And the Furies prove by their threats to Orestes that they are not

unmindful of their charge. ‘Nay, in return for the blood thou hast

shed, thou must give me to suck the red juices from thy living limbs.

Thyself must be my meat, my horrid drink.’ ‘Yea, while thou livest, I

will drain thee dry, ere I hale thee ’neath the earth[1153].’ And the

same thought is emphasized yet again in that binding-spell which the

Furies chant to draw him whom they already account their prey from his

vain refuge at Athene’s altar:

ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ τεθυμένῳ

τόδε μέλος, παρακοπὰ, παραφορὰ φρενοδαλής,

ὕμνος ἐξ Ἐρινύων,

δέσμιος φρενῶν, ἀφόρμικτος, αὐονὰ βροτοῖς[1154].

‘Over our victim thus chant we our spell,

Rocking and wrecking the torturèd soul,

The jubilant song of Avengers,

Fettering the soul with no ’witchments of lute,

A spell as of drought[1155] upon mortals.’

Such is the wild, weird refrain of the Furies’ incantation; and in its

closing phrase are re-echoed the closing words of Clytemnestra’s charge.

Will anyone then venture to say that Aeschylus had no special reason

for thus repeating thrice within the compass of some two hundred lines

the same threat? For the punishment threatened is substantially the

same, though the means of inflicting it vary. Now it is the breath of

the Furies which shall scorch up the victim’s very blood; now it is

their lips that shall suck him dry; now a magic spell to parch and

shrivel him; but ever the effect is the same; the bloodguilty man

shall lie in death a sere and sapless carcase, already ‘damned to

incorruption[1156] even in that doom which wastes all else.’ And the

only reason which I can conceive for the poet’s insistence upon this

thought is that here again, as in all the former punishments, he was

reproducing a popular belief substantially the same then as it is in

Maina now, namely, that the murdered man, having become a _revenant_,

sucked his murderer’s blood and made him also in his turn a _revenant_.

Nor is Aeschylus the only ancient authority for the idea of some such

retribution after death. Plato, in a passage of the _Phaedrus_ already

cited, contemplates the activity of a murdered man’s wrath (μήνιμα)

not only in the present time but also hereafter[1157]; and in his

_Laws_ there is a provision, not assuredly of his own devising but

dating from the very beginning of Greek legislation, which can only

have been designed to insure the complete vengeance of the murdered

man on his murderer even beyond death. A man convicted of the wilful

murder of a near kinsman[1158] was punishable not only with death but

with a further penalty: ‘the attendants of the jury and the magistrates

having killed him shall cast out his corpse naked at an appointed

cross-roads without the city, and all the magistrates, representing

the whole city, shall take each a stone and cast it upon the head of

the corpse and thereby free the whole city from guilt, and thereafter

they shall carry the corpse to the borders of their land and cast it

out, in accordance with the law, unburied[1159].’ Now the law, we know,

in ordaining the penalty of death, ordained it as a satisfaction of

the murdered man’s claims to vengeance. The State, so to speak, sided

with the dead man and assisted him to exact blood for blood. Again the

stoning of the dead body by representatives of the city was intended,

we are expressly told, to free the whole city from guilt--from guilt,

that is, in the eyes of the murdered man, who might otherwise visit

his wrath upon the city as though it had consented to the crime or had

too lightly punished it. Can it then be supposed that the State was

actuated by any other motive in carrying out the rest of the penalty?

It was surely still in deference to the murdered man’s desires that the

murderer’s corpse was left unburied. To refuse burial was the surest

means of condemning the man to resuscitation and thereby of satisfying

his former victim’s uttermost demands.

Thus our detailed examination of the Aeschylean catalogue of penalties

establishes beyond doubt that of which we had already had some

evidence, namely, that all the punishments which were inflicted on

the murderer--and, in popular belief, inflicted by the murdered man

on his own behalf--were an exact reproduction of the sufferings which

the murdered man himself had undeservingly endured, and culminated

therefore, as they should, in the blood-guilty man becoming, like his

victim, a _revenant_.

The main problem then of this section is now fully solved; but

incidentally much light has been thrown upon the character ascribed

by the Greek people in antiquity to those _revenants_ who were not

merely pitiable sufferers but were active in bringing a like doom

upon those who had wronged them. And the character of these Avengers

approximates very closely to that of the modern _vrykolakes_. True,

there is one fundamental difference; the ancient Avenger directed his

wrath solely against the author of his sufferings, or at the most

extended it only to those who, owing to him the duty of furthering his

vengeance, had proved lax and cowardly therein; the modern _vrykolakas_

is unreasoning in his wrath and plagues indiscriminately all who fall

in his way. But the actual sufferings which the _vrykolakas_ inflicts

are identical with those which furnished Aeschylus with his tale of

threatened horrors. Modern stories there are in plenty, which tell

how the _vrykolakas_ springs upon his victim and rends him and drinks

his blood; how sheer terror of his aspect has driven men mad; how, in

order to escape him, whole families have been driven forth from their

native island to wander in exile[1160]; how death has often been the

issue of his assaults; and how those whom a _vrykolakas_ has slain

become themselves _vrykolakes_. Only his unreasoning and indiscriminate

fury is necessarily of Slavonic origin; his acts are the acts of those

ancient _revenants_ whose own wrongs rightfully made them the Avengers

of blood. Apart from the one Slavonic trait, the characters of the

_vrykolakas_ and the ancient Avenger are identical.

And perhaps this identity is most clearly seen in the one case in which

the old Avenger punished not only the immediate author of his own

wrongs, but a whole community which had subsequently given the guilty

man an asylum. We have noticed how Antiphon ventured to threaten an

Athenian jury with such punishment at the hands of the dead man if they

wrongfully acquitted his murderer. In the same spirit Aeschylus makes

the Furies, as the agents of the dead Clytemnestra, menace the whole

land of Attica with a venomous curse that shall blast man and beast and

herb in revenge for the wresting of Orestes from their grasp[1161].

And such too is the dread which in the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides stirs

Creon to make to the blood-guilty Oedipus this appeal: ‘Nay, remove

thee hence: verily ’tis not in scorn that I say this, nor in enmity to

thee, but because of thine Avengers, in fear lest the land suffer some

hurt[1162].’ In such cases the punishments with which a whole community

is threatened, although still a reasonable measure, approach most

nearly to the indiscriminate violence of the modern _vrykolakas_.

For the fulfilment of such threats as these we must turn to the

_Supplices_ of Aeschylus, and there we shall find a description of just

such a devastation as is said to have been suffered by the inhabitants

of Santorini and many other places in the seventeenth century. The

story of Aeschylus tells how ‘there came unto the Argive land, from

the shore of Naupactus, Apis, son of Apollo, both healer and seer,

and cleansed the land of monsters that destroyed mankind, even of

those that Earth, tainted with the pollutions of blood shed of old,

sent up in wrath to work havoc, fearsome as a dragon-brood to dwell

among[1163].’ What then were these monsters? I will venture to say

that any Greek peasant of to-day, could he but read and understand

the Aeschylean description, would furnish a better commentary upon

those lines than the most learned discourse thereon that any scholar

has written; and his commentary would be summed up in the one word

_vrykolakes_. For, vigorous as the description is, its vigour comes

less of dramatic word-building than of fidelity to the horrors of

popular superstition, and no other single passage could so fully

establish the unity of ancient and modern belief. For while the actual

language contains all the words[1164] which in antiquity were bound

up with the superstition--the ‘pollution’ which comes of bloodshed,

the ‘wrath’ which follows thereon and in which Earth herself is here

made to share, and the ‘sending up’ by Earth of the Avengers--the

thought of the passage is a faithful reflection of what the Greek

peasants still believe, that a violent death is among the chief causes

of resuscitation, that the earth sends up the dead man raging to deal

destruction, and that with others of his kind he consorts and conspires

in veritable dragon-bands; and men still tell of gifted seers and

healers, such as Apis, summoned in hot haste to panic-stricken hamlets

to allay the pest. The κνώδαλα βροτοφθόρα of Aeschylus, ‘the monsters

that destroy mankind,’ are indeed but little removed from the modern

_vrykolakes_.

Is it not then clear also on what sources Aeschylus drew for his

picture of the Furies themselves? We have seen how, for dramatic

purposes, they were substituted for a _revenant_ wreaking his own

vengeance. Clytemnestra herself in bodily form should have been the

Avenger, if popular superstition had not been in this respect too

gross; but the Erinyes take her place in the actual execution of

vengeance, and she herself appears only as a ghost to instigate them

to their work. But, when that substitution was effected, did not

Aeschylus clearly transfer to the Erinyes the whole character and

even the appearance popularly attributed to the human Avenger? They

are black and loathly to look upon[1165]; their breath is deadly

to approach[1166]; the smell of blood is a joy to them[1167]; they

follow like hounds upon their victim’s trail[1168]; they torment him

both body and soul[1169]; they fasten upon his living limbs and gorge

themselves with his blood[1170]; and if any would harbour him from

their pursuit, the venom of their wrath falls like a plague upon the

land, and devastates it[1171]; they are monsters, κνώδαλα[1172]--and

the recurrence of this word is significant--abhorrent alike to gods

and to men[1173]. The description is surely not that which Aeschylus

would himself have invented for beings who should come afterwards to be

worshipped as ‘revered goddesses,’ σεμναὶ θεαί. The difficulty of that

transition in the play itself cannot but arrest the attention of every

reader; it is a difficulty which even the genius of Aeschylus could not

remove. Why then did he draw so loathsome a portrait of the Erinyes

in the earlier part of the play? Why did he create that difficulty?

The reason, I suggest, was that he followed once more, and this time

almost too faithfully, the popular traditions, and, while he would not

represent a real _revenant_ on the stage, transferred to those demonic

agents, by whom the work of vengeance was vicariously performed, all

the attributes popularly associated with the prototypes of the modern

_vrykolakas_.

Thus then the history of the modern belief in _vrykolakes_ has been

fully traced. The ancients also believed that for certain causes--the

same causes in the main as are still assigned--men were doomed to

remain incorruptible after death and to rise again in bodily form from

their graves, and that one class of these _revenants_, those namely

who had wrongs of their own to avenge, inflicted upon their enemies

(and upon any who shielded or harboured them) the same sufferings as

are now generally believed to be inflicted in an unreasoning manner

by all classes of _vrykolakes_ alike upon mankind at large, with no

justification, such as a natural desire for vengeance might afford,

in the case of those whose resuscitation is not the outcome of any

injury or neglect at the hands of other men, and with no discrimination

between friend and foe on the part of those who have real wrongs

to avenge. Remove the unreasoning element in the character of the

_vrykolakas_, and the _revenant_ in which the folk of ancient Greece

believed remains.

But, if they believed in him, they must have called him by some

name. Aeschylus’ phrase κνώδαλα βροτοφθόρα, ‘monsters that destroy

mankind,’ is a description rather than a name. What were the reasonable

_vrykolakes_ of ancient Greece called? That is now the one question

which must be answered in order to make our enquiry complete.

Briefly my answer is this, that the particular class of _revenants_

with which the present section has mainly dealt, the Avengers of blood,

were known by three several names, μιάστωρ, ἀλάστωρ, and προστρόπαιος,

but that literature contains no word which could serve as a collective

designation for all classes alike. I hope however to show that the

Greek language was not originally defective in this respect, but that

the term ἀλάστωρ, although regularly used from the fifth century

onwards in the narrow sense of an Avenger, had originally a wider

application and denoted simply a _revenant_.

Now the interpretation which I give to these three words is not that

which is commonly accepted. Anyone who will turn to a lexicon will

find that to each of the three is assigned a double signification

in connexion with blood-guilt. All three are said to denote either

a god who punishes the blood-guilty or the blood-guilty man who is

punished. Thus a god, it is alleged, may be called μιάστωρ (literally

a ‘polluter’) because he punishes the polluted--a somewhat obvious

misnomer; or again ἀλάστωρ, because he ‘does not forget’ but punishes

the sinner--a derivation which, as I shall show later, cannot be

accepted; or thirdly προστρόπαιος, as the being who was ‘turned to’

by the murdered man and was besought to avenge his cause--a somewhat

circuitous way for the word to arrive at its active sense of ‘Avenger.’

And, secondly, a man, it is said, was called μιάστωρ when, being

himself polluted, he was liable to be ‘a polluter’ of other men with

whom he came in contact--a view which is certainly defensible; ἀλάστωρ

as one whose sin ‘could not be forgotten’--an interpretation almost

beyond the pale of serious discussion; and προστρόπαιος because,

being blood-guilty, he ‘turned towards’ some god for purification--an

explanation which may be right--whence the word came to denote in

general a polluted person who still needed purification.

Thus in my view, as I have indicated, the greater part of the

information in the lexicons with regard to these three words is

inaccurate; and my reasons for disputing the received interpretations

will be set forth point by point as I offer my own interpretations in

their stead.

In dealing with the first group of meanings assigned to the three

words, by which they came, somehow or other, to be used with the common

active signification of ‘Avenger,’ my main contention will be that,

as regards their primary and strictest usage, all three words were

applied not to gods but to men--men who, having been murdered, sought

to requite their murderers--and were only secondarily extended to the

agents, whether divine or human, to whom those dead men committed the

task of vengeance; but I shall also endeavour to show, as regards the

literal meaning of the three words severally, that the interpretation

by means of which their final sense of ‘Avenger’ has generally been

elicited from them is in each case wrong, and that, in the case of

the word ἀλάστωρ in particular, a right understanding of its original

meaning gives very important results.

And in dealing with the second group of meanings, by which the three

words are said to denote three only slightly different aspects of

one and the same person--a murderer who is μιάστωρ as polluted and

spreading pollution, ἀλάστωρ as pursued by vengeance, and προστρόπαιος

as still needing purification--I shall maintain that these alleged uses

of the first two words do not exist, and, as regards the third, I will

offer a suggestion, but a suggestion only, as to the means by which it

acquired this signification which it unquestionably bore.

It will be convenient to deal first with μιάστωρ and ἀλάστωρ as being

parallel in usage throughout, and to reserve προστρόπαιος for later

consideration.

The clearest example of that which I take to be the original usage

of μιάστωρ is furnished by Euripides. In that scene of mutual

recrimination between Medea and Jason, after that in revenge for her

husband’s faithlessness she has slain their children, there comes

at last from her lips the brutal taunt, as she points to the dead,

‘They live no more: that truth at least will sting thee’; and Jason

answers, ‘Nay, but they live, to wreak vengeance on thy head (σῷ κάρᾳ

μιάστορες)[1174].’ No language could be more simple, more explicit. The

very children who lay there murdered at Medea’s feet, they and none

other should be the _Miastores_, the Avengers of their own foul deaths.

But of course the word has other applications also. When

Aeschylus[1175] made the Erinyes threaten that even when Orestes should

have fled beneath the earth, he should find another Avenger (μιάστορα)

to plague him in their stead, the whole tenor of the passage compels

us to understand that that other Avenger is some deity or demon of the

nether world--a divine, not a human, _Miastor_, though at the same

time one who will act, like the Erinyes themselves, on behalf of the

murdered Clytemnestra.

And, yet again, the same term is applied to a living man, when, as

next of kin to him who has been murdered, he is in duty bound to exact

vengeance. This time Sophocles is our authority, and the person of whom

the word is used is Orestes. ‘Oft,’ says Electra to Clytemnestra, ‘oft

hast thou reproached me with saving him to take vengeance upon thee

(σοὶ τρέφειν μιάστορα)[1176].’

These three passages then illustrate the threefold application of the

name _Miastor_, and the question to be answered is which represents the

primary usage of the word. To multiply instances of each or any would

be of no avail; the question is not of the frequency of each usage; the

commonest is not necessarily the earliest. How then is the question

to be answered? It is, I think, already answered. We have seen that

in popular belief the murdered man was the prime avenger of his own

wrongs, and that even in literature, when the execution of vengeance

is wholly transferred either to the nearest kinsman or to some demonic

power, the murdered man is still recognised as the principal and

the others are only his agents. It is this relation between them

which settles the question. A principal does not act in the name of

his agents, but the agents in the name of their principal. The name

_Miastor_ therefore belonged first to the dead man himself, and was

only extended afterwards to those who wrought vengeance on his behalf.

So much for the usage of the word. Next, how did it acquire the

meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which it undoubtedly possessed? This can be

only a matter of opinion. But since it appears to me unscholarly and

illogical to suppose that a word, which on the grounds of formation

must have first meant ‘one who causes pollution,’ could have come to

mean ‘one who punishes pollution,’ I may at least offer an alternative

suggestion. The murdered man, I admit, can hardly be said to have

‘caused’ the pollution of his murderer, or at any rate he could only

have caused it involuntarily. But he might well be regarded as active

in debarring the murderer from the means of purification and in keeping

the pollution, as it were, fresh and virulent, with intent to isolate

his enemy and to ban him from the abodes of his fellow-men. And some

indication of such an activity is afforded by the Erinyes--acting,

as always, on Clytemnestra’s behalf; they refuse to acknowledge the

purification granted by Apollo to Orestes, and they say moreover that

their task is to ‘keep dark and fresh the stain of blood[1177].’ The

murdered man may therefore have been believed, if not actually to cause

and to create, yet at least to promote and to re-create, the pollution

of his foe, and, by keeping the stains of blood as it were from fading

or being cleansed away, to wreak some part of his vengeance. In this

way the transition from the sense of ‘polluter’ to that of ‘avenger’ is

at least, I submit, intelligible. This however is only a side-issue.

The important point is that the word _Miastor_, however it may have

come to mean ‘Avenger,’ was primarily applied to the _revenant_

himself, and only secondarily to any god.

The next name to be considered, ἀλάστωρ, is commonly accounted a

synonym of μιάστωρ, denoting in actual usage a ‘god of vengeance,’

and meaning literally ‘one who does not forget’ blood-guiltiness. I

too hold it to be a synonym of _Miastor_, but to denote therefore

primarily not a god but a human _revenant_ seeking vengeance, and only

afterwards, by a transference of usage, a god or living man acting in

the name of the dead; while, as for the supposed derivation, I count it

absolutely untenable.

And first as regards the application of the word; after what has

been, I hope, a fairly exhaustive study of the passages of classical

literature in which it occurs, I am bound to confess that, though the

instances of its use are far more numerous than those of _Miastor_,

I am still unable to select three passages and to say ‘Here are my

proofs of the triple application of the word.’ Indeed all that I can

prove by the evidence of any single passage taken alone is curiously

enough the existence of what I take to have been the rarest of the

three usages--the application of the name _Alastor_ to the kinsman of

the dead man, as being the agent of his vengeance. Just as Sophocles

speaks of Orestes being preserved as a _Miastor_ to take vengeance

on Clytemnestra for his father’s death, so does Aeschylus make the

same Orestes name himself an _Alastor_ on the score of the vengeance

which he has taken. ‘Queen Athene,’ he prays, ‘at Loxias’ bidding am

I come; receive thou me graciously, avenger as I am, no murderer,

nor of defiled hand ... ἀλάστορα, οὐ προστρόπαιον, οὐδ’ ἀφοίβαντον

χέρα[1178].’ Such, I am convinced, is the right rendering of the

passage. The lexicons indeed cite the line as an example of the alleged

passive meaning of ἀλάστωρ--one who suffers from divine vengeance, an

accursed wretch[1179]; and I acknowledge that such a meaning would

make passable sense of the passage; for Orestes was indeed suffering

from the vengeance of the Erinyes. But I hold, and I shall endeavour

to prove later, that ἀλάστωρ never possessed a passive meaning, and I

claim moreover that the active meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which I attribute

to the word here as elsewhere, is immensely preferable in itself. For

Orestes throughout pleads justification[1180]; he has avenged murder,

not committed it; he has discharged a duty to his dead sire, not

perpetrated a wanton crime against his mother; he slew her indeed,

but his motive was pious, and the ordaining of his act divine. On the

grounds therefore, first, of the word’s own active meaning, secondly,

of the whole trend of Orestes’ defence of his conduct, and last, but by

no means least, of the exact parallel furnished by Sophocles’ use of

the word _Miastor_, I am confident that _Alastor_ as applied by Orestes

to himself means an ‘Avenger.’

That the word however was not primarily applied to the kinsman acting

on behalf of the murdered man will be universally conceded; in the

vast majority of passages some supernatural being is clearly intended.

But it has been too hastily assumed that the supernatural avengers

were always gods or demons; that they were often so conceived I do not

doubt; but, as a matter of fact, I have discovered no single passage of

classical literature which can be said finally and absolutely in itself

to demand that interpretation. In many instances the probabilities are

in favour of the _Alastores_ being regarded as a class of avenging

demons; in many others it is equally good or even better to suppose

that they are the dead men themselves in person.

What then are the foundations upon which the received notion, that

the _Alastores_ were always gods, is based? It might perhaps be urged

that the word _Alastor_ found a place among the many epithets and

titles conferred by worshippers upon Zeus[1181] in order to indicate

the particular exercise of his all-reaching power which their hearts

desired. It might also be urged that Clement of Alexandria names

the _Alastores_ among those classes of gods whom the pagan Greeks

had evolved from the naughtiness of their own imagination as types

and personifications of the baser human passions[1182]. But neither

of these facts can serve to substantiate the contention that the

_Alastores_ were primarily and necessarily gods. The occasional use

of a word as an epithet of Zeus cannot be held to prove the general

appropriation of that word to a class of lesser gods; while the

statement of Clement is the statement of a man designedly vilifying the

whole Greek religion, neither appreciating nor desirous to appreciate

its refinements, but willing rather to overwhelm it utterly, its better

and its worse elements alike, with the torrent of his invective and

reprobation. To him the _Alastores_ appeared as supernatural beings

instinct with the pagan passion of revenge, false gods therefore

or devils, fit objects whereon to pour out the vials of righteous

wrath and Christian scorn. He was not concerned to be wholly just or

wholly accurate. Indeed the very sources from which he drew the idea

that the _Alastores_ were gods are still open to us; it is the Greek

Tragedians whom he holds guilty of this naughty invention; it is the

Greek Tragedians who remain for us the fountain-head of information

concerning these Avengers, and who will on examination make it clear

that they were not primarily or necessarily gods.

The single passage in Greek Tragedy which has been often regarded

as evidence in favour of Clement’s classification of _Alastores_

among gods is on fuller enquiry rather a refutation of that view. In

the _Persae_ of Aeschylus the messenger, who reports to the queen

the disaster which has befallen the Persian fleet, sets it down to

supernatural agency:

ἦρξεν μὲν ὦ δέσποινα, τοῦ παντὸς κακοῦ

φανεὶς ἀλάστωρ ἢ κακὸς δαίμων ποθέν[1183].

This has generally been taken to mean that the beginning of the

disaster was due to the sudden appearance of ‘some vengeful or

malicious deity.’ But elsewhere in Tragedy ἀλάστωρ is treated not as

adjective but as substantive; and, since there is no compulsion to

suppose other than the ordinary use of the word here, it appears better

to translate the phrase ‘some Avenger or some malicious god.’ In other

words the real, if unemphatic, contrast implied in the phrase is not

between ἀλάστωρ and κακός--no contrast is possible there[1184]--but

between ἀλάστωρ and δαίμων. The inference therefore is rather that the

_Alastor_ in this passage was not conceived as a deity.

There are other passages of Greek Tragedy also in which the balance

of probability seems to me to incline towards interpreting the name

_Alastor_ in the sense of a _revenant_ and not of a god. Two such occur

in the _Medea_ of Euripides--the same play, be it noted, which contains

that perfectly plain statement that the dead children of Medea are

themselves the _Miastores_ who will punish her. The first is in the

scene in which Medea works herself up to the perpetration of her crime.

Passionate love of her children, passionate jealousy and fury against

their father, alternate in tragic turmoil, until the tense agony of

spirit is let loose in that fierce oath,

‘No, by the Avengers that lurk deep in hell,

Ne’er shall it come to pass that I should leave

My children to mine enemies’ despite.

Most surely they must die; and since they must,

’Twas my womb bare them, ’tis my hand shall slay[1185].’

Strong and terrible would be the oath even if the _Alastores_,

whose wrath Medea thus defies, were gods or spirits; but the force

and the horror are doubled, if the _Alastores_ here are of the same

order as those whom Jason names _Miastores_ but a little later in the

same drama, and if therefore among those Avengers, in whose name the

murderous oath was sworn, were soon to be numbered those very children

whom Medea loved best and yet bound herself to slay most foully.

The second passage occurs in Jason’s outburst of fury against Medea

when he first learns her crime. ‘’Tis thine Avenger whom the gods have

let light on me; for truly thou didst slay thine own brother at his

own hearth, or ever thou didst set foot in Argo’s shapely hull[1186].’

Surely we are meant to understand that the dead Absyrtus is himself

the _Alastor_--for one _Alastor_ only is named this time, and that

too as distinct from the gods (θεοί)--and that Jason diverted to

himself a portion of the dead man’s wrath by wedding the blood-guilty

woman. Again then the interpretation of _Alastor_ in the same sense in

which, only a little later in the same scene, _Miastor_ is undoubtedly

employed is, if not necessary, yet vastly preferable.

To review here all the passages of Greek Tragedy in which the word may

advantageously be so understood, when at the same time no single one of

them constitutes a final proof of my view, would be to encumber this

enquiry to no purpose; but I may perhaps be permitted to select one

instance from a story of blood-guilt other than that of which Medea is

the centre.

This shall be from that scene in the _Hercules Furens_ in which the

hero, sane now and overwhelmed with horror at the ghastly slaughter of

his own children which in a moment of sudden madness he had wrought,

receives from Theseus some measure of consolation and advice. Early in

that colloquy, ere yet Theseus has had time to soothe the sufferings or

to guide the course of his stricken friend, Heracles cries to him in

bitterness of soul,

Theseus, hast view’d my triumph o’er my children?

and Theseus answers with gentle simplicity,

I heard, and now I see the woes thou showst me.

And then follow the lines:

ΗΡ. τί δῆτά μου κρᾶτ’ ἀνεκάλυψας ἡλίῳ;

ΘΗ. τί δ’ οὐ; μιαίνεις θνητὸς ὢν τὰ τῶν θεῶν;

ΗΡ. φεῦγ’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀνόσιον μίασμ’ ἐμόν.

ΘΗ. οὐδεὶς ἀλάστωρ τοῖς φίλοις ἐκ τῶν φίλων[1187].

_Her._ Why then hast bared my head before the Sun?

_Thes._ Nay, wherefore not? canst thou--mere man--taint godhead?

_Her._ Yet flee thyself, risk not my taint of blood-guilt.

_Thes._ Where love joins, bloodshed to no vengeance moves.

It is the connexion and significance of the last two lines which I

wish briefly to discuss. Theseus has used the word ‘taint’ (μιαίνεις),

and Heracles at once seizes on it, emphasizes it, and warns his friend

to begone lest he be contaminated; and then Theseus answers (to give

a literal rendering) ‘No Avenger of blood proceeds from them that

love against them that love.’ What does this mean? The line is often

translated as if Theseus meant, ‘No, I will stay, for though an Avenger

of blood may probably pursue you, Heracles, I have no fear that he will

touch me who love you as a friend[1188].’ A generous and sympathetic

utterance indeed! And how consistent with that fine burst of feeling

with which he had but a moment before refused to be warned away:

‘Why warn’st thou me of blood with hand uplift?

In fear lest I be tainted by thy speech?

Nought reck I of ill fortune at thy side

Where once ’twas good; that hour must draw my heart

When thou didst bring me safe from death to light;

Nay, I hate friends whose gratitude grows old,

I hate the man that will enjoy good hap

But will not face foul weather with his friend[1189].’

Is this the man whose words, spoken but a moment later, shall be

interpreted to mean, ‘I will not run away, because the danger that

threatens my friend cannot hurt me’? The thought is deeper, more

generous, than that. Theseus is thinking not of himself, but of his

friend. It is the word ‘pollution,’ used first by himself and caught

up by Heracles, which arrests his attention. Was his friend ‘polluted’

by a deed of blood, wrought in madness, expiated in tears? Polluted?

Yes, in the sense that religious purification was required[1190]. He

cannot deny the pollution. But could the deed also be punished as the

murder of close kinsfolk was wont to be punished? Could the children,

albeit slain by their own father’s hand, desire revenge upon him who

loved them and was loved of them? ‘No,’ he answers boldly, ‘pollution

(μίασμα) there is, but no _Alastor_, no Avenger of blood, can come from

them that love against them that love.’ How then does Theseus picture

the _Alastor_ who, but for the bond of love between the father and his

dead children, would seek vengeance for their death? The phrase which

he uses is ambiguous--perhaps deliberately ambiguous--οὐδεὶς ... ἐκ

τῶν φίλων. It may mean equally well ‘no one of those who love’ or ‘no

one coming from those who love.’ But when the close correspondence of

μίασμα, ‘pollution,’ and ἀλάστωρ ‘avenger,’ is noted in this passage,

and when it is also remembered that the dead children of Medea are

elsewhere plainly named _Miastores_, it is hard to suppose that an

audience familiar with the belief that the dead themselves avenged

their own wrongs would not have interpreted the ambiguous phrase

to mean ‘none of these children shall rise up from the grave as an

_Alastor_, for love is stronger than vengeance.’

But such doubt as still remains is set at rest when we turn from the

usage of the word _Alastor_ to its origin and enquire how it obtained

the sense of ‘Avenger.’ What is its derivation?

Two conjectures seem to have been made by the ancients and are recorded

by early commentators and lexicographers[1191]. The one connects the

word with the root of λανθάνω, ‘I escape notice,’ and extracts a

meaning in a variety of ways, leaving it open to choice, for example,

whether it shall mean a god whose notice nothing escapes or a man

who commits acts which cannot escape some god’s notice. The other

conjecture refers the word to the root of ἀλάομαι, ‘I wander.’ It is

between these two proposed derivations that our choice lies; nor can we

obtain much help from the greatest modern authorities. Curtius[1192]

unhesitatingly adopts the latter, Brugmann[1193] the former, nor does

either of them so much as mention the possibility of the alternative.

I must therefore discuss the question without reference to these

authorities, knowing that, if I run counter to the one, I have the

countenance of the other.

Is then ἀλάστωρ, in the sense of a ‘non-forgetter,’ a possible

formation from the root of λανθάνω? My own answer to that question

is a decided negative, and my reasons are as follows. Substantives

denoting the agent and formed with the suffix -τωρ (-τορ-) can only be

so formed direct from a verb-stem, as ῥήτωρ from ϝρε or ϝερ appearing

in ἐρῶ etc., μήστωρ from the stem of μήδομαι, ἀφήτωρ answering to the

verb ἀφίημι, ἐπιβήτωρ to ἐπιβαίνω. It is among these and other such

examples that Brugmann places the anomalous ἀλάστωρ, to be connected

with ἄλαστος, λήθω. But evidently, in order that ἀλάστωρ may be

parallel, let us say, to ἀφήτωρ, we must postulate the existence of

an impossible verb ἀ-λήθω or ἀ-λανθάνομαι, ‘I non-forget.’ Nor would

it mend matters to suppose, first, the formation, direct from λήθω,

of a _nomen agentis_ of the form λάστωρ, a ‘forgetter’; for the

privative ἀ- appears only in adjectives and adverbs and in such verbs

and substantives as are formed directly from them, as ἀμνημονεῖν from

ἀμνήμων etc., and cannot be prefixed at pleasure to a substantive

or verb not so formed; ἀλάστωρ could no more be formed from an

hypothetical substantive λάστωρ[1194], than could an hypothetical

verb ἀ-λανθάνεσθαι be formed from λανθάνεσθαι. Etymologically then

the derivation of ἀλάστωρ from ἀ- privative and the root of λήθω is

impossible, and its sense of ‘Avenger’ was not developed from the

meaning ‘one who does not forget.’

On the other hand, to the connexion of ἀλάστωρ with the verb ἀλᾶσθαι,

‘to wander,’ no exception can be taken. Not only is the formation

simple, but an exact parallel is forthcoming. As the substantive

μιάστωρ stands to the verb μιαίνω, so does the substantive ἀλάστωρ

stand to a by-form of ἀλάομαι, which is fairly frequent in Tragedy,

ἀλαίνω[1195]. It follows then that ἀλάστωρ meant originally a

‘wanderer.’

But, when once that primary meaning is discovered, there can be no

further doubt as to the primary application of the term. Of the three

possible exactors of vengeance--the _revenant_ himself, some demonic

agent, and the nearest kinsman--the first alone could be aptly

described as a ‘wanderer’; moreover we know that the murdered man was

actually so conceived, and that, among the punishments by which he

sought to make his murderer suffer the same lot as he himself endured,

one of the most conspicuous was the punishment of wandering and exile.

The name _Alastor_ therefore, like _Miastor_, denoted first of all the

dead man himself, and was only secondarily extended to human or divine

agents seeking vengeance on his behalf.

It remains only to enquire how the meaning ‘Avenger’ was evolved from

the meaning ‘Wanderer,’ and so completely superseded it that the name

_Alastores_ was extended to those agents who were in no obvious sense

‘Wanderers’ but simply ‘Avengers.’

The first occurrence of the word is in the _Iliad_, as the proper name

of a Greek warrior[1196]. This fact tends to show that the word had as

yet acquired none of that ill-omened sense which it undoubtedly bears

in Greek Tragedy. It was used rather, we may believe, in its original

and literal sense of ‘wanderer,’ and the adoption of such a word as

a proper name is entirely consistent with the principles of Homeric

nomenclature. Hector, Nestor, Mēstor, are famous names of the same

class.

Otherwise than as a proper name the word is not used in Homer, nor

does it occur at all again, so far as I am aware, before the time

of Aeschylus. It is during this interval then that the evolution of

meaning must have taken place; for by the age of Aeschylus the idea of

vengeance--and vengeance of a horrible kind--had become the ordinary

signification of the word. My view then is that the intervening

centuries had witnessed a gradual differentiation of the several words

which alike originally meant a ‘wanderer,’ a differentiation such that

ἀλήτης remained the ordinary and general term, while ἀλάστωρ was little

by little restricted to the wanderer from the dead, the _revenant_; and

that subsequently from meaning a _revenant_ of any and every kind it

became limited to that single class of _revenants_ whose wanderings

were guided by the desire for revenge--the class to whom the name

_Miastores_ had always belonged.

Some evidence for the first stage in this development of meaning is

furnished by the Tragic usage of the verb from which the substantive

is derived; for in both its forms, ἀλᾶσθαι and ἀλαίνειν, it continued

to be applied to any of the restless dead, when the substantive

ἀλάστωρ, as I conceive, had come to be appropriated to the Avenger

only. Indeed it might almost be thought that both Aeschylus and

Euripides had an inkling of the derivation and earlier meaning of the

substantive; for while idiom debarred them from using ἀλάστωρ in the

large sense of any _revenant_, they certainly used the corresponding

verb in contexts which suggest that those who thus ‘wander’ were not

imagined by them as vague impalpable ghosts, but possessed for them

rather the real substance and physical traits of a _revenant_. Thus in

the _Eumenides_, though Clytemnestra could not be permitted to play

the part of a _revenant_ and appears only as a ghost, yet the more

gross and popular conception of her is clearly present to the poet’s

mind. Though a ghost, she points to the wounds which her son’s hands

inflicted[1197]; though a ghost, she is made to exhort the Erinyes to

vengeance ‘on behalf of her very soul’ (τῆς ἐμῆς πέρι ψυχῆς)[1198].

Strange gestures and strange language indeed, if the so-called ghost

had been conceived as a mere disembodied soul! But the popular

conception of the _revenant_ penetrated even here. And was it not the

same conception which suggested the phrase αἰσχρῶς ἀλῶμαι, ‘I wander

in dishonour[1199]’? In the popular belief, as we know, the murderer

was bound to wander after death, suffering as he had wrought; and it

is as a murderess[1200] that Clytemnestra avows herself condemned

to shameful wanderings. ‘To wander,’ ἀλᾶσθαι, sums up the suffering

which the murderer, like his victim, must incur after death. It is

likely then that the name ἀλάστωρ too was originally applied to any

‘wanderer’--whether murderer or murdered--before it acquired the

connotation of vindictiveness and so became appropriated to the latter

only.

Again Euripides uses the same verb of one whose body has not received

burial. This time there is no connexion with blood-guilt at all, but

the lines are simply the plaint of captive wife for husband slain in

battle: ‘oh beloved, oh husband mine, dead art thou and wanderest

unburied, unwatered with tears’--σὺ μὲν φθίμενος ἀλαίνεις, ἄθαπτος,

ἄνυδρος[1201]. ‘To wander unburied’--could there be a simpler

description of a _revenant_? Does not the whole misery of the unburied

dead consist in this--that they must wander? It is almost inconceivable

then that the name _Alastor_, ‘wanderer,’ should have been originally

applied only to a single class of the wandering dead--to those whose

wanderings were directed towards vengeance, and not also to those whose

wanderings were more aimless, more pitiable, whose whole existence

might have been summed up in that one word ‘wandering.’ At some time

then between the age of Homer and that of Aeschylus _Alastor_, I hold,

meant simply _revenant_.

How then shall we explain that caprice of language which, according

to this Tragic usage, permitted all the unhappy dead to be said

‘to wander’ (ἀλᾶσθαι, ἀλαίνειν), but apparently forbade them to be

collectively named ‘wanderers’ (ἀλάστορες)? How did _Alastor_ acquire

its sense of ‘Avenger’ and become restricted to one class of _revenant_

only?

It might be sufficient answer to point out that those _revenants_

who were bent on avenging their own wrongs are likely always to have

occupied a prominent place in popular superstition simply because

they inspired most terror in the popular mind; other _revenants_ were

harmless, and, as harmless, liable to be little regarded and seldom

named; and the most conspicuous class might thus have appropriated to

itself the name which properly belonged to all. But there is another

influence which, if it did not cause, may at least have facilitated and

quickened the change--the influence of the word ἄλαστος, ‘unforgotten,’

which, as I have noted above, was commonly and naturally, in an age

when etymology was not science but guess-work, connected with ἀλάστωρ.

Etymologically the two words have nothing in common; but that is no

obstacle to the supposition that, in their usage, their casual but

close similarity of form rendered the meaning of the one susceptible

to the influence of the other. Nay more, the fact that the two words,

it matters not how erroneously, were actually in early times referred

to a common origin[1202] warrants the suggestion that such influence

had been exercised. Now ἄλαστος always remained in meaning true to

its derivation. Itself employed in the passive sense, ‘unforgotten,’

it seems to have made over the active meaning, ‘unforgetting,’

‘vindictive’ (which, on the analogy of ἄπρακτος and a score of similar

forms, it should naturally have possessed), to the apparently kindred

word ἀλάστωρ. This adventitious meaning accorded well with the popular

conception of the most conspicuous class of ‘wanderers’ from the

grave--those whose wanderings had a vindictive aim; and thus, by the

help of the accidental resemblance of two words, it seems to have

come to pass that the term _Alastores_ ceased to be applicable to all

kinds of _revenants_ and denoted only the ‘Avengers.’ At this point

it became in fact synonymous with _Miastores_, and, like that word,

enlarged its scope so as to denote not only the prime Avenger, the

_revenant_ himself, but also any divine or human agents employed by him

as subsidiary Avengers.

So much then for the first meaning which the lexicons attach to the

words _Alastor_ and _Miastor_; the second interpretation of them, in

relation to a blood-guilty man, may be more briefly treated. _Alastor_

in this passive sense is alleged to mean a man who suffers from the

vengeance of one who is an _Alastor_ in the active sense; and _Miastor_

to mean a man who is himself polluted and therefore pollutes those with

whom he associates.

As regards _Alastor_, this explanation stands already condemned by

the fact that it pre-supposes the derivation from λανθάνομαι, and

even then it does fresh and incredible violence to language; a sane

philologist may commit the error of deriving ἀλάστωρ from λανθάνομαι

and making it mean ‘one who does not forget’; but only the maddest

could dream of interpreting it as ‘one who does deeds which others

do not forget.’ But, if in spite of this we trouble to turn up the

references which the lexicons give under this heading, it is obvious

at once that there is no more support for such a meaning in idiomatic

usage than in etymological origin. Three references are cited. The

first is to that passage of the _Eumenides_ in which Orestes declares

himself ἀλάστορα, οὐ προστρόπαιον[1203], a phrase which means, as I

have already shown, ‘an avenger, not a murderer.’ This then should

be classified as an example of the active, not of the hypothetical

passive, meaning of _Alastor_. Of the other two passages, one is from

the _Ajax_ of Sophocles, where the hero in his anger and despair

speaks of the guileful enemies who robbed him of his prize as

_Alastores_[1204], and the other a passage from Demosthenes in which

he criticizes Aeschines for applying the word as an opprobrious name

to Philip of Macedon[1205]. But in what possible sense could either

Ajax’ enemies or Philip of Macedon be described as ‘suffering from

Avengers’? On the contrary, at the times when the word _Alastor_ was

applied to them, their success should surely have suggested that they

were favoured by heaven, and their opponents rather were the sufferers.

What then was the meaning of the word thus opprobriously employed?

A meaning, I answer, very little removed from that of ‘Avenger’ and

arising out of it. For how was the Avenger--be he the _revenant_

himself or a demon acting on his behalf--constantly pictured? Was it

not as a fiend tormenting with every torment the object of his wrath,

plaguing him, maddening him, sucking his very blood? Little wonder

then if the justice of that vengeance was sometimes obscured in men’s

minds by their horror of it, and if the word _Alastor_ suggested to

them a fiend, a merciless tormentor. In that sense Ajax might well

apply the name to his enemies, and Aeschines to Philip. Nor are other

instances of it lacking. Demosthenes himself, for all his criticism of

Aeschines’ vulgarity in calling Philip βάρβαρόν τε καὶ ἀλάστορα, ‘a

foreign devil,’ used the same word of Aeschines and his friends[1206];

again, in Sophocles, the lion of Nemea for the loss and havoc that he

inflicted is unique among beasts that perish in having merited the same

sorry title--βουκόλων ἀλάστωρ, the ‘herdsmen’s Tormentor[1207]’; and

indeed, apart from living men and animals, there are many instances in

Tragedy[1208] in which the word _Alastor_, applied to some supernatural

foe, _revenant_ or demon, may be more appropriately rendered by ‘fiend’

or ‘tormentor’ than by ‘avenger.’

And the same thing is true, I hold, of the word _Miastor_. The

theory of the lexicons, namely, that the word denotes a polluted

and blood-guilty man because such an one is inevitably a ‘polluter’

of others, is certainly not intrinsically bad; for it recognises the

primary meaning of the word, ‘polluter,’ and bases the secondary

meaning ‘polluted’ upon a right understanding of the old belief that

pollution was contagious. But at the same time it gives some occasion

to wonder why the word should have been diverted from its most natural

meaning in order to denote that which the cognate word μιαρός already

expressed more simply. Moreover, when examination is made of those

passages which are claimed as examples of such an usage, the theory

becomes wholly unnecessary. The two most specious examples are two

passages from Aeschylus[1209] and Euripides[1210], in both of which

the persons called _Miastores_ are Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Now the

authors of Agamemnon’s death were certainly polluted, and might with

justice have been called μιαροί--that is admitted. But because they

might have been called μιαροί and actually are called μιάστορες, it

does not follow that, though the words have the same root, they also

bear the same meaning. Obviously the word ‘fiends,’ if μιάστορες ever

has that sense, would be an equally apt description of the murderous

pair. The choice therefore between these two renderings here must be

guided by more certain examples of usage elsewhere.

Two may be selected as eminently clear. In one Orestes calls Helen τὴν

Ἑλλάδος μιάστορα[1211], where the word cannot mean a ‘polluted wretch,’

for the construction postulates an active meaning in _Miastor_; nor

yet can the phrase be intelligibly rendered ‘the polluter of Greece,’

for there was no pollution involved in the warfare which Helen had

caused; clearly Orestes means ‘the tormentor of Greece,’ the fiend who

had proved the bane of ships and men and cities. In the other passage

Peleus applies the word to Menelaus: ‘I look upon thee,’ he says,

‘as on the murderer--the fiend-like destroyer (μιάστορ’ ὥς τινα)--of

Achilles[1212].’ Here again _Miastor_ clearly bears an active sense,

and at the same time cannot be rendered ‘polluter.’ Menelaus had

brought upon Achilles not pollution but death, and the word _Miastor_

explains the word ‘murderer’ (αὐθέντην) which precedes it--explains

that the murder laid to Menelaus’ charge was not the open violence of

a stronger foe, but resembled the death-dealing of some lurking fiend.

In these two passages then the interpretation of _Miastor_ in the sense

of ‘fiend,’ ‘tormentor,’ ‘destroyer,’ is necessary and proven; and,

this being known, common reason bids us read more ambiguous scriptures

in the light thus obtained. There is therefore no call to suppose

that μιάστωρ ever meant ‘polluted’; from the active meaning ‘Avenger’

it developed, like _Alastor_, the broader sense of ‘Tormentor’ or

‘Fiendish Destroyer’; and these meanings completely satisfy the

conditions of Tragic and other usage of the words.

There remains the word προστρόπαιος, to which the lexicons, I admit,

rightly ascribe a twofold meaning. It is clearly used both of the

Avenger of blood and also of the blood-guilty person who is seeking

purification. But as regards both the means by which the first

signification was obtained, and the primary application of the word

in that signification, I join issue. The second meaning is more

satisfactorily explained, and my criticism of it will not go beyond an

alternative suggestion.

The lexicons elucidate the first meaning as follows: _he to whom one

turns_, especially with supplications, θεός or δαίμων προστρόπαιος

the god _to whom the murdered person turns_ for vengeance, hence _an

avenger_, like ἀλάστωρ ... hence also of the _manes_ of murdered

persons, _visiting with vengeance, implacable_.

The objections to this explanation are obvious. It may well be

questioned whether προστρόπαιος is at all likely to have had any

passive meaning--as it were a person who ‘is turned to’--when the

verb προστρέπω itself was, so far as I can ascertain, never so used;

and further, if a god had really been called προστρόπαιος because the

murdered man turned for vengeance to him, the extension of the term to

the _manes_ of murdered persons must imply a conception of the murdered

man turning for vengeance towards--himself. This is not a little

cumbrous; and for my part I deny the existence of any passive sense of

προστρόπαιος.

I do however find two senses of the word, the one active, corresponding

to the transitive use of the verb προστρέπειν or προστρέπεσθαι (for the

middle as well as the active voice might be used transitively, as will

shortly appear), the other middle, corresponding to the ordinary usage

of the middle προστρέπεσθαι. Thus the active meaning of προστρόπαιος

will be _turning_ something _towards_ or _against_ someone; the middle

meaning, _turning oneself towards_ someone.

The active usage is best illustrated by a passage of Aeschines, in

which he accuses Demosthenes of wilful perjury in calumniating him, and

then appeals to the jury in these words--ἐάσετε οὖν τὸν τοιοῦτον αὑτοῦ

προστρόπαιον (μὴ γὰρ δὴ τῆς πόλεως) ἐν ὑμῖν ἀναστρέφεσθαι[1213]; ‘Will

you then allow this perjurer, who has turned upon his own head (for I

pray that it be not on the city) the anger of the gods in whose name he

swore, to continue in your midst?’ Here the very brevity of the Greek,

which I am compelled to expand in translation, proves that Aeschines’

audience were perfectly familiar with an active meaning of προστρόπαιος

with an evil connotation, ‘turning some misfortune or punishment or

vengeance upon someone.’

The middle sense of προστρόπαιος is equally clearly exhibited by

Aeschylus, who in telling the story of Thyestes says that after

his banishment by his brother Atreus he came again προστρόπαιος

ἑστίας[1214], ‘turning himself (as a suppliant) towards the hearth’

of his father’s home, so that his own life at least was spared out of

respect for the place.

Thus the two meanings of the word are established, and it remains only

to show how they were specially used in connexion with blood-guilt.

In the active sense προστρόπαιος was primarily applied, I hold, like

_Miastor_ and _Alastor_, to the murdered man himself, who ‘turned’

his wrath ‘against’ the murderer, or, if it so happened, against the

next of kin who had failed in his duty of bringing the murderer to

justice. It is precisely thus that Plato uses the verb προστρέπεσθαι

in recording the old tradition in which he apparently reposed so much

faith as to base his own laws upon it. ‘If the nearest of kin,’ so

runs the passage, ‘do not seek vengeance for the deed, it is held

that the pollution devolves upon him, and that _the sufferer_ (i.e.

the dead man) _turns upon him the suffering_ (i.e. that which the

homicide himself should have incurred), and anyone who will may bring

a suit against him, etc.[1215]’ The words which I have italicised are

in the Greek τοῦ παθόντος προστρεπομένου τὴν πάθην, where the middle

presumably was preferred to the active because the sufferings which

the dead man inflicts are, as we already know and as the language of

the particular phrase itself suggests, exactly those which he himself

suffers. This usage of the verb, though it is distinctly rare and

probably a technicality of religion or law, is so perfectly clear

in this one example[1216], that there should be no hesitation about

understanding the cognate word προστρόπαιος in the same sense. And

indeed one lexicographer, Photius, shows that he did so understand

it; for he tells us that Zeus was sometimes invoked under this title,

as turning against murderers the pollution (including perhaps the

punishments) of their crime: Ζεὺς ... προστρόπαιος, ὁ προστρέπων τὸ

ἄγος αὐτοῖς (sc. τοῖς παλαμναίοις)[1217]--such are his actual words,

and this time of course the verb is rightly in the active, for Zeus

is in no way personally concerned but acts only in the interests of

the dead man. Clearly then it was in virtue of this active meaning

that προστρόπαιος came to be practically a synonym of _Miastor_ and

_Alastor_ in the sense of an Avenger of blood.

Once more then we return to the same question which has been propounded

and answered with regard to those two other names--to whom was the term

προστρόπαιος primarily applied?

I find the application of it more restricted than that of the other two

words. It was used of the dead man himself, and it was used of demons

avenging his cause; but it was never used[1218] of the next of kin in

the character of avenger--and that for the very good reason that when

the word was applied to a living man it bore an entirely different

meaning, which has yet to be discussed, the meaning of ‘blood-guilty.’

A few examples of each usage must be given. Both Antiphon and Aeschylus

apply the word to murdered men; Antiphon, in a speech in which the

kinsman, who has, as in duty bound, undertaken the prosecution of the

murderer, claims that, if the jury wrongfully acquit, the dead man

will not become προστρόπαιος, an Avenger, against his kinsmen who have

done their best in his service, but will visit his anger on the jury

for condoning and thereby sharing the blood-guilt[1219]; Aeschylus,

in that list of penalties which has been discussed, when he depicts

the ‘madness and vain terror,’ which will befall Orestes if he fail in

his task, as an arrow that flieth in darkness sped by powers of hell

‘at the behest of fallen kindred that turn their vengeance upon him’

(ἐκ προστροπαίων ἐν γένει πεπτωκότων[1220]). But equally clearly in

other passages the Avenger indicated is not the murdered man, but some

divine being. Antiphon again is an authority for this usage. Twice,

in a context similar to that which has just been noticed, he speaks

not of the murdered man himself becoming an Avenger, but of certain

divine powers--whom he also calls ἀλιτήριοι, the powers that deal with

sin--acting as Avengers (προστρόπαιοι) of the dead[1221]. And similarly

in later time Pausanias also speaks of ‘the pollution (μίασμα) incurred

by Pelops and of the Avenger (προστρόπαιος) of Myrtilus[1222].’

Since then there is no question but that the word προστρόπαιος was

actually applied both to dead men and to gods, to which of the two did

it refer primarily? We already know the answer. The dead man himself,

as a _revenant_, was the prime and proper Avenger of his own wrongs;

demons of vengeance acted only in his name, as his subordinates and

agents. To him therefore the name primarily belonged. And even if

we had not already learnt this from other sources, the passage of

Aeschylus, to which I have just referred, might well guide us to the

same conclusion. The arrow that flieth in darkness is sped indeed, he

says, ‘by powers of hell’ (τῶν ἐνερτέρων)--the demonic agents of the

dead--but ‘at the behest of fallen kindred.’ The activity both of the

principal and of the agent is recognised in the same passage, and

either might have been called προστρόπαιος: but, because the activity

of both was plainly asserted, Aeschylus reserved the name for the one

to whom it primarily belonged, the murdered man, who turns his wrath,

who turns indeed those powers of hell who execute his wrath, against

his enemies.

There now remains for consideration only the second meaning of

προστρόπαιος; how could a word, which in reference to dead men or to

deities meant ‘an Avenger of blood,’ bear, in relation to living men,

the sense of ‘blood-guilty’? Very likely the dictionaries are right

in accepting the explanation of this use which Hesychius[1223] and

others give. We have seen one case[1224] in which the word clearly

has a middle sense ‘turning oneself towards’ a place or a person in

supplication; and there is no difficulty in supposing that the word was

used technically in the same sense of a blood-guilty man who turned

to some god or to some sanctuary in quest of purification. This, I

say, is very probably the right explanation. But I may perhaps offer

an alternative explanation which I do not count preferable but merely

possible. The active meaning of προστρόπαιος, ‘turning something upon

someone,’ might conceivably have produced this sense of ‘blood-guilty’

as well as the other sense ‘an Avenger of blood.’ As the dead man was

held to turn something, namely his wrath, against his enemy, so might

the murderer have been pictured as trying to turn something, namely the

pollution which he had incurred, upon some object and so to cleanse

himself therefrom. Now the chief feature in the Delphic ceremony of

purification was the slaying of a sucking-pig[1225]. This may of course

have been merely a propitiatory sacrifice; but it is possible also that

the animal was really a surrogate victim for the murderer himself,

that by laying his polluted hand on its head he transferred the

religious uncleanness from himself to it, and that, by the subsequent

slaughter of the now blood-guilty animal, he vicariously satisfied the

old law that blood could only be washed out by blood. This is only a

conjecture, and I leave others to judge of its probability; but, if the

ceremony had followed the lines which I have suggested, it is easily

intelligible that, in the technical language of religion, the murderer

who sought to turn his own pollution upon the victim might have been

called προστρόπαιος.

Thus then the problem of the ancient nomenclature of _revenants_

is solved, and the results are briefly these: all _revenants_ were

originally called ἀλάστορες, ‘Wanderers’; but subsequently that name

was restricted only to the vengeful class of _revenants_, to which the

names μιάστορες and προστρόπαιοι had always belonged; and for the more

harmless and purely pitiable _revenants_ no name remained, but men said

of such an one simply, ‘He wanders.’

FOOTNOTES:

[959] Heard by me from a fisherman of Myconos.

[960] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. pp. 573 and 593.

[961] The list of dialectic forms compiled by Bern. Schmidt (_das

Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 158) comprises, besides that which

I have adopted as in my experience the most general, the following:

βουρκόλακας, βρουκόλακας, βουρκούλακας, βουλκόλακας, βουθρόλακας,

βουρδόλακας, βορβόλακας. To these may be added βαρβάλακας from Syme

(Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 601), βουρδούλακας, from Cythnos (Βάλληνδας,

Κυθνιακά, p. 125), and an occasional diminutive form such as βρυκολάκι.

The κ is often doubled in spelling.

[962] A plural in -οι, -ους, with accent either paroxytone or

proparoxytone, also occurs.

[963] _De quorumdam Graecorum opinationibus_, cap. 12 sqq.

[964] ὁποῦ τὸν ἐγνώριζε προτίτερα, leg. ἐγνώριζαν.

[965] For these memorial services (μνημόσυνα) and the appropriate

funeral-meats (κόλλυβα) see below, pp. 534 ff.

[966] The reference given by Allatius is to _Turco-Grecia_, Bk 8, but I

cannot find the passage.

[967] With this description compare a phrase used in a recent

Athenian account of a _vrykolakas_, σὰν τουλοῦμι, ‘like a (distended)

wine-skin,’ Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. 575.

[968] See p. 339.

[969] _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable a Sant-Erini

Isle de l’Archipel, depuis l’établissement des Peres de la compagnie de

Jesus en icelle_ (Paris, MDCLVII.), cap. XV. pp. 208-226.

[970] In many places at the present day it is believed that

_vrykolakes_ (and sometimes other supernatural beings) cannot cross

salt water. Hence to bury (not burn) the corpse in an island is often

held sufficient.

[971] Some modern authorities state that Turks are believed to be

more subject to become _vrykolakes_ than Christians. Schmidt (_Das

Volksleben_, p. 162) appears to me to overstate this point of view,

which I should judge to be rarer and more local than its contrary. Even

where found, it is unimportant, being a mere invention of priestcraft

for purposes of intimidation. See below, pp. 400 and 409.

[972] Evidently a local form of τουμπί (= τύμπανον, cf. Du Cange, _Med.

et infim. Graec._, s.v. τυμπανίτης), with metathesis of the nasal. Cf.

the word τυμπανιαῖος above.

[973] To this phrase I return later.

[974] leg. ἄσπρος.

[975] _Histoire nouvelle des anciens ducs et autres souverains de

l’Archipel_, pp. 255-6 (Paris, 1699).

[976] _Voyage du Levant_, I. pp. 158 ff. (Lyon, 1717). Cf. also

Salonis, _Voyage à Tine_ (Paris, 1809), translated by Δ. Μ. Μαυρομαρᾶς,

as Ἱστορία τῆς Τήνου, pp. 105 ff.

[977] Paul Lucas, _Voyage du Levant_ (la Haye, 1705), vol. II. pp.

209-210.

[978] Cf. Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 164 (Lyon, 1717).

[979] Ἀντών. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125.

[980] Γρηγ. Παπαδοπετράκης, Ἱστορία τῶν Σφακίων, pp. 72-3.

[981] The writer points out in a note the correspondence of the number

of priests who assemble for τὸ εὐχέλαιον, the anointing of the sick

with oil.

[982] The Cretan word used throughout this passage is καταχαν-ᾶς (plur.

-ᾶδες), on which see below, p. 382.

[983] διπλοσαραντίσῃ. I have given what I take to be the meaning of a

popular word otherwise unknown to me.

[984] Ᾱντ. Μηλιαράκης, Ὑπομνήματα περιγραφικὰ τῶν Κυκλάδων

νήσων.--Ἄνδρος, Κέως, p. 56.

[985] Good examples may be found in Bern. Schmidt, _Märchen_, etc., no.

7, and Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 590 sqq.

[986] _The Cyclades_, p. 299.

[987] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 577.

[988] _Ibid._, p. 578.

[989] In Scyros and in Cythnos, as I have noted above, this means of

riddance has given place to milder remedies. But in the former I heard

of fairly recent cases of vampirism, and in the latter, according to

Βάλληνδας (Κυθνιακά, p. 125), the names of several persons (including

one woman) who became _vrykolakes_ are still remembered.

[990] Communicated to me by word of mouth in Maina.

[991] ἑορτοπιάσματα (see above, p. 208), who are commonly regarded as

subject to lycanthropy in life and continue the same predatory habits

as vampires after death.

[992] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 162 (from Aráchova).

[993] This belief belongs chiefly, in my experience, to the Cyclades.

[994] Curt. Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 117 (from

Elis).

[995] _Ibid._ p. 114 (from Elis). Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 162

(Parnassus district). Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 578 (Calávryta).

[996] _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 170.

[997] This derivation is reviewed and rejected by Bern. Schmidt, _Das

Volksleben_ etc., p. 158.

[998] Cf. Miklosich, _Etym. Wörterbuch d. Slav. Spr._, p. 380, s.v.

*velkŭ, Old Slav., vlъkъ, _wolf_....

Old Slav., vlЪkodlakЪ; Slovenian, volkodlak, vukodlak, vulkodlak;

Bulg., vrЪkolak; Kr., vukodlak; Serb., vukodlak; Cz., vlkodlak; Pol.,

wilkodłak; Little Russian, vołkołak; White Russian, vołkołak; Russian,

volkulakЪ; Roum. ve̥lkolak, ve̥rkolak; Alb., vurvolak; cf. Lith.,

vilkakis.

‘Der vlЪkodlak ist der Werwolf der Deutschen, woraus m. Lat. guerulfus,

mannwolf, der in Wolfgestalt gespenstisch umgehende Mann.’ The second

half of the compound is less certainly identified with _dlaka_, Old

Slav., New Slav., Serb., = ‘hair’ (of cow or horse).

I am indebted for this note to the kindness of Mr E. H. Minns, of

Pembroke College, Cambridge. It will be found to corroborate the view

pronounced by B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 159.

[999] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 160 (with

note 1).

[1000] Ralston, _Songs of the Russian people_, p. 409.

[1001] Whether this word is originally Slavonic appears to be

uncertain, but it is at any rate found in all Slavonic languages and is

proved by the forms which it has assumed to have been in use there for

fully a thousand years. This note also I owe to my friend, Mr Minns.

[1002] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 217.

[1003] _Das Volksleben d. Neugr._ p. 159.

[1004] _Ibid._ note 2.

[1005] Mannhardt’s _Zeitschrift f. d. Mythol. und Sittenk._ IV. 195.

[1006] _Les Slaves de Turquie_, I. p. 69 (Paris, 1844).

[1007] Cf. above, p. 183.

[1008] Cf. pp. 183 and 208.

[1009] In Chios at the present day the word _vrykolakas_ is in general

usage, except that in the village of Pyrgi, owing to a confusion of

_vrykolakes_ and _callicantzari_, a local name of the latter is applied

also to the former. Cf. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 367, and see

above p. 193.

[1010] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125. The two words are given in

the neuter plural τυμπανιαῖα and ἄλυτα, as equivalents of the word

_vrykolakas_ which, in the form βουρδούλακκας, is also employed.

[1011] The periodical Πανδώρα, vol. 12, no. 278, p. 335 and vol. 13,

no. 308, p. 505, cited by Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160.

[1012] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160, referring to Φιλίστωρ (periodical),

III. p. 539; Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 574.

[1013] Πολίτης, _ibid._

[1014] Cf. above, p. 277.

[1015] Βάλληνδας in Ἐφημερὶς τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1861, p. 1828. Schmidt

interprets the word as ‘der Aufhockende,’ one who sits upon and crushes

his victims, a habit sometimes ascribed to _vrykolakes_, but more

often to _callicantzari_. My own interpretation has the support of

many popular stories, in which, when the exhumation of a _vrykolakas_

takes place, he is found sitting up in his tomb. See e.g. Πολίτης,

Παραδόσεις, I. p. 590.

[1016] Cf. Χουρμούζης, Κρητικά, p. 27 (Athens, 1842); Γρηγ.

Παπαδοπετράκης, Ἱστορία τῶν Σφακίων, pp. 72-3.

[1017] _Op. cit._ p. 160.

[1018] Ἄτακτα, II. p. 114.

[1019] _Os hians, dentes candidi_, cf. above, p. 367.

[1020] The word is mentioned by Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in

the Levant_, I. p. 212. I have been unable to obtain any more recent

information.

[1021] Τὸ Θανατικὸν τῆς Ῥόδου (_The Black Death of Rhodes_), ll. 267

and 579, published in Wagner’s _Medieval Greek Texts_, I. p. 179 (from

Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160, note 4).

[1022] I have shown above (pp. 239 ff.) that in certain districts the

word λυκάνθρωπος was superseded by a new Greek compound λυκοκάντζαρος;

but this new term was probably always confined, as it now is, to

the vocabulary of a few districts only, while the Slavonic word

_vrykolakas_ enjoyed a wider vogue.

[1023] See above, p. 378.

[1024] I quote my authority only for choice specimens which I have not

myself heard. Variations may be found in almost any work bearing on

popular speech or belief.

[1025] Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας, II. 123 (from Crete).

[1026] _Ibid._

[1027] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 199 (from Sinasos in Asia Minor).

[1028] Christophorus Angelus, _De statu hodiernorum Graecorum_, cap. 25.

[1029] Cf. above, p. 370.

[1030] In the details of my account of this custom I follow Βάλληνδας,

Κυθνιακά, pp. 113-114. But it prevails also in substantially the same

form in many places besides Cythnos.

[1031] I have been at some pains to make wide enquiries on this point,

but have found no example.

[1032] The version which I translate is No. 517 in Passow’s _Popularia

Carmina Graec. recent._

[1033] Prof. Πολίτης has collected seventeen in a monograph entitled

Τὸ δημοτικὸν ἅσμα περὶ τοῦ νεκροῦ ἀδελφοῦ (originally published in the

Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας).

[1034] Πολίτης, _op. cit._ p. 43 (Version No. 4, ll. 18, 19).

[1035] The periodical Πανδώρα, 1862, vol. 13, p. 367 ( Πολίτης, _op.

cit._ p. 66, no. 17, ll. 19, 20).

[1036] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 164 (from Sinasos in Asia Minor).

[1037] I make this statement with as full confidence as can be felt in

any such negation, after perusing nearly a score of versions.

[1038] See above, p. 368.

[1039] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 589.

[1040] _Ibid._ p. 591.

[1041] Goar, _Eucholog._ p. 685.

[1042] Cf. Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graecorum opinat._ XIII. Balsamon,

I. 569 (Migne). _Epist. S. Niconis_, quoted by Balsamon, II. p. 1096

(ed. Paris, 1620). Christophorus Angelus, cap. 25.

[1043] S. Matthew xviii. 18.

[1044] The power of excommunicating belonged to priests as well as

to bishops, but they might not exercise it without their bishop’s

sanction. Cf. Balsamon, I. 27 and 569 (Migne).

[1045] Quoted by Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graec. opinat._ XIII. and XIV.

[1046] The reversal of the decree of excommunication by the same person

who had pronounced it was always preferred, largely as a precaution

against an excommunicated person obtaining absolution too easily. Cf.

Balsamon, I. 64-5 and 437 (Migne).

[1047] _op. cit._ cap. XV. Cf. also Christophorus Angelus, Ἐγχειρίδιον

περὶ τῆς καταστάσεως τῶν σήμερον εὑρισκομένων Ἑλλήνων (Cambridge,

1619), cap. 25, where is told the story of a bishop who was

excommunicated by a council of his peers, and whose body remained

‘bound, like iron, for a hundred years,’ when a second council of

bishops at the same place pronounced absolution and immediately the

body ‘turned to dust.’

[1048] According to Georgius Fehlavius, p. 539 (§ 422) of his edition

of Christophorus Angelus, _De statu hodiernorum Graecorum_ (Lipsiae,

1676), Emanuel Malaxus was the writer of a work entitled _Historia

Patriarcharum Constantinopolitanorum_, which I have not been able to

discover. It was apparently used by Crusius for his _Turco-Grecia_; for

the story here told is narrated by him in two versions (I. 56 and II.

32, pp. 27 and 133 ed. Basle) and he alludes also (p. 151) to a story

concerning Arsenios, Bishop of Monemvasia, which likewise according to

Fehlavius (_l.c._) was narrated by Malaxus.

[1049] See below, p. 409.

[1050] Christophorus Angelus (_op. cit._ cap. 25) vouches for the early

use of this word by one Cassianus, whom he describes as Ἕλλην παλαιὸς

ἱστορικός. I cannot identify this author.

[1051] Du Cange, _Med. et infim. Graec._, s.v. τυμπανίτης.

[1052] Christophorus Angelus, _l.c._

[1053] Matthew xviii. 18.

[1054] John xx. 23.

[1055] See above, p. 365.

[1056] The word μνημόσυνα, which I have rendered with verbal

correctness ‘memorial services,’ really implies more, and corresponds

to a mass for the repose of the dead.

[1057] Anastasius Sinaita, in Migne’s _Patrologia Gr.-Lat._, vol. 89,

279-280.

[1058] i.e. the πνευματικοί, as they were called, the more discreet

and ‘spiritual’ priests who alone were authorised by their bishops to

discharge this function. Cf. Christophorus Angelus, _op. cit._ cap. 22.

[1059] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 335 and 339.

[1060] On this symbol see above, pp. 112 f.

[1061] Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in the Levant_, I. p. 212

(1865). (Cf. B. Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 164.)

[1062] Cf. Christophorus Angelus, _op. cit._ cap. 25 (init.).

[1063] _I. Cor._ v. 5 and _I. Tim._ i. 20.

[1064] Theodoretus, on _I. Cor._ v. 5 (Migne, _Patrologia Gr.-Lat._,

vol. 82, 261).

[1065] Aesch. _Choeph._, 432-3.

[1066] Paus. IX. 32. 6.

[1067] _Philopseudes_, cap. 29.

[1068] See above, p. 208.

[1069] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 576.

[1070] Ralston, _Songs of the Russian people_, p. 412.

[1071] Mirabilia, cap. I.

[1072] By ‘seer’ I render μάντις, a man directly inspired; by ‘diviner’

οἰωνοσκόπος, one who is skilled in the science of interpreting signs

and omens.

[1073] _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable a Sant-Erini

etc._, p. 213. He calls Philinnion a Thessalian girl, and makes

Machates come from Macedonia. But his reference to the story contains

a patent inaccuracy (for he speaks of the girl being buried a second

time, whereas she was burnt), and in all probability he was quoting

from memory, not from a more complete text than that now preserved.

[1074] See Pashley, _Travels in Crete_, II. p. 221; Carnarvon,

_Reminiscences of Athens and the Morea_, p. 162; Schmidt, _das

Volksleben_, p. 165; Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. pp. 589, 591 and 593;

Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125.

[1075] Alardus Gazaeus, _Commentary on_ Ioh. Cassianus, _Collatio_,

VIII. 21 (Migne, _Patrologia_, Ser. I. vol. 49).

[1076] On ‘striges’ see above, pp. 179 ff.

[1077] On this word see above, p. 288.

[1078] _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 170, with note 1.

[1079] _Philopseudes_, cap. 26.

[1080] Ar. _Eccles._, 1072-3.

[1081] See above, pp. 387-91.

[1082] Eur. _Or._, 1086.

[1083] Eur. _Hipp._, 1038.

[1084] Soph. _O. C._, 1383 ff.

[1085] Soph. _O. C._, 1405.

[1086] 261-297.

[1087] Aesch. _Choeph._, 287-8.

[1088] Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος, I. p. 788. συμπεπτωκότος is a necessary

correction of the ἐμπεπτωκότος of the MSS.

[1089] Cf. l. 366 μιαίνεται.

[1090] Aesch. _Suppl._, 407 ff.

[1091] Aesch. _Eum._, 173 ff. reading ἄλλον μιάστορ’ ἐξ ἐμοῦ.

[1092] See above, p. 398.

[1093] _Works and Days_, 325 ff.

[1094] See above, p. 397.

[1095] See above, p. 370.

[1096] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 69 ff.

[1097] Hom. _Od._ XI. 51 ff.

[1098] Eur. _Hec._ 1-58.

[1099] Aesch. _Eum._ 94 ff. It must be observed, however, that

Clytemnestra’s restlessness is represented as being due to her being a

murderess quite as much as to her having been violently slain. There

was a double cause. See below, p. 474.

[1100] cap. 29.

[1101] Other references are given by Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 169,

among them Servius on Virg. _Aen._, IV. 386 and Heliod. _Aethiop._, II.

5.

[1102] Certain hints however are to be found, on which see below, pp.

438-9.

[1103] Aesch. _Choeph._ 480 ff.

[1104] See below, pp. 438-9.

[1105] p. 81 C, D.

[1106] _Iliad_ XXIII. 65 ff.

[1107] Eurip. _Hecuba_ 1 ff.

[1108] τοῦ ὁρατοῦ as opposed to τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ Ἅιδου.

[1109] See above, pp. 110 ff.

[1110] See above, p. 340.

[1111] Soph. _El._ 453-4.

[1112] Aesch. _Choeph._ 480-1.

[1113] Aesch. _Ag._ 455.

[1114] Eur. _Or._ 491-541.

[1115] _Ibid._ 580 ff.

[1116] Aesch. _Choeph._ 924-5. Cf. also 293.

[1117] Soph. _El._ 445.

[1118] Aesch. _Choeph._ 439 ff.

[1119] Antiphon, pp. 119, 125, and 126.

[1120] Cf. below, p. 459.

[1121] Plato, _Leges_, 865 D, παλαιόν τινα τῶν ἀρχαίων μύθων.

[1122] The word δειμαίνει, which in this passage seems clearly

transitive, is perhaps a verbal reminiscence of the old language in

which Plato had heard the tradition.

[1123] Plato, _Leges_, 865 D ff.

[1124] Cf. Demosth., _in Aristocr._, pp. 634 and 643.

[1125] The word technically used of this withdrawal without formal

sentence of banishment was ἀπενιαυτεῖν, or simply ἐξιέναι (cf.

ὑπεξελθεῖν τῷ παθόντι in the above passage of Plato), or, as again in

the same passage, ἀποξενοῦσθαι; whereas legal banishment was denoted by

φεύγειν.

[1126] Plato, _Leges_, 872 D ff.

[1127] In early Greek, as witness the first line of the _Iliad_, the

use of μῆνις, was less restricted than in later times; but the word,

μήνιμα even in Homer occurs only, I think, in the phrase μήνιμα θεῶν.

See below, p. 449.

[1128] Plato, _Phaedrus_, § 49, p. 244 D.

[1129] Cf. especially Eur. _Or._ 281-2, as pointed out by Bekker in his

note on Plato, _Phaedrus_, _l.c._

[1130] Aesch. _Choeph._ 293.

[1131] Plato, _Leges_, 869 A (Bekker’s text); cf. also 869 E.

[1132] See Aesch. _Eum._ 101 and 317 ff.; cf. Eur. _Or._ 583.

[1133] _Ibid._ 94-139.

[1134] _Ibid._ 417.

[1135] Xenoph. _Cyrop._ VIII. 7, 18.

[1136] Hom. _Il._ XXII. 358.

[1137] Hom. _Od._ XI. 73.

[1138] Pind. _Pyth._ IV. 280 ff.

[1139] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, IX. _passim_, and especially p. 871.

[1140] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 285 and 448 ff.

[1141] Plato, _Leges_, 868 A and 871 A.

[1142] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 445.

[1143] Plato, _Leges_, 871 B.

[1144] _Ibid._ 865 C.

[1145] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, p. 854 A, δυσίατα καὶ ἀνίατα.

[1146] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, 866-874, _passim_.

[1147] Aesch. _Eum._ 74 ff.

[1148] Aesch. _Choeph._ 280-1.

[1149] Aesch. _Choeph._ 288-9.

[1150] Cf. especially Aesch. _Choeph._ 400 ff.

[1151] Aesch. _Eum._ 336, θανὼν δ’ οὐκ ἄγαν ἐλεύθερος.

[1152] Aesch. _Eum._ 137-9.

[1153] _Ibid._ 264-7.

[1154] _Ibid._ 328 ff., and again 343 ff.

[1155] This rendering of the word αὐονά has been challenged, but has

the support of the Scholiast who explains it by the words ὁ ξηραίνων

τοὺς βροτούς, (the hymn) which dries and withers men.

[1156] The tense of ταριχευθέντα in the phrase from which I started

(_Choeph._ 296) is hereby explained.

[1157] Plato, _Phaedrus_, 244 E, πρός τε τὸν παρόντα καὶ τὸν ἔπειτα

χρόνον.

[1158] Plato’s list is ‘father, mother, brother, sister, or child,’

_Leges_, IX. 873 A.

[1159] Plato, _Leges_, IX. 873 B.

[1160] Cf. especially Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 163, who

was an eye-witness of such an occurrence in Myconos.

[1161] Cf. Aesch. _Eumen._ 780 ff., and (for the withdrawal of the

curse) 938 ff.

[1162] Eur. _Phoen._ 1592 ff. The word here translated ‘avengers’ is

ἀλάστορες, which is fully discussed below, pp. 465 ff.

[1163] Aesch. _Suppl._ 262 ff., reading in 266 μηνιτὴ δάκη, the

emendation of Porson.

[1164] _l.c._ 265-6, μιάσμασιν ... μηνιτή ... ἀνῆκε.

[1165] Aesch. _Eum._ 52.

[1166] Aesch. _Eum._ 53, 137-9.

[1167] _Ibid._ 254.

[1168] _Ibid._ 75, 111, 131, 246-7.

[1169] _passim._

[1170] 183-4, 264.

[1171] _Ibid._ 780 ff., 938 ff.

[1172] _Ibid._ 644.

[1173] _Ibid._ 70, 73, 644.

[1174] Eur. _Med._ 1370.

[1175] Aesch. _Eum._ 177.

[1176] Soph. _El._ 603.

[1177] Aesch. _Eum._ 349, reading μαυροῦμεν νέον αἷμα.

[1178] Aesch. _Eum._ 236.

[1179] L. and S. s.v.

[1180] Cf. Aesch. _Choeph._ 1026 ff., and _Eumen._ _passim_.

[1181] Cf. Preller, _Griech. Mythol._, I. p. 145 (edit. 4, Carl Robert).

[1182] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. § 26.

[1183] Aesch. _Pers._ 353.

[1184] This fact is recognised by Geddes in his edition of the

_Phaedo_, in the course of his note (p. 280 ff.) on the difficulty

concerning the words ἢ λόγου θείου τινὸς in cap. 33 (p. 85 D). He does

not however infer that the words really contrasted are ἀλάστωρ and

δαίμων, but claims for the particle ἢ an epexegetic sense (‘or, in

other words,’) besides its usual disjunctive sense (‘or else’). I am

far from being satisfied that the epexegetic use of ἢ existed at all

in Classical Greek, which idiomatically employed καὶ in that way. At

any rate its existence is not proved by the other passages which Geddes

cites--Aesch. _Pers._ 430 and Soph. _Phil._ 934--where the ἢ perhaps

equals _vel_ rather than _aut_, but has none of the epexegetic sense of

_sive_.

[1185] Eur. _Med._ 1059 ff.

[1186] Eur. _Med._ 1333 ff.

[1187] Eur. _H. F._ 1229 ff.

[1188] Cf. Paley, in his note to elucidate this dialogue. It should be

added however that in a second note on the same page, dealing with this

line only, he apparently contradicts his previous explanation.

[1189] Eur. _H. F._ 1218 ff.

[1190] Cf. 1324.

[1191] See Eustath. on _Il._ IV. 295.

[1192] _Gk Etymol._ 547.

[1193] _Vergleichende Grammatik_, II. § 122.

[1194] The nearest parallel could only be the dubious form ἀδώτης in

Hesiod, _W. and D._, 353. But that form, if correct, is probably best

treated as adjective (giftless) not as substantive (non-giver).

[1195] I am indebted to Mr P. Giles, of Emmanuel College, for pointing

out to me that the analogy with μιάστωρ is mentioned in the last

edition of Meyer’s _Griechische Philologie_.

[1196] Hom. _Il._ IV. 295, Ἀμφὶ μέγαν Πελάγοντα, Ἀλάστορά τε, Χρόμιόν

τε. The hiatus in the third foot has been made the basis of a

suggestion, to which Mr P. Giles has kindly called my attention, that

ἀλάστωρ should begin with a digamma. There is however no need for the

supposition, since hiatus after the trochaic caesura is not infrequent

(e.g. _Il._ I. 569) and some license is generally allowed in any case

in the metrical treatment of proper names; moreover, in _Il._ VIII.

333, we have a line δῖος Ἀλάστωρ which makes against the original

existence of a digamma in the word.

[1197] Aesch. _Eum._ 103.

[1198] Aesch. _Eum._ 114.

[1199] Aesch. _Eum._ 98.

[1200] This is distinctly stated in the passage, though of course her

own violent death might equally well have been given as a cause of

‘wandering.’

[1201] Eur. _Tro._ 1023.

[1202] Cf. Plutarch, _de defect. orac._, cap. 15 (p. 418).

[1203] Aesch. _Eum._ 236, cf. above, p. 466.

[1204] Soph. _Ajax_, 373.

[1205] Demosth. _de Falsa Legat._, p. 438, 28.

[1206] Demosth. _de Corona_, § 296, p. 324.

[1207] Soph. _Trach._ 1092.

[1208] e.g. Eur. _Iph. in Aul._ 878; _Phoen._ 1550; _El._ 979; _Or._

1668.

[1209] _Choeph._ 928.

[1210] _Electra_, 677.

[1211] Eur. _Or._ 1584.

[1212] Eur. _Andr._ 614.

[1213] Aeschines, _De falsa legatione_, § 168 (p. 49). Cf. § 162 (p.

48).

[1214] Aeschylus, _Agam._ 1587.

[1215] Plato, _Leges_, IX. p. 866 B, cf. above, p. 445.

[1216] So far as I can discover, it is a solitary example of the use

in Classical Greek; but I very strongly suspect that in Antiphon, p.

127 (init.), προστρέψομαι should be read instead of προστρίψομαι. A

man accused of murder is saying, ἀδίκως μὲν γὰρ ἀπολυθεὶς, διὰ τὸ μὴ

ὀρθῶς διδαχθῆναι ὑμᾶς ἀποφυγὼν, τοῦ μὴ διδάξαντος καὶ οὐχ ὑμέτερον τὸν

προστρόπαιον τοῦ ἀποθανόντος καταστήσω· μὴ ὀρθῶς δὲ καταληφθεὶς ὑφ’

ὑμῶν, ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ τούτῳ τὸ μήνιμα τῶν ἀλιτηρίων προστρίψομαι. The sense

is, ‘If I were really guilty of this murder and yet owing to the feeble

case presented by the prosecutor I were acquitted by you, my escape

would bring the Avenger of the dead man upon the prosecutor and not on

you; whereas, if you condemn me wrongly when I am innocent, it will be

on you and not on him that I, after death, shall turn the wrath of the

Avengers.’ Clearly προστρέψομαι is required to answer προστρόπαιον, and

it could have no more natural object than τὸ μήνιμα, the special word

denoting the wrath which follows on bloodguilt.

[1217] Photius, s.v. παλαμναῖος.

[1218] I venture upon this emphatic negation, not so much because I

have found no such usage in my reading of Greek literature, as because

the line of the _Eumenides_ in which Orestes calls himself ἀλάστορα, οὐ

προστρόπαιον, would be hopelessly ambiguous if such an usage had been

possible.

[1219] Antiphon, 119. 6.

[1220] Aesch. _Choeph._ 287.

[1221] Antiphon, 125. 32 and 126. 39.

[1222] Pausan. II. 18. 2.

[1223] Hesychius, s.v. προστρόπαιος.

[1224] Aesch. _Agam._ 1587; see above, p. 480.

[1225] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 283 and 450.