239] See _supra_, p. 164 ff.
[240] _Supra_, p. 263.
[241] _Supra_, p. 164 ff.
[242] 464-470.
[243] _Supra_, p. 327.
[244] 1050.
[245] 1009 ff.
[246] 1022 ff.; 1045 ff.
[247] 961-980.
[248] 1010.
[249] 1050.
[250] 1028 ff.
[251] 1053.
[252] 1024.
[253] _Supra_, p. 379.
[254] _Supra_, p. 223.
[255] βούλευσις, in the sense of a plot to kill which is not realised.
[256] See introd. to _Medea_, p. xi ff.
[257] 1334.
[258] 485.
[259] βούλευσις, when the plot was realised.
[260] _Supra_, p. 223 f.
[261] 735.
[262] _Od._ xi. 253 ff.
[263] Pindar, _Pyth._ iv. 95 ff.
[264] 735.
[265] Eur. _Phoen._ 410-425.
[266] _Supra_, p. 116.
[267] 709 ff.
[268] 746-7 and 749-51.
[269] See 796, 850, 1268, 1383.
[270] _Supra_, p. 234 ff.
[271] 846 ff.
[272] 1321-2.
[273] 1378 ff.
[274] 1386 ff.
[275] 1389 ff.
[276] _Supra_, p. 365.
[277] _Supra_, p. 234.
[278] 1231 ff.
[279] 1279 ff.
[280] 34-7. I venture to modify Woodhull’s version of v. 37—ἐναυσίαν
ἔκδημον αἰνέσας φυγήν,—as he renders ‘to _voluntary_ exile submitting for
one year.’
[281] i. 28.
[282] _Supra_, p. 245.
[283] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[284] _Supra_, p. 214.
[285] 950 ff.
[286] _Supra_, p. 240 ff.
[287] 800.
[288] 877 ff.
[289] Homer, _Il._ vi. 160 ff.
[290] 887-898, omitting 891-892.
[291] 974, 1094.
[292] 1195 ff.
[293] 1282 ff.
[294] _Supra_, pp. 58 ff.; 76.
[295] _Supra_, p. 223.
[296] i. 22.
[297] i. 3.
[298] _Theseus_, 10.
[299] Paus. i. 22.
[300] _Supra_, p. 178.
[301] Paus. i. 28.
[302] _Ib._ i. 22.
[303] Plutarch, _loc. cit._
[304] Through his mother, Aethra.
[305] Eur. _Hipp._ 974, 1094.
[306] Müller, _Dorians_, i. 265 ff.
[307] _Supra_, p. 224 f.
[308] _Supra_, p. 326 f.
[309] 1106 ff.
[310] 1222 ff.
[311] 1254 ff.
[312] 1259.
[313] 1275 ff.
[314] 1291 ff.
[315] 1301.
[316] 1306.
[317] 1308.
[318] 1329.
[319] From 750 B.C. onwards.
[320] 1330 ff.
[321] 1000 ff.
[322] 1231 ff.
[323] 802 ff.
[324] _Supra_, p. 75.
[325] _Ath. Pol._ ch. 57; _supra_, pp. 192, 251.
[326] According to the usual interpretation of Aristotle, _supra_, pp.
225, 251.
[327] _Supra_, p. 225.
[328] 333 ff.
[329] _Cf._ 496.
[330] 450.
[331] 174 ff.
[332] _Supra_, p. 173.
[333] 1106.
[334] 1161 ff.
[335] 1241-2.
[336] 1240.
[337] _Supra_, p. 195.
[338] Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 473 ff.
[339] 1232 ff.
[340] 1136-1144.
[341] 1085-6.
[342] _Supra_, p. 83.
[343] _Supra_, p. 76.
[344] 1243-51.
[345] 714-20.
[346] 789-97.
[347] 534-8.
[348] _Supra_, p. 106.
[349] 260 ff.
[350] 40.
[351] _Bacchae_, 240 ff.
[352] 356 ff.
[353] 995 ff.
[354] 1202-15.
[355] See _supra_, p. 325 ff.
[356] 1250.
[357] 1296.
[358] 1330 ff.
[359] 1363, 1379.
[360] 1350.
[361] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.
[362] 5-7.
[363] _Supra_, p. 44 ff.
[364] Plutarch, _Greek Questions_, 12; Aelian, _Var. Hist._ iii.
[365] 730 ff.
[366] _E.g._ 333 ff.
[367] _Troades_, 705 ff.
[368] _Supra_, p. 58 ff.
[369] 1150 ff.
[370] _Supra_, p. 122.
[371] _Contra Euerg. et Mnesib._ 1160, 15; _supra_, p. 182.
[372] 1639-41.
[373] _Iph. in T._ 1171.
[374] 1174.
[375] _Androm._ 173 ff.
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Having now concluded our inquiry into the origin, the nature, and the
evolution of Greek systems of blood-vengeance, it may be desirable
to give here a brief synoptic summary of the theories which we have
sought to establish. Our summary naturally falls into two sections: (A)
chronological and (B) literary.
(A) (1) From the earliest times there existed in Greece a code of
homicide-customs which is a well-known characteristic of the tribal or
‘group’ system of primitive human society; wergeld was the dominant
penalty, and exile or death, or, possibly, servitude were alternative
penalties; there was regular trial and collective control. We may call
the system ‘private vengeance,’ but it was fundamentally different from
‘vendetta.’ This system has left only very slight traces of its existence
in extant Greek literary or inscriptional remains: while it persisted
in a suppressed or modified form all through the course of ancient
Greek history, its presence was obscured by other developments, social,
religious, and political.
(2) Thus there was, in the first place, the Achaean domination (say,
1300-1100 B.C.) which is the dominant atmosphere of the Homeric poems;
we have seen that the Achaean system in regard to homicide made death
the normal penalty, but that this penalty could be avoided in practice,
though not in theory, by the flight of the slayer. There was no regular
or prescribed trial, but there existed a kind of social etiquette or a
potential military discipline which established a general distinction
between murder and vengeance, and which, while omitting any nice points
of discrimination in estimating the degrees of guilt, nevertheless
prevented any wholesale system of vendetta.
(3) When in the ‘Hesiodic’ age (1000-750 B.C.) various migrations and
economic changes disturbed the peaceful operation of clan-laws, and no
form of control, either tribal or military, could be said to exist in the
greater part of Greece (excluding, perhaps, the Attic State), then arose,
as we think, in its full vigour the barbarous vendetta system which has
left so marked a trace in Greek legends: then rose to prominence the
belief in ancestral curses, which were held to fall upon children even in
the fourth generation. Then came into being the blood-thirst of the dead,
the mutilation of the murdered corpse, the deprivation of burial—all the
barbarisms of collective hereditary vendetta.
(4) Into this state of chaos there came, as it were, by the foresight
of the gods, in the seventh century, the ‘Apolline’ religious code. The
murderer now becomes god-hated: he is shunned by society: all men must
rise in horror against him, and if he is guilty they must either slay him
or banish him for ever. Courts must operate, for murder, if for nothing
else. The right of suppliants must be respected at least till guilt is
proved. Wergeld is abolished, but a minor appeasement of the relatives is
permitted after exile, for minor degrees of guilt.
(5) Almost contemporaneously came the evolution of the synoekised Greek
State. A compromise between the old and the new ideas produced the laws
of Dracon and the historical murder-codes of Greece. The State now takes
over the execution, as well as the trial of homicides. The avenger of
blood gives place to the Public Executioner. Parricide and kin-slaying
are punishable with death. The property of wilful murderers is
confiscated to the State. Courts which at first have general jurisdiction
specialise in certain kinds of homicide, and their specialised functions
are stereotyped in law. The personnel of these courts undergoes
modifications which keep pace, in the main, with the advance of democracy
to complete political power.
(B) (1) We have seen that the homicide references in Homer can only be
properly understood by assuming a predominance, in legend or in the
atmosphere of the poet, of the Achaean system of vengeance, and the
existence of faint but unmistakable echoes of the Pelasgian wergeld
system.
(2) Of the Hesiodic period the poems of Hesiod are the only authentic
evidence, and such evidence is obscure. We may however supplement
it indirectly by arguments from survivals, and by the argument of
‘elimination.’
(3) Of the Apolline or historical system we need not review the evidence
which has been given at length in our Second Book. This evidence has been
examined and interpreted by many modern scholars. We have indicated what
we considered the most probable interpretation of matters which were
open to doubt, especially when the solution of the problem was important
for the analysis of blood-vengeance in Attic tragedy. We have sought to
prove that Plato’s homicide code should be regarded as an important and
indispensable contribution to the study of Greek homicide-law. However
difficult the analysis of the references to homicide in Attic tragedy may
have been, without Plato any such analysis would have been impossible.
INDEX
NOTE:—The following Index is intended merely as a supplement to the Table
of Contents, and is divided, for convenience, into four sections: (I)
subjects discussed: (II) modern authors cited: (III) persons, legendary
and historical, mentioned in connexion with homicide: (IV) technical
Greek terms.
I
adultery, 58 f., 74, 217, 356
Areopagus, 53, 94, 192, 194, 217 f., 221, 225, 243 ff., 248, 250-5,
263, 269-74, 279, 287 ff., 292 ff., 298, 310, 336, 340, 343,
345, 351, 359 ff.
Bouphonia, 246 f.
Burial, rights and duties of, 87
beliefs connected with, 106
refused to murderers, 223
of enemies in war, 379, 394
Canones Wallici, 9, 54
Delphinium court, 53, 94, 169, 214 f., 245, 249 f., 254, 263
Eleven, the, 249, 257, 262
Ephetae, the, 137, 158, 192, 197, 205, 249, 252, 263, 269 ff.
Erinnyes, the, 97, 99, 105, 109 ff., 113 ff., 120 ff., 145, 148, 151,
155, 166, 174 f., 289 ff., 297 ff., 307, 342, 345, 360, 366
ff., 372
Eupatridae, the, 136 f., 266 f., 289
Exegetae, the, 137, 147, 158, 169, 182, 192, 260, 262, 267 ff.
Exile penalty for homicide:
amongst the Pelasgians, 22-57
amongst the Achaeans, 65 ff.
in historical Greece, 143 ff., 157, 159, 161 ff., 164, 171, 173,
207 ff., 209 ff., 213, 218, 221, 225, 234, 237 ff., 247, 249
f., 256 ff., and Book III _passim_
Hebrews, homicide laws of the, 3, 140, 201
Heliastic courts, 249, 253
kin-slaying, Pelasgian penalty for, 47, 353
historical penalty for, 181, 233 ff., 401 ff.
land-tenure, Homeric, 15 ff.
Nekuia, the, 104 ff.
Orphism, 240 ff., 401
Palladium court, 53, 94, 204, 206, 245 f., 248, 250 f., 254, 263, 272
Pantheon, Homeric, 101 ff.
Phreatto court, 247, 249 f., 256, 263, 327
private settlement for homicide, 143, 146, 173-190, 209, 213, 221
Prytaneum court, 91, 197 ff., 202 ff., 246, 249 f., 256, 263
sanctuary, right of, 80, 94, 406
Semnai Theai, 146, 148, 298 ff.
Servitude, penalty of, 44, 330, 363, 418
Spartan homicide laws, 130 f., 158, 173
wergeld, 2, 7 ff., 24 ff., 32, 34 ff., 41 ff., 44, 88, 123 f., 124,
143, 146, 173
II
Bury on Homeric homicide customs, 23, 78, 79
on origin of trials for homicide, 92 ff.
on homicide-purgation, 111
on the Ionian tribes, 135 f.
on the Phoenicians, 138 f.
on the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, 287
Caillemer on parricide, 234
Coulanges, Fustel de, on the phratry, 82, 88
on local Attic magistracies, 83, 135, 199
on religious aspect of homicide, 95
on anthropomorphism, 100
on homicide-purgation, 111
Eichhoff on Homeric homicide customs, 23
Gilbert on origin of trials for homicide, 80, 93, 263
on the Attic tribe-kings, 83
on the Dorian tribes, 130
on State-execution of death penalty, 226 ff.
Gilbert on the Ephetae, 264 ff.
on the Exegetae, 267
on the Areopagus, 269
Glotz on the meaning of ποινή, 28 f.
on the Shield of Achilles, 40
on the penalty of servitude, 44
on homicide in Homeric Greece, 58, 68, 80
on the historical survival of clan courts, 83
on the judicial aspect of kin-slaying, 86, 181, 233 f.
on the question of γραφὴ φόνου, 258 ff.
on confiscation and wergeld, 219
on State-execution of death penalty, 226, 231 f.
on the meaning of θέμιστες, 90
on the Prytaneum court, 92
on the abolition of wergeld, 92, 179 ff., 222
on homicide-purgation, 112, 117, 139
on the Middle Age of Hellenism, 132 ff.
on Solon’s legislation, 133
on ‘private settlement’ for homicide, 143 ff., 174 f., 186 ff.,
198, 209, 221 f.
on ‘appeasement’ in cases of manslaughter, 198, 207 ff.
on the Ephetae, 264 ff.
on ἀσυλία, 145, 166, 179 ff.
Grote on homicide customs in Homeric Greece, 23
on Spartan institutions, 130
Harrison (Miss) on religious aspect of homicide, 96
on anthropomorphism, 100
on Olympian and Chthonian ritual, 102, 114
on the Erinnyes, 110, 113 ff., 123
on homicide-purgation, 110, 142
on the Year-Spirit, 334
on the Pitcher Feast, 377
Hogarth on early Boeotia, 131
Holm on Spartan institutions, 130
Jevons on homicide in Homeric Greece, 23, 78
on the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, 287
on Greek drama, 303
on Euripides, 332 ff.
Leaf on the historicity of Homer, 12 ff.
on tribalism in Homer, 21
on homicide in Homer, 25 ff., 66, 83, 96
on the Shield of Achilles, 25 ff., 89, 90
on kin-slaying in Homer, 95
on Achaean religion, 100
Leaf on Chthonianism in Homer, 103
on post-Homeric tribalism, 127
on the Dorian conquest, 129
on the Ionian tribes, 135
on Boeotia, 131
Lipsius on the Shield of Achilles, 35, 39 f.
on βούλευσις, 224 f.
on the Delphinium court, 255
Mahaffy on prehistoric Greece, 138
Maine on origin of private property in land, 15 f.
on the sacramentum, 40
on the θέμιστες, 90
on Indian village communities, 82
on Indian tribal police, 228
Monro on the Shield of Achilles, 34
Müller (C. O.) on homicide-purgation, 52, 65, 111 ff., 152 ff.
on the origin of trials for homicide, 93
on the religious aspect of homicide, 96
on the Erinnyes, 120
on ‘private settlement’, 174, 177, 209
on the δικαὶ ἀψύχων, 197
on ‘appeasement’, 207 f.
on the Ephetae, 265
on the Exegetae, 267
on the Areopagus, 269 ff.
on the trial of Orestes, 297
on Attic mythology, 135
on the Dorian Apollo, 155
on Thessaly, 128
on Sparta, 130
on Boeotia, 131
Murray, G., on primitive religion, 98
on the Year-Spirit, 334
Philippi on homicide-purgation, 153
on ‘private settlement’, 174
on the Draconian inscription, 194 ff.
on the δικαὶ ἀψύχων, 197
on the penalties for adultery, 217
on confiscation, 221
on the γραφὴ ἀσεβείας, 262
on the Ephetae, 264 f.
Ridgeway on the Homeric poems, 13
on Homeric land-tenure, 15 ff.
on the Shield of Achilles, 34
on Pelasgian and Achaean religion, 104 ff.
on the decline of Achaean power, 128
on the Boeotians, 131
on the place of Orestes’ trial, 296
Seebohm, F., on wergeld in Wales, 7 ff.
on the Welsh tribes, 20 f.
on _Beowulf_, 48
on the Wisigoths, 53
Seebohm, H., on tribalism in Homer, 13, 15
on Achaean offerings to the dead, 108
Verrall on the Erinnyes in Aeschylus, 123
on the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, 288, 290
on the trial of Orestes, 297
on Medea, 394
Wedd on the _Orestes_, 364 ff.
on Euripides, 398 ff.
III
Achilles, 29, 31, 139
Admetus, 418
Adrastus, 70, 379
Aegisthus, 72, 338
Agamemnon, 19, 72, 83, 413
Agave, 416 f.
Ajax, 32, 319, 321, 325, 416
Akamas, 69, 76
Alcestis, 418
Alcmaeon, 141, 157
Amphinomus, 60
Antigone, 319-25
Arthmius (ap. Dem.), 188
Astyanax, 419
Athamas, 116, 158
Bellerophon, 18, 59, 110, 111, 142, 151
Cleisthenes (of Sicyon), 156, 341
Clytaemnestra, 72 ff., 97, 125, 150, 175, 276-301, 311, 336 ff., 349
ff., 419
Creusa, 172, 229, 405 ff.
Croesus, 139
Diodorus (ap. Dem.), 181, 235, 260
Diomedes, 352
Dionysodorus (ap. Lysiam), 177
Electra, 304-9, 335-42
Epeigeus, 66
Epimenides, 152
Eupeithes, 60, 76
Eurystheus, 391 ff., 394
Euthyphro, 147, 182, 237, 259
Halirrhothius, 58
Hecuba, 83, 412-15
Helen, 347, 420 ff.
Hercules, 44, 173, 329 ff., 385 ff.
Hippolytus, 400-5
Hyettus, 58
Ion, 172, 405-8
Iphigeneia, 151, 281 ff., 311, 336, 369 ff.
Ixion, 155, 168
Lycophron, 66
Medea, 394-400
Medon, 66
Meleager, 70, 121
Menelaus, 348, 409
Menestratus (ap. Lysiam), 230
Nausimachus (ap. Dem.), 187
Nausithous, 18
Neoptolemus, 229, 408-11
Odysseus, 32, 50 f., 67, 104 ff., 325-9
Oedipus, 55, 75, 150, 170 ff., 304, 310-19, 378-84
Orestes, 60, 72 ff., 112, 120, 124 f., 151 ff., 169 f., 172 f., 185
f., 214 f., 229, 244, 255 f., 276-301, 305, 336 ff., 344 ff.,
360, 374-8, 408-12, 419
Pactyas, 168
Patroclus, 29, 56, 75
Phoenix, 32, 67, 69, 121
Polyneices, 302, 317 f., 321, 323 f., 378, 380
Proetus, 59, 110, 142, 151 f.
Pylades, 151, 309, 362 f.
Teiresias, 106 ff.
Teucer, 319, 327 ff.
Theoclymenus, 21, 65
Theocrines (ap. Dem.), 88, 183 f.
Theseus, 68, 76, 245, 379, 385-94, 400 ff.
Tlepolemus, 47, 108
Tydeus, 71, 396
Tyndareus, 62, 335, 348
IV
ἁγνιτής, 52, 112
ἀγορά (Homeric), 35
ἀνδροληψία, 164 ff., 239
ἀνδροφόνος, 237
ἀπενιαυτίζειν, 212
ἄποινα, 28 f.
ἄριστίνδην, 195, 198, 264
ἀσυλία, 145, 163
ἄτιμία, 144, 189, 219
ἄφεσις, 178
ἀφυλαξία, 147, 196, 213
βούλευσις, 193 f., 224, 251, 325, 405, 409
γραφὴ ἀσεβείας, 180, 260 ff.
γραφὴ φόνου, 181, 258 ff.
δικαὶ ἀψύχων, 93, 197
δικασπόλοι βασιλῆες, 89
ἔμφυλος, 21, 61, 65, 168
ἐσέσθων (from ἔσίημι), 207
θέμιστες, 90
ἱλασμός, 96
ἴστωρ, 43
καθαρμός, 96, 118
καθάρσιοι θεοί, 145, 152, 169
μασχαλισμός, 122, 308
μοιχάγρια, 59, 217
ποινή, 28 ff., 31
πωληταί, 221
φυλοβασιλεῖς, 88, 91
χόες, 364, 375
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