CHAPTER II

THE PELASGIAN SYSTEM

Current views explained and criticised: author’s view: proofs from the text of Homer: question of a distinction between murder and manslaughter, and between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide: collectivity in vengeance.

The opinions which have hitherto prevailed among scholars in regard to early Greek blood-vengeance are more or less unanimous. They seem to be based on an assumption of homogeneity in the society depicted by Homer. Expressed in terms of the modes of vengeance which we have described in the preceding chapter, the customs of Homeric Greeks in regard to homicide have been conceived as a confusion of modes I, II, and III—as a mixture of restricted and unrestricted vendetta and wergeld. Thus, Eichhoff[1] holds that in Homer murder is a ‘private’ affair, and that the slayer must go into exile if the ‘money’ paid to the injured family is not accepted. Bury[2] says: ‘According to early custom which we find reflected in Homer, murder and manslaughter were not regarded as crimes against the State, but concerned exclusively the family of the slain man, which might either slay the slayer or accept compensation.’ Grote[3] says: ‘That which the murderer in Homeric times had to dread was not public prosecution and punishment, but the personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends of deceased. To escape from this danger he is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment as satisfaction for their slain comrade.’ Jevons[4] says: ‘If the family of the murderer were not content to pay the wergeld, the murderer generally found it expedient to flee into a far country, for, if he remained he would assuredly be killed in revenge.’ In a foot-note in Butcher and Lang’s translation of the _Odyssey_,[5] we are told that ‘as a rule blood called for blood, and the manslayer had to flee from the kindred who took up the feud.... It is superfluous to remark that the “price” as an alternative to vengeance is a widespread custom.’ Glotz[6] speaks of death, exile, wergeld, and slavery as possible penalties everywhere. He seems to believe that there existed in Homeric times that collective and hereditary vengeance which is so characteristic of barbarous peoples, but for this view he has adduced no evidence apart from post-Homeric legends. In an article in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines_,[7] we are informed that ‘originally’ homicide is an offence only against the family of the victim, and all the members of the ‘famille outragée’ have a right and a duty of vengeance. To escape this vengeance the murderer has no other resource but exile. His exile will exempt his kinsmen from the reprisals to which they would otherwise be exposed.[8] As the murderer will be most often supported and defended by his family, a war of families will lay desolate a whole country: in course of time, and with the softening of human character, the offended family will renounce its vengeance, and enter into a bargain with the murderer and his family. He will be permitted to return from exile, but, as a rule, only by payment of ‘compensation.’ His relatives will furnish him with this payment (ποινή), at once the price of the blood shed and the ransom of the murderer’s life. The payment is vaguely defined at first, varying with the importance and the wealth of families. For murder within the family (γένος), there is no question of wergeld. A compromise is effected by which the family waive their right to kill the murderer on condition that he leaves the γένος—‘ils se bornent au bannissement du coupable, rompant ainsi, par son expulsion, les liens qui le rattachaient au γένος.’[9]

All these critics appear to suggest that the early age of Greece presents us with a more or less homogeneous but undeveloped and quasi-barbarous race[10] which slowly and gradually evolves into something like civilisation in the time of Dracon and Solon. Thus conceived, the homicide-customs of Homer are very similar to those of the Montenegrins of modern times, who have long lived in a condition of social chaos and who accept, in atonement for homicide, a payment of money when there is hardly anyone left to pay it!

Leaf, who in _Homer and History_[11] (1915) differentiates very clearly between the Pelasgian and the Achaean elements in the societies of Homeric Greece, points out that to the Achaeans ‘homicide is a local and family affair, and brings no disability other than exile from home.’ A wealthy and generous king can give opportunities of advancement beyond all the hopes of a narrow family circle. To an ambitious Achaean (as witness Patroclus,[12] Phoenix[13] and others[14]), exile in such circumstances is not a real punishment. When Leaf observes, in regard to the Achaeans, that ‘thus the most sacred of all taboos, the shedding of kindred blood, loses its final sanction,’ he seems to hint at the existence, in the Homeric society, of a non-Achaean attitude to homicide. He does not however explain the precise nature or origin of this attitude.

Moreover, in _Homer and History_, Leaf does not suggest any solution of an important problem to which he refers in previous works—the problems presented by the reference to wergeld in the Homeric passage which describes the Shield of Achilles.[15] In a note of his translation of the _Iliad_ (1883), he said[16]: ‘The trial scene is one of the most difficult and puzzling passages in Homer.... The whole passage is clearly archaic, but the difficulty lies in the fact that no parallel, so far as we know, is to be found in the procedure of any primitive races which throws any light upon this passage.’ In his _Companion to the Iliad_ (1892) and in his latest edition of the _Iliad_ (1902), in a note on the passage in question,[17] he put forward an hypothesis which seems to suggest that he conceives the Homeric Greeks as quasi-barbarous peoples. Having indicated the frequency of blood-for-blood retaliation in the _Iliad_, he interprets the trial-scene as representing a stage in the evolution of homicide customs from more primitive conditions. ‘It seems absolutely necessary to assume an intermediate stage in which the community asserted the right to say in every case whether the next of kin should, for reasons of public policy, accept compensation, and the missing link is apparently brought before us here.’

By assuming that the trial-scene represents, not a murder trial (which few now maintain) nor yet a wergeld debt trial, _i.e._ an inquiry as to whether wergeld has been paid or not, but a piece of novel homicide legislation, Leaf thinks that ‘the scene gains enormously in importance.’ Postponing for a time[18] our criticism of this view, published thirteen years before the date of _Homer and History_, and deferring the solution which we shall offer of the difficulty, we proceed to state our own theory of the homicide customs of Homer. This theory is based in the first place on a distinction between an Achaean dominant caste and a subject Pelasgian people; secondly, on the hypothesis which Leaf puts forward as to the different character and mode of life of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians—the former being conceived as a race of bellicose military adventurers living in isolated groups; the latter, as an agricultural subject-people, tillers of the soil, who preserved intact their tribal organisations; thirdly, on the connexion existing between the homicide customs of a people or caste and their temperament and social organisation—a connexion which is established by a general study of blood-vengeance amongst various peoples; and, finally, on a correct interpretation of the text of Homer.

Our theory is as follows: there existed in Greece at the period of the Achaean domination (1300-1100 B.C.) two fundamentally distinct social strata, each having a distinct characteristic attitude to homicide, and observing distinct modes of blood-vengeance. The two modes coexisted side by side without affecting or modifying each other, but their coexistence produced a slight confusion of thought and an absence of clear discrimination in language in the Homeric poet (or poets) who were in contact with the two social strata, and who were familiar with the two modes of vengeance, but who almost ignored the one and exalted the other, out of courtesy to the masters whose praises they sang. These two modes of vengeance, which we will call respectively Achaean and Pelasgian, may be thus described: (1) Amongst the Achaeans the normal penalty for homicide is death. Their system is private vendetta, of a restricted character, such as we have already described in our introductory chapter. The vengeance is quite personal and individual, that is, the murderer alone is liable to the blood feud, which is therefore neither collective nor hereditary. Vengeance is a duty which devolves upon the dead man’s sons or brothers, but we may include the possibility of support from a kindred of limited extent[19]: a kindred which may be an embryonic clan, but whose attitude to homicide is quite different from that which normally characterises a clan. Wergeld is not accepted, even though it is known to exist outside the caste: exile is not a recognised appeasement or atonement, but is merely a flight from death, and the Achaean murderer frequently takes refuge with a king or a wealthy man. We shall describe this Achaean system more fully in a later chapter. (2) The Pelasgian mode will be found to be that which we have described in the Introduction as the ‘tribal wergeld’ mode, though it may have evolved from a more barbarous mode before 1300 B.C. In this system there are three or four recognised alternative penalties: (1) ‘wergeld,’ which is the normal measure of vengeance or retribution, and which is so frequently associated with tribalism; (2) exile, which involves a formal and solemn expulsion from the ‘group,’ a serious penalty for anyone born and bred in the atmosphere of tribal life and religion; (3) death, which is rarely inflicted, but is a possible alternative if neither ‘wergeld’ nor exile is accepted by the murderer or his clan; (4) we may add, with Glotz,[20] though there is no definite Homeric evidence for its existence, the option of slavery or servitude. This is not the slavery which is found in later times in Home and in Greece, when there was a regular slave trade, nor is it the temporary ‘slavery’ which is involved in being ‘kidnapped’ and held to ransom—a frequent occurrence in Homer; it is, however, akin to this latter condition, inasmuch as it involves a state of bondage, from which a murderer can be redeemed, not by the payment of such a price as his ‘redeemer’ can be induced to pay, but by the payment of such valuables as have been determined by long tradition—his quota of the wergeld of the clan.

PROOFS FROM THE TEXT OF HOMER

In our introductory chapter we pointed out the connexion which exists between the homicide customs of a people or caste and their temperamental outlook and social organisation; we have quoted Seebohm’s views as to the essentially tribal character of the wergeld-exile-death system; and, therefore, anyone who accepts Leaf’s hypothesis as to the nature of the Achaean and Pelasgian social strata will be prepared to admit that our hypothesis as to Pelasgian blood-vengeance is logically _a priori_ probable. In a later chapter we shall seek further confirmation of our theory by explaining the difference in the religious beliefs of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, and by indicating their different attitudes to the judicial aspect of homicide. We now proceed to the crucial test of our opinions—the evidence of the Homeric poems.

In Homer the word ποινή occurs very frequently. Glotz[21] thinks the word is connected with the verb τίνειν (to pay). He says: ‘De vrai, ποινή doit être rapproché de τίνω et des mots apparentés, τίνυμι, τιμάω, τίσις, τιμή.’ Others[22] however hold that it is connected with the root _pu_, found in Greek πῦρ, and Latin _purus_, _punire_, _poena_. The word ἄποινα seems akin in origin to ποινή, but in Homer it is invariably used of a ransom or gift of valuables.[23] We do not think that Glotz[24] has quite succeeded in his attempt to prove the evolution of the word ποινή from an earlier meaning of ‘blood-vengeance’ to a later one of pecuniary satisfaction, at least within the limits of the Homeric poems. His reasoning is very similar to that known as ‘squaring one’s premises to one’s conclusions’: he is not aware of any distinction between Achaeans and Pelasgians, and he finds the Homeric use of ποινή rather difficult to explain. He must have been aware of the fact—one which we consider of great importance—that in Homer the word ποινή nearly always means ‘punishment’ or ‘revenge’ rather than ‘compensation’ or ‘ransom’: he is certainly aware that, while ποινή can mean a pecuniary satisfaction for a material wrong or injury, and can mean the ‘ransom’ of a captive or of a warrior’s dead body, nevertheless there are only two instances in all Homer in which ποινή can be formally interpreted to mean wergeld. Thus he says,[25] ‘On songe aux deux passages de l’Iliade où il est formellement parlé de composition pour homicide. Ce sont le discours d’Ajax à Achille au chant ix et la scène judiciaire figurée sur le bouclier d’Achille au chant xviii.’ It is by a close examination of these two passages that we hope to solve the difficulty connected with the Homeric ποινή. But, first, let us say that the word ποινή is precisely the kind of word which may easily possess a general as well as a special significance. The ideas of ‘payment’ and ‘punishment’ may, in certain circumstances, coalesce: and it is probably because Homer was subconsciously aware of the fusion of ideas involved in the use of the word ποινή, that he employs another word of kindred meaning, ἄποινα, to denote a payment in which the idea of ‘punishment’ is absent or obscured.

In Homer, the word ποινή is used to denote a variety of ideas ranging from ‘punishment in general,’ such as death inflicted in vengeance, to ‘compensation for injury’: thus in _Iliad_ xvi. 398 Patroclus, having slain many foemen in battle, is said to have thus exacted vengeance (or payment) for many Greeks who had fallen:

κτεῖνε μεταΐσσων, πολέων δ’ ἀπετίνυτο ποινήν.

There is no question of ‘payment of goods’ or ‘wergeld’; it is merely the vengeance which a warrior inflicts upon his enemies. In _Iliad_ xxi. 28 Achilles chooses out twelve Trojan youths whom he afterwards burns on a funeral pyre. His motive may have been to placate the shade of Patroclus, by sending him ‘souls’ to be his slaves in Hades, or, less probably, to gratify the desire of the shade for vengeance. The youths are spoken of as ποινὴ Πατροκλοῖο: clearly they are not ‘goods or valuables,’ and are neither ‘paid’ nor ‘received.’ The poet may have been conscious of an undercurrent of meaning, if he had known of bondage or slavery as a penalty for murder in the tribes. But the slaying of Patroclus was not murder! The ποινή of Patroclus is not even ordinary blood-vengeance, it is merely the retaliation of an indignant warrior.

Again, in _Odyssey_ xxiii. 312 Odysseus tells Penelope how he exacted from the Cyclops punishment for the slaying of his companions,—ὡς ἀπετίσατο ποινὴν ἰφθίμων ἑτάρων. The Cyclops was regarded by Homer and the Achaeans as one of a lawless band of men who, as the poet says, ‘have no plants or plough, no gatherings for council nor laws—each one giveth law to his children and wives, and they reck not of one another’: he was thus the very antithesis of tribal or of civic society. The payment exacted was not wergeld, but the loss of an eye! In _Iliad_ v. 266 ποινή denotes merely compensation for injury—there being no question of murder at all. Zeus, having carried off Ganymede, the son of Tros, gave Tros a gift of horses as compensation—υἷος ποινήν Γανυμήδεος. It was really a case of ‘kidnapping,’ but Ganymede was not ‘held to ransom’—a price is paid for his loss, which is very different from wergeld.

In _Iliad_ xiv. 483 Akamas having slain Promachus tells how ‘Promachus sleeps, done to death by my sword, lest a brother’s vengeance (ποινή) be too long unpaid.’ Here we have a formula of blood-vengeance applied to the collective vengeance of war. Akamas does not seek the life of Ajax, the slayer of his brother, but is satisfied by slaying any individual of the enemy as a ‘satisfaction’ for his brother. But there is no question of wergeld: death is the penalty desired and exacted. Though the phrase δηρὸν ἄτιτος could be regarded as a reminiscence of the wergeld system, in which a period of time was normally allowed for payment, it is quite naturally applicable to blood-for-blood revenge, as δηρὸν can simply mean ‘a long time,’ and the tendency of such vengeance was to quick retribution.

In _Iliad_ xiii. 659 we are told of the slaying in battle of Harpalion, son of Pylaimenes, king of the Paphlagonians. ‘And the Paphlagonians tended him busily, and set him in a chariot and drove him to Ilios sorrowing, and with them went his father, shedding tears, and there was no atonement (ποινή) for his dead son.’ It is obvious that even if we suppose the Paphlagonians (who were not Achaeans) to have had clans and tribes and wergeld payments in their normal home life, we cannot attribute to them any expectation of wergeld for a man killed on the field of battle. Nor could the absence of such a compensation, to a king who had much more wealth than he could ever enjoy, be regarded as a cause of tears. Hence the word ποινή here must mean blood-vengeance, the satisfaction arising from blood-for-blood retribution: and this satisfaction was frustrated because the Paphlagonians did not happen to see the man who slew Harpalion.[26]

There are only two passages in Homer in which ποινή unmistakably refers to the genuine wergeld penalty. If those passages were missing no one could speak of wergeld as a penalty for homicide in the society described by Homer. We shall now examine those passages with a view to showing that they do not represent the normal system of the dominant Achaean caste, but are merely what Leaf would call ‘reminiscences,’ traces of a system with which Homer and the Achaeans were familiar, but which they did not adopt or practise amongst themselves.

In the first passage (_Iliad_ ix. 632-7) the scene is the tent of Achilles before Troy. Owing to the secession of Achilles from the Greek fighting-line the Trojans had been rapidly gaining the upper hand and the Greeks were only saved from destruction by the sudden approach of night.[27] An embassy is sent from Agamemnon to Achilles to induce him to waive his wounded pride in the interest of the Achaeans, and promising not only the restoration of his concubine Briseis but also a grant of seven cities in the Peloponnese and many splendid gifts. Achilles rejects every possible ‘satisfaction’[28] and implies that the insult offered to him was so great that nothing short of the destruction of Agamemnon and his army would assuage his wrath. Odysseus and Phoenix having failed to bend his haughty spirit, the third member of the embassy, Ajax, son of Telamon, who was certainly an Achaean, reproached him with his indifference to the fate of his Achaean comrades, who loved him, and reminded him of the self-control possessed by other men in directing their passion for revenge, even when afflicted by a much graver injury—that of murder. ‘Yet,’ he says, ‘doth a man accept payment (ποινή) from the murderer of his brother or for the slaying of his son: and the manslayer abideth in his home-land when he hath paid a goodly price, and the man’s heat and proud spirit is restrained when he hath accepted the payment—but for thee the gods have put within thy breast an evil and implacable spirit.’ When Ajax delivered this speech, he had already despaired of the success of the embassy[29]: and he mentioned the act of the receiver of wergeld, not as the act of a normal Achaean hero—the Achaeans of the Homeric age are of a very different type—but as an act which was characteristic of a well-known kind of temperament, an act which, he thought, might serve to emphasise the extreme abnormality of Achilles’ desire for vengeance. If Achilles had had a son or a brother who was murdered, and if he were on the point of crushing a whole village in revenge, the argument of Ajax would have been more relevant to the case, but even then it could not be taken to imply that either Ajax or Achilles was a member of a society in which wergeld was a recognised penalty. It is significant also that Achilles, in his reply, makes no reference whatsoever to this argument. Viewing Homer as a whole, it seems more than probable that this almost solitary instance of wergeld was introduced by the poet, who[30] was aware of the existence of the wergeld system, but was not concerned with its details. We need not call attention to the non-factual nature of recorded speeches even in Greek prose writers, and _a fortiori_ in the epic poets who reconstructed speeches more or less as a historical novelist would at the present day. It is in a similarly casual way that Homer gives us his one solitary reference to a common tillage field[31]—a reference which Ridgeway makes a basis for very wide generalisations as to Homeric land-tenure. No Achaean uses the words: they are the poet’s own: hence they can easily be applied to conditions of tenure with which the poet was himself acquainted, but which were not necessarily adopted by the Achaeans during their domination in Greece. In regard to the wergeld passage, Glotz suggests that, while the verses themselves would lead one to suppose that a certain ‘superior force’ constrained the kinsman of the victim to forgo blood-vengeance by accepting a blood-price, still they do not prove that there was any ‘social justice’ to intervene and impose a settlement or to indicate the amount of the wergeld.[32] This view we cannot accept. There is no explicit[33] reference, of course, to any ‘social justice,’ but the temperament which forgoes blood-vengeance and accepts wergeld is the product of a social system which restricts and controls the human passion for revenge. The Achaeans were above and outside such a system: the Pelasgians, we think, were born and bred in it,—perhaps for centuries. Allegiance to his tribal or civic unit and its laws alone could restrain primitive man—especially in Southern climes where passion dies very hard—from following the promptings of his natural blood-thirst. In course of time individual members of a settled agricultural tribe would inevitably develop a restrained temperament, through their fear of violating those unwritten laws of which Antigone said[34] that they ‘are not of to-day or yesterday, but no man knows the time which gave them birth.’ The Achaeans, who lived in every-day contact with such types of men, must have observed even though they did not imitate their self-restraint, and all the more because it was a quality which the Achaean caste-atmosphere could not produce.

The second of the two genuine wergeld passages in Homer is found in the description of the Shield of Achilles.[35] This passage raises many problems and causes serious difficulties to Homeric scholars. Ridgeway, who holds that the Achaean shield was of a round shape, and who assumes that the Shield of Achilles was therefore round, still finds nothing in Homer’s description to suggest that the Achaeans manufactured this particular shield. ‘It is probable,’ he says,[36] ‘that whilst the shape of the shield and the style or ornament are derived from central Europe, its technique discloses the native Mycenaean craftsman employing for his Achaean lords the method seen in Mycenaean daggers.’ Monro[37] also points out that ‘in choice of subjects and in the manner of treatment there is a remarkable agreement between the Mycenaean remains and the Shield of Achilles.’ All the pictures, he observes, are taken from incidents of every-day life, and the absence of any references to commerce or seafaring life suggests the antiquity of the picture.[38] Leaf, in his translation of the _Iliad_ (1883),[39] makes the following comment: ‘The whole passage is clearly archaic, but the difficulty lies in the fact that no parallel, so far as we know, is to be found in the procedure of any primitive races which throws any light upon this passage. Homer so constantly represents the kings as the keepers of the “traditions,” and therefore sole judges, that he must have been consciously moving in some different world when he depicted the Shield: a world, too, in which there is no mythology and no sacrifice and nothing distinctly Hellenic.’ In his _Companion to the Iliad_[40] (1892) and in his latest edition of the _Iliad_ (1902) he has proposed a solution[41] of the problems raised by this passage. He suggests that the passage does not refer to a murder-trial, nor yet to an inquiry into the question of payment of wergeld (as he held in his translation[42] of the _Iliad_), but that it is an account of the establishment of a new murder-code, which abolishes private vendetta and substitutes a compulsory ‘wergeld’ system. We will now quote the portion of this famous passage which relates to homicide—and we will offer a solution of the difficulty.

On the Shield are depicted, amongst other things, two cities, one of which is in a state of siege, the other in a condition of peace. It is with the latter city that we are here concerned. In this city two ‘events’ are described: the first is a wedding, concerning which we need only say that it is an event of common occurrence, which is not in the least degree novel or abnormal; the second event[43] is a dispute about the ransom of a slain man, which takes place in the ἀγορά of the city, in the presence of the Elders, of the sacred heralds, and of a cheering crowd of people. Leaf’s original translation (1883) (some of which he has since abandoned, not, as we think, wisely) is as follows: ‘But the folk were gathered in the assembly-place; for there a strife was arisen, two men striving about the blood-price of a slain man: the one avowed that he had paid all ... but the other denied that he had received aught, manifesting it to the people: and each was fain to obtain consummation on the word of his witness[44]: and the folk were cheering both, as they took part on either side. And heralds kept order among the folk, while the Elders on polished stones were sitting in the sacred circle and holding in their hands staves from loud-voiced heralds. Then before the people they rose up and gave judgment each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold to be given unto him who should plead among them most righteously.’

This is the traditional view, which regards the scene as an investigation by the Elders of the city as to whether a recognised wergeld has or has not been paid. It is followed by Glotz, who proposes however some curious explanations of details, which we shall presently discuss. It is the view which we shall adopt when we have explained more precisely the exact nature of the ‘court.’

There is however a second view, adopted by Leaf in 1887, 1892 and 1902, first propounded by Müncher (1829), and supported by other scholars,[45] which regards the scene as describing the first interference on the part of some higher authority with the chaotic blood-feuds of savages.

Thirdly, there is the view of Lipsius that the trial was a genuine murder-trial, and that the two talents of gold referred to by the poet represented a genuine wergeld. This view is now generally rejected and we shall see presently the objections which militate against it: but our first duty is to formulate the arguments which will induce us to accept the first and to reject the second hypothesis.

First of all, we have already protested against the opinion which represents the early Greeks as cannibals living in a state of barbarism. In our view, the only period of Greek history to which such a conception may, with any justice, be applied is the period of the Dark Ages which succeeded the Trojan war, when continual migrations and the breakdown of tribal solidarity gave a temporary reality to the picture which is drawn for us by Hesiod. The Pelasgian, Minoan, and Achaean periods, however, present to our minds societies enjoying a civilisation which was regular and orderly, and a culture which was real and distinctive, even though it was also primitive. Again, the arguments which Leaf bases on the linguistic interpretation of one or two verbs in this passage are not only inconclusive for his hypothesis, as Glotz rightly holds,[46] but suggest, we think, the opposite deduction. In 1883 Leaf translated the words ὀ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ’ ἀποδοῦναι ... ὁ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι as ‘the one avowed that he had paid all ... the other denied that he had received aught’: but in his latest edition of the _Iliad_ (1902) he translates them (to suit his changed hypothesis) thus: ‘the one offered to pay all ... the other refused to accept aught.’ He admits, of course, that the verbs can have the meaning which he gave to them in 1883. But he omits to note the solitary word πάντα which we consider a decisive factor. If a man is said to ‘pay all’ surely that ‘all’ must have been a sum fixed by a traditional arrangement. We can find no parallel, in wergeld-paying communities, for a judicial decision on the part of the tribe which compels a relative of the victim to accept the wergeld which the tribe of which he is a member has traditionally recognised as the complete payment of the debt. It is only if payment is in default or dispute that the tribe would assert itself to prevent a feud of blood. When Homer adds, after the clause ὁ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι, the words δήμῳ πιφαύσκων, surely this means ‘declaring it to the people’ rather than ‘manifesting it to the people,’ for it is absurd to suppose that the actual wergeld was included in the scene, since such a payment, as we have shown, usually consisted of cattle and sheep.

Again, we may mention what we consider a very serious weakness in Leaf’s later position. He has to assume that the scene in question is not a single scene, but two scenes. He thus describes the affair in his _Companion to the Iliad_[47] (1892). ‘A man has been slain: the homicide has offered a money payment in commutation of the death, but the next of kin refuses to accept it. Both parties come into the public place attended by their friends and dispute. This scene ends here. The next scene shows us the dispute referred to the Elders, the King’s Council, who are to decide what course is to be taken. The importance of this double scene lies in the fact that it shows us criminal law in its very birth. No criminal law can be said to exist when it is a matter for private arrangement between the homicide and the next of kin to settle the offence, if they like, by a money payment, instead of by the normal blood revenge, which means the exile of the homicide if he is not killed. But criminal law begins when the people claim to have a voice in the question and to say that the money shall be accepted.’ We will merely say, by way of comment, that this two-scene theory not only is artistically improbable but finds no support whatever in the text of Homer.

A period of thirteen years separated the date of the _Companion_ from that of the publication of _Homer and History_. Though in this latter work he does not mention the Shield of Achilles, still we feel that if Leaf had applied his later theory of the distinction between Achaeans and Pelasgians to the solution of his earlier problem, he could have thrown considerable light on the question. In 1883 it was the absence of a king in the trial that troubled him. But is it not now clear that the ‘Kings’ of Greece from 1300 B.C. to 1100 B.C. were Achaeans, bellicose war-lords, who held in their hands the ‘sceptres’ and dealt out dooms to the people, but who took little interest in local disputes, who did not understand, perhaps, and probably did not adopt, many of the Pelasgian ‘dooms’?[48] Hence, if we suppose that the Elders in this scene are not Achaeans but Pelasgian chiefs of clans and tribes, we can quite easily understand the absence of the Achaean king or over-lord.

Leaf gives us a very clear picture in _Homer and History_[49] which we may utilise to remove the difficulties which he felt in 1883. ‘All this time,’ he says, ‘the main population of Greece was going on with beliefs and customs undisturbed, unaffected by the change of masters[50] at the Castle. The group society of the Pelasgians—φυλή, γένος, φρατρία—continued intact, abiding its time. The epic of the Achaeans takes no notice of it, why should it? The Achaeans knew little and cared less about the customs of their subjects, unless at times called in to settle disputes based on silly family usage, unworthy of a lord’s notice.’ Though Leaf does not say so explicitly, we think that in his conception of the Homeric wergeld he is now much nearer to the position he held in 1883 than to the positions he adopted in the intervening period.

If we combine then the arguments based on the text of this Homeric passage with the results of Leaf’s latest researches and also with the general principles outlined in our Introductory Chapter, we may conclude that this trial-scene presents us with a genuine wergeld dispute, not within the Achaean caste, but amongst the Pelasgian tribal folk. We have seen that scholars are unanimous in holding that the Shield is of an essentially Mycenaean and therefore Pelasgian pattern. We have quoted Seebohm at length for the connexion between the wergeld-system of homicide-compensation and tribal organisation and control.[51] We have quoted Leaf’s recent views as to the probable existence of clans and tribes among the Pelasgian subject-people. The conclusion we have drawn is therefore a practically self-evident deduction from assumed premises.

Before we apply this general conclusion to the solution of minor difficulties presented by this Homeric passage, it may be desirable to discuss briefly the view of Lipsius which has been already mentioned. He maintains that the trial in question was a murder-trial—a decision of homicidal guilt or innocence: he therefore holds that the two talents of gold were the actual wergeld. He says[52]: ‘Upon him (of the claimants) who, according to their (_i.e._ the judges’) opinion—at any rate in the verdict of the majority—has given his opinion best, are bestowed two talents of gold which have been laid down in front of them. They (_i.e._ the talents) constitute, therefore, the objects of the dispute, the amount of the blood-atonement which the accused deposits and is to get back in case of victory,[53] but otherwise must transfer to the plaintiff.’ This opinion has been attacked on many grounds, but chiefly on the ground that the sum of two (Homeric) talents of gold is too small to constitute a wergeld-payment.[54] But it does not follow that the Achaean standard of values was necessarily that of their Pelasgian subjects. Even though it is true that in Homer a goodly price is paid for a freeman sold as a slave[55]; for a woman[56]; and for the ransom of the kidnapped son of a king[57]; although a ‘ransom unspeakable’ (ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα) is offered for a warrior’s life on the field of battle[58]; and Lycaon, son of Priam, is kidnapped and sold as a slave for 100 oxen and liberated by a ransom of 300 oxen[59]:—although ten talents of gold is an insignificant portion of the ‘placation’ offered to Achilles,[60] and two talents of gold is the reward paid by Aegisthus to his scout,[61] there is nothing in all this to prove that, amongst the poor tribal tillers of the soil, the sum of two talents of gold (which, though it was not real money, was still a valuable commodity) may not have sufficed as wergeld for a tribal race ruled over by strangers. The really insuperable objections which we find to the view of Lipsius are the following: In the first place tribal wergeld, even where it is comparatively small, as it was in Ireland under the Brehon Laws, is generally a collection of numerous valuables, whether cows or sheep or slaves. Even when money is substituted, the coins are small in value but numerous[62] (_e.g._ 200 solidi, 400 argentei). The reason for this lies in the diffused nature of the responsibility for payment, quite a number of families and individuals of the wider kindred being liable to contribution. Secondly, there is no parallel, in analogous instances of wergeld, for the assumption that the total amount was collected and deposited in court at any time, much less before the validity of the murder-charge had been established. In this case, the accused asserts (according to Lipsius’ translation) that he had paid the whole sum: but surely ἀποδοῦναι cannot be taken to mean ‘that the accused had deposited in court the normal wergeld.’ How could the accused assert that he had paid it, how could the plaintiff deny that he had received it—if the actual wergeld were deposited in court before their very eyes? Thirdly, to say that the two talents would be given to the most convincing pleader is a very strange way of describing a judgment of guilty or not guilty on a charge of homicide. Thus the text of Homer refutes the theory of Lipsius. Maine[63] indicates the real function of the two talents in this court by showing that they served the same purpose as the _sacramentum_ or court-fee of Roman law.

Assuming then that the court here described by Homer was a group of Pelasgian tribal chiefs or elders who could regularly be appealed to in such disputes, and who would also perform the functions of a murder-court if any person accused of homicide appealed to them to establish his innocence, we shall conclude our discussion by clearing up some minor points of difficulty.

We cannot concur with Glotz[64] in the opinion that the result of the verdict is a matter of life or death for the murderer. He says ‘Il peut y avoir un jugement de condamnation entraînant l’esclavage ou la mort.’[64] But quick justice is not a characteristic of the wergeld-exile-slavery-death system. We have seen how[65] among the Welsh tribes wergeld was paid in fortnightly instalments: and we may suppose that failure to pay any one instalment would have been a common subject for litigation. In the laws of King Edmund of England (A.D. 940-946) a period of twelve months[66] was allowed for payment of wergeld—‘to prevent manifold fightings.’ In the laws of Henry I. the period was fixed by ‘Sapientes.’

Again, in this Homeric passage as it is usually interpreted, both pleaders cannot have been right. Payment of wergeld was very different from a modern transfer of cash. It involved a complete readjustment of the whole property of two clans, so that hundreds of people were aware of the transaction. If however we suppose that a portion of the wergeld was unpaid, it will be possible to maintain that both parties were _bona fide_ in their assertions. We will assume that Homer, whether he is indulging his imagination or describing something which he had actually seen on a shield, is giving us an account of a typical wergeld dispute such as must commonly have taken place in Pelasgian life: we must especially remember that the accused (whom we assume to be the murderer) and the plaintiff are isolated members of large groups concerned in the payment, though the accused would normally have to pay the greatest individual share, and the plaintiff, if he was the nearest relative of the slain, would receive a large share of the wergeld. Let us suppose, then, that some of the wergeld had been paid, and that the part which had not been paid was due, not from the murderer himself or his immediate relatives,[67] but from some distant family of cousins who, unknown to the defendant, had defaulted or were unable to pay. We can, on this assumption, credit the defendant (that is, the murderer) with _bona fides_. Or again, assuming still that the defendant is the murderer, if we suppose that the disputed ‘instalment’ had been received, unknown to the plaintiff, by a distant family of his wider kindred for whom he is acting as the leading ‘avenger’ in negotiation—in a word, if we suppose that both litigants are acting as representatives of large groups, we can understand the contradiction in their statements which would be less intelligible if they were speaking for themselves personally. And have we not here a clue as to the constitution of the crowd which attended at the trial? Homer distinctly says that the crowd ‘cheered on both parties’[68]: and he adds: ‘taking part on either side’[69]: so interested were they in the issue, that the heralds had to maintain order.[70] This implies that there was a certain danger of rioting amongst the crowd—of something like the ‘manifold fightings’[71] of the Anglo-Saxons.

We cannot agree with the general view that this scene must be expected to contain a picture of intense public interest.[72] The parallel scene, in the city at peace, is a wedding! The Shield-picture contains also a reaping scene and a ploughing scene. Surely the artist was not so much at pains to reveal subjects of public interest as to depict topics of common occurrence. To us it seems obvious that one of the most frequent scenes of tribal life was a wergeld dispute: and as this dispute concerned the property of a large number of people, all such persons would be naturally interested in the verdict. In all ancient codes prominence is given to laws relating to theft, to inheritance, to marriage settlements and the like, rather than to what we should now consider graver matters. The reason is, that all ancient thought and religion centred around questions of property. Hence we think it more than probable that the ‘folk’ of the Homeric trial scene are not the general public but are rather the wider kinsmen of the plaintiff and the defendant. It would be not only natural but also right that they should have supported each one his own side, just as they would do in the event of a clan feud. But the success with which the heralds checked the passions of the people shows how very different the ancient Pelasgians were from the barbarous races who only accept wergeld under duress, and who hail with triumph the slightest pretext for another feud. Glotz, who thinks of the Pelasgians as he would of any barbarous primitive people, thinks therefore that in this scene the crowd came together armed to the teeth! ‘Les hostilités, un instant suspendues, menacent d’éclater à nouveau. Les deux ennemis qui déjà se résignaient mal à une transaction, échangent des injures, en attendant qu’ils se cherchent les armes à la main.’[73]

What now, we may ask, is the meaning of ἴστωρ in this passage? Homer says:

ἄμφω δ’ ἱέσθην ἐπὶ ἴστορι πεῖραρ ἑλέσθαι.

Leaf, in 1883, translated thus: ‘and each one was fain to obtain consummation on the word of his witness.’ Later (1892 and 1902), when he conceived that there were really two scenes described in the picture, he regarded the ἴστωρ as an arbitrator: ‘each one relied on an arbitrator to win the suit.’ We can only say that while the etymology and use of the word ἴστωρ permit of both interpretations, the relation of the verse to its context seems to us immeasurably in favour of the interpretation ‘witness.’ We may presume that the ‘witnesses’ were included in the ‘people’ and were brought forward to prove the actual transference of property which had or had not taken place. They are, therefore, similar to the ‘compurgators’ who figure so prominently in medieval litigation.[74]

Since Homer, then, the poet of the Achaeans, has given us only two incidental references to wergeld, we are not surprised that he has told us nothing about the details of the system. We may indeed infer that the amount payable was very large,[75] but Glotz reveals how little he is himself acquainted with the system when he asserts[76] that the offender only escaped death at the cost of ruin. ‘La ποινή,’ he says, ‘c’est une large, parfois peut-être une totale dépossession de l’offenseur au profit de la partie lésée. A la mort juste on n’échappe que par la ruine.’ It is probable that the payment took the form of ‘women, cattle, or horses.’[77] But in the absence of more definite evidence[78] we must fall back on what we can learn from analogous instances. It is for that reason that we have discussed at so much length the wergeld system in our introductory chapter. We have no doubt that the wergeld revealed by Homer was a genuine wergeld, and not a mere clumsy device for terminating the feuds of savages exhausted by slaughter.

We must now search further, in the text of Homer, for anything he may have to tell us of other alternative penalties existing amongst the Pelasgian people. In this matter we cannot trust to the analysis of Glotz, for he knows of no distinction between Achaeans and Pelasgians, and hence his account is misleading.

We may say at once that we cannot find any genuine Pelasgian reference to the death penalty as an alternative, in cases of homicide _outside the clan_, though from other analogies and, indirectly, from Homer[79] we may infer that the option was valid.

It is also doubtful if we can detect any genuine instances of slavery as a penalty for homicide. Glotz calls attention[80] to a very curious custom which is found among some primitive peoples, the custom of compelling a murderer to have himself ‘adopted’ by the ‘family’ of the victim. The murderer takes the place of the dead man! Among the Ossetes ‘a mother does not hesitate to recognise as her son the man who has deprived her of her son’—but this adoption does not give him a right to succeed to property. Glotz[81] thinks it more than probable that the same custom prevailed in the Homeric epoch, for he regards wergeld as a kind of debt, and slavery was a universal solvent of debt down to the time of Solon, by whom it was still permitted in the case of a daughter who was guilty of misconduct (_prise en faute_).[82] The offer of a daughter in marriage by Agamemnon to Achilles, in an age when men bought women as venal chattels, Glotz regards as a species of wergeld (ποινή).[83] He quotes[84] Apollodorus[85] for the eight years ‘captivity’ of Cadmus with Ares whose son (the dragon) he had murdered—after which Ares gave him his daughter in marriage.[86] For having massacred the Cyclopes,[87] Apollo became a shepherd in the service of Admetus.[88] Heracles, having slain Iphitus, serves Omphale for three years.[89] The only Homeric reference which Glotz mentions is a passage[90] which describes the year’s service of Apollo and Poseidon with Laomedon for a sum of money, at the command of Zeus: they built the walls of Troy, but Laomedon refused to pay their wages. As there is here no question of murder, we may say that there is nothing relevant about this Homeric passage.[91] Nor can we attach any weight to legends presented by Apollodorus, for, as we shall see, the abolition of wergeld in the seventh century B.C. made exile the inevitable penalty for murder and left the murderer no property to take away with him, and therefore he had little option but to accept menial service with a stranger.

If we reflect on the nature of the wergeld system, we shall see how difficult it would be to apply a penal form of slavery in default of payment within a tribe or in any definite locality. Wergeld was essentially a ‘diffused’ penalty, involving a large number of debtors, any one of whom could, equally with the murderer, be sold as a slave at the command of tribal authorities. To enslave a distant relative[92] of the murderer for debt would constitute a severe form of collective punishment: and it is much more probable that, in default of payment on the part of any individual family, the deficiency would have been contributed by the rest of the clan.[93] It is improbable that an entire family or gwely would have been so poor and needy that they could not by a series of instalments have discharged the wergeld debt. In a law of Henry I. it is decreed[94] that ‘Amends being set going (_i.e._ first deposits being paid) the rest of the wergeld shall be paid during a term to be fixed by the _Sapientes_.’ And we must not ignore the role of the _phratores_, or of the _congildones_, who were selected from neighbouring clans, and who might have to contribute in certain emergencies. Thus, in another law of Henry I. we read[95]: ‘If the slayer has no maternal (or paternal) relations the _congildones_ shall pay half, and for half he shall flee or pay.’ In ancient tribal Ireland an instance of bondage is related in the _Senchus Mor_,[96] but failure to pay occurs only in the case of an illegitimate son, who would normally have no real share in family property. There is here, indeed, a sort of ‘collectivity.’ Six men of the tribe of Conn of the Hundred Battles, including four brothers and an illegitimate nephew, had slain a brother who was under the protection of another tribal chieftain. A compensation was demanded, which is not so much wergeld as a fine payable to the chief. Five of the six men were able to pay, but the illegitimate murderer could not pay: so his mother was handed over to the tribe as a bondwoman in pledge. However, the fact that the slain man had been adopted by an outside tribe, and that the money was paid to the chief, forbid the conclusion that money was paid for murder within the kindred in tribal Ireland or that kin-slaying was normally atoned for by bondage in the family of the victim.

It may be urged that slavery was accepted as an expiation of _manslaughter_ within the kindred on the ground that wergeld was impossible, that death was too dreadful, and that perpetual exile or outlawry was too severe a punishment. It is obvious, from the very nature of the case, that wergeld cannot apply to bloodshed within the clan or the wider kindred. Seebohm has found no instance of such a penalty amongst the tribes whose customs he has investigated. He points out that ‘if it (_i.e._ _the murder_) was of someone within the kindred, there was no slaying of the murderer. Under Cymric custom there was no _galanas_ (_i.e._ wergeld), nothing but execration and ignominious exile.’[97]... ‘There is no feud within the kindred when one kinsman slays another. Accidental homicide does not seem to be followed even by exile. But murder breaks the tribal tie, and is followed by outlawry.’[98] ‘Tribal custom everywhere left the worst crime of all—murder of a parent or kinsman—without redress, ... unavenged.’[99] Glotz, also, holds that there was no drastic punishment for bloodshed within the clan: ‘Rien qu’un parent fait contre un parent n’est susceptible de châtiment.’[100] But the graver crimes against one’s kindred are penalised, he says, by exile:—‘La peine la plus grave qui soit ordinairement infligée ... c’est l’expulsion de la famille.’[101] We believe that in all clans which worshipped ancestors kin-slaying was usually punished by exile, perpetual or temporary. In a later chapter, when we come to discuss the survival of primitive clan-customs in historical Attica, the grounds for this belief will become apparent. At present we will merely say, with Fustel de Coulanges,[102] that kinsmen would not encourage the presence of a kin-slayer as a slave in daily intercourse with his clan, nor would they easily permit him to take part, at least for a time, in the worship of the family hearth—of the clan ‘fire’ which he by his act had to some extent extinguished.[103] We prefer to see him, as Glotz[104] describes it, stripped naked, and escorted to the clan boundaries, beaten and insulted, declared an outlaw for years or for ever for treason to his blood. Later, we shall see[105] that when Athenian State-magistrates are charged with the execution of the sentence of death, the kin-slayer may no longer escape, and his clan will refuse to have his corpse ‘gathered to his fathers.’ It was thus that the King of the Wisigoths commanded the judge to punish with death the kin-slayer who in the system of ‘private vengeance’ saved his life by becoming an outlaw from his clan.[106]

We find a reference to the exile penalty _for kin-slaying_ in Homer.[107] We are told that Tlepolemus, son of Hercules by Astyocheia, came to Troy from Rhodes, whither he had fled, because when grown to manhood he had slain his father’s maternal uncle, an old man, Likymnius, of the stock of Ares. ‘Then with speed he built ships and gathered much folk together and went fleeing across the deep, because the other sons and grandsons of the mighty Hercules threatened him.’ So he came to Rhodes, a wanderer, and his folk settled by kinship in three tribes and were loved by Zeus.’ Leaf would probably regard this passage as non-Homeric, since it happens to occur in the ‘Catalogue’: but this will not vitiate our argument, as the predominant atmosphere of post-Homeric Greece was, in Leaf’s view, that of the ‘group-system’ and there was no break in the custom of tribal wergeld. We may assume[108] that the family of Hercules was Pelasgian. Homer does not mention the place where the slaying took place, but it was, possibly, Mycenae, of which Electryon, father of Likymnius, was at one time king. Likymnius was a half-brother of Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, whose birth, according to Homer,[109] took place at Thebes. Likymnius was, therefore, a maternal uncle of Hercules and grand-uncle of Tlepolemus. In a normal clan the avengers of Likymnius must have included the brothers of Tlepolemus, since the homicide affected the whole kindred-group. The case is remarkably similar to that described in _Beowulf_, and referred to by F. Seebohm,[110] but Beowulf took no part in the quarrel between his maternal and paternal kindreds and the quarrel was in violation of tribal usage. This is precisely the kind of event which would have tested to the utmost the solidarity of the kindred; for there was a clan law that all the members who were akin either paternally or maternally had to act together in the avenging of a kinsman. The murder of Likymnius—who was not a kinsman of Amphitryon, grandfather of Tlepolemus, but who was akin to Hercules, to Tlepolemus and the brothers of Tlepolemus—was a crucial test, as it involved a conflict between loyalty to clan law and loyalty to one’s nearer relatives. When Homer speaks of the avengers of Likymnius as the ‘sons and grandsons of the mighty Hercules,’ it does not follow that the family of Hercules were the sole avengers, but that, as the nearest relatives of Tlepolemus, their action was the most important, seeing that they were the kinsmen whose obedience to clan law was most difficult and, therefore, most appreciated.

Glotz[111] does not seem to us to have rightly interpreted this passage. He refuses to believe that the duty of vengeance was so strict as to compel a man to exercise it against a relative of the paternal line, in the interest of a victim of the maternal line. Moreover, he argues that the sons of Hercules are not the avengers of Likymnius, for, if they were, they would not have allowed him to depart. Here, we believe, Glotz is confusing the exile penalty of Pelasgian tribes with the Achaean exile, which was a flight from death. They let him go, says Glotz, because they wish to avoid a feud within the clan—‘Ils veulent seulement que le meurtrier s’en aille, parce qu’ils entendent ne pas se brouiller avec des alliés.’[112] We think, on the contrary, that the case of Tlepolemus furnishes a splendid instance of the solidarity of the clan. There was no question of wergeld—nor, we think, of slavery. It was a question of exile or death. The brothers of Tlepolemus appear to lead the avengers. From this we need not infer that Likymnius, an old man, had no sons or grandsons or brothers living at the time. We have said that a clan conflict was averted by the decision of the sons of Hercules to join in avenging. Rather than tolerate in the clan society, in the worship of common ancestors, the slayer of a kinsman, the brothers of Tlepolemus would, if necessary, have killed him. It is with _death_ that they threatened him, if he remained. But his exile was not a flight from death: he was granted a certain time in which to build himself ships. Such delay is characteristic of Pelasgian but not of Achaean vengeance. There would be some difficulty in interpreting the reference to the people whom he carried with him into exile, were it stated, as fortunately it is not, that they were his kinsmen. His companions were hangers-on, lackland men who were content to join a powerful ‘exile’ emigrant. He founded in Rhodes a city, in typical Pelasgian fashion,[113] dividing the folk by kinship into three tribes. It is perhaps because he was a son of Hercules that his exile appears to be no excessive penalty but a mere inconvenience. It is perhaps for the same reason that he was loved by Zeus, the father of Hercules.[114]

For the Pelasgian penalty of exile as an alternative to wergeld for homicide _outside the kindred_, the most relevant, though indirect, Homeric reference is a passage in the _Iliad_[115] which we have already discussed, in which we hear of a man-slayer who abides among his people when he has paid a goodly wergeld. We have already argued that this passage refers to the tribal customs of the Pelasgians, and that the Achaean Ajax, who uses the words, is borrowing, for rhetorical purposes, a sentiment which did not characterise the Achaean attitude to homicide.[116] We may now point out furthermore that the vagueness of the description of the wergeld payment, both in this passage and in that which relates to the Shield of Achilles, suggests, if it does not prove, that the description proceeds from Achaeans who were not familiar with the details of the system, but had merely become acquainted with its outstanding principles. When Homer says ‘a man has been known to accept a blood-price for the death of a brother or a son,’ the statement is only a vague description, as anyone who is familiar with real wergeld will admit. We have seen that a large number of people participated both in the payment and in the satisfaction. Whether Homer can be taken to mean that exile would have absolved the murderer’s kindred from all payment, as it did in the laws of King Edmund of England,[117] or whether it merely acquitted the murderer of his share of the debt,[118] are questions which, owing to the vagueness of our Homeric references, cannot here be decided.

These are the only Homeric references to the exile penalty for homicide which can be definitely associated with Pelasgian customs. There is a passage in the _Odyssey_[119] in which the penalty is referred to, but we think it wiser to interpret the passage as an Achaean reference, and to regard the exile as a flight from death. Odysseus, having slain the suitors—an action characterised by arbitrary Achaean hypervengeance—urges his son Telemachus to consult with him and take joint measures to prevent retaliation from the relatives of the slain. He says to Telemachus: ‘A man who has slain a single individual amongst the folk (ἐνὶ δήμῳ) goes into exile and leaves his connexions and his native land, even when the slain man has not many “helpers” left behind: but we have slain the mainstay of the city, those who were noblest of the youths in Ithaca, so I bid thee take thought upon the matter.’ The outlook of the Achaean over-lord is clearly indicated in this passage, in the importance which Odysseus seems to attach to the numbers or military strength of the avenging relatives. For the Achaeans, murder went unavenged if there were no avengers or if the avengers were not sufficiently powerful to retaliate. Blood was rarely shed in vengeance, because the murderer usually fled and took precautions against pursuit. The idea of fleeing when the fear of ‘reprisals’ was negligible was not very intelligible to an Achaean, and it is mentioned here as an instance of unusual caution, in order to emphasise the danger for Telemachus and Odysseus who remain unprepared at home surrounded by a host of powerful and hostile Ithacans. Later on, Odysseus suggests that music and dancing should resound in the house to prevent the rumour of the slaughter being disseminated until he has time to prepare his plans.[120] When, eventually, the truth became known, the relatives of the suitors took counsel together,[121] in the manner of an Achaean council of war, but not as a Pelasgian clan or tribe assembled to judge of guilt or innocence. Some said that Odysseus was justified in his act; others prepare for war. The fight ensues, and many are slain.[122] Athene[123] intervenes to reconcile the feud; she acts not as the patron of clan law but as the symbol of Achaean military discipline. Odysseus does not depart into exile: the covenant which the outraged relatives submissively enter into came from the throne of Zeus, and pledged them to serve the king for all his days.[124]

Neither can we put forward as evidence for the Pelasgian exile penalty for homicide the passage in the _Iliad_[125] in which Priam’s inexplicable appearance before Achilles and his friends evokes in them an emotion which Homer compares to the amazement (θάμβος) felt when a man ‘slays one in his country and goes into exile to the house of a rich man[126] and wonder possesses them that look at him.’ The amazement here described would be equally natural whether the stranger was an exiled Pelasgian or, as Leaf suggests,[127] an Achaean fleeing for his life. Moreover, suspicion has been thrown upon the whole passage by the reference, in two scholia, to ‘purification,’ which has led Müller[128] to infer that the scholiasts read, in their texts, ἁγνιτέω instead of ἀφνειοῦ. We hope to show later[129] the error of Müller’s view that purification for homicide was a characteristic of the Homeric age, and hence we maintain that either the whole passage is a later interpolation or that the reading ἁγνιτέω found its way into some Homeric texts from a marginal gloss of post-Homeric origin, suggested by a false interpretation of the word ἄτη in a preceding verse.

Hence, while the poems of Homer indicate beyond reasonable doubt the existence of a genuine Pelasgian exile penalty, it is significant that the poet of the Achaeans tends to ignore the exile[130] alternative as he tends also to ignore the wergeld alternative, in the system of penalties for homicide adopted by a tribal people outside the Achaean caste.

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY HOMICIDE

It is generally[131] asserted that primitive societies recognise no distinction either between wilful murder and manslaughter (which presumes a certain degree of guilt), or even between wilful murder and accidental slaying. The reason assigned is that bloodshed, even in comparatively advanced civilisations, is a ‘civil’ rather than a ‘criminal’ offence—a matter for damages and compensation rather than for exemplary punishment. Thus Glotz[132] says: ‘L’intention n’est rien: le fait est tout. Pas de circonstances atténuantes. Nulle différence entre l’assassinat lâchement prémédité et l’homicide involontaire.’ To the possible objection that the distinction is found in Greek legends, as given by Aeschylus, Apollodorus, Pausanias and others, he replies that these legends are of late origin—a view which is not quite consistent with his usual attitude.[133] He thinks that those legends were invented by the Athenians to restore the history of the Areopagus, the Palladium, and the Delphinium courts.[134] He attributes the moral distinction, which these courts are assumed to imply, between voluntary and involuntary homicide to a period ‘not much anterior to Dracon,’ but he admits that the idea was being developed before that time in ‘family law’—that is, in clan justice. He seems to us rather inconsistent in holding that ‘dans les lois sur l’homicide (de Dracon) apparaît pour la première fois la distinction du meurtre prémédité et du meurtre involontaire,’ and in maintaining at the same time that it was a ‘principe lentement élaboré dans la justice sociale.’[135] The distinction was developed, he thinks, not from any philanthropic motives but only because private vengeance was abolished and the newly established power of the State sought thereby to restrain the taste for blood. Now we may admit, with Glotz,[136] that the distinction is a late development in most races whose social customs are known to us—for instance, amongst the Germans, the Slavs, the Celts, the Scandinavians, and the Ossetes. France does not seem to have recognised the distinction in its written laws before A.D. 819. In feudal England it does not make its appearance before the time of Henry VIII.[137] But Seebohm[138] shows that in the Lex Wisigothorum (about A.D. 650) ‘a homicide committed unknowingly (_nesciens_) is declared to be ... no cause of death. “Let the man who has committed it depart secure.”’ The introduction of Roman law may have caused this innovation, for Roman law admitted the distinction from the time of the Twelve Tables[139] onwards, and this code was still operative amongst Gallic peoples when they were conquered by the Wisigoths.[140] From _Beowulf_, however, Seebohm[141] infers that in Scandinavia within the clan ‘accidental homicide does not seem to be followed even by exile.’ The poem says[142]: ‘Hæthcyn by arrow from hornbow brought him (Herebeald) down, his near kinsman. He missed the target and shot his brother. One brother killed the other with bloody dart. That was a wrong past compensation.... Any way and every way it was inevitable that the Etheling must quit life unavenged.’ In this case, of course, there could be no question of wergeld.

In the ‘Canones Wallici’[143] (Celtic laws of the period A.D. 700-800), which are based on the tribal wergeld system as adopted by the Church, we find this clause: ‘Si quis homicidium ex intentione commiserit, ancillas III et servos III reddat.’ This implies a different penalty when murder was not _ex intentione_.

The Brehon laws[144] contain minute distinctions of payment in different cases of wounding. If a bishop’s blood was shed in certain quantities, the guilty person had to be hanged or to pay seven _cumhals_ (slaves)—or their equivalent in silver and gold: if a less quantity of blood was shed, the aggressor was condemned to lose his hand. If the blood of a priest was shed in certain quantities, the criminal’s hand was cut off or seven _ancillae_ paid, if the act was intentional; if it was not intentional, one _ancilla_ sufficed for compensation. It is clear then that this distinction is not always absent even in a wergeld system where the crime of bloodshed is particularly objective. We have seen[145] that wergeld often carried with it an ‘honour-price,’ an atonement for the insult, which was caused by homicide. This price, it seems to us, could easily admit of a modification of the penalty. Moreover, it is possible that wergeld is not always to be regarded as a measure of the loss sustained by a clan, but as also to some extent a ransom of the prisoner’s life. ‘Partout,’ says Glotz,[146] ‘la composition varie selon le rang de la victime: et selon le rang du coupable: elle est à la fois la rançon du meurtrier et le prix du sang versé.’ For the Germans, according to Coulanges,[147] ‘la composition est un rachat, non pas rachat de la victime mais rachat de la vie du coupable.’[148] Is it not natural to suppose that a system of compensation for homicide which contains such minute differentiations would leave the road open for a discrimination as to degrees of guilt?

It is time to ask whether Homer has anything to say of this distinction. We will admit that he says nothing which is directly relevant to the question. But we will examine two passages with a view to showing that the distinction was known outside the Achaean caste.

The first passage is from the _Odyssey_[149] and is concerned with King Oedipus the parricide and with his punishment. Odysseus narrates how, in Hades, he saw Epicaste, and how ‘he that had slain his father wedded her and straightway the gods made known these things to men. Yet he abode in pain in pleasant Thebes, ruling the Cadmeans, by reason of the baneful devices of the gods. She indeed went down to Hades ... but for him she left behind many a woe, such as the Erinnyes of a mother bring to pass.’ Of all forms of homicide, that by which a son deprived a parent of life was regarded as the most horrible. Probably even the Achaeans, as we shall see presently, felt a certain horror at the thought of parricide. Homer, then, cannot understand why the gods, who had taken the trouble of revealing the crimes of Oedipus, nevertheless permitted, if they did not encourage, his continued rule over the Cadmeans. All other parricides of whom Homer had ever heard had taken to flight! And what was the pain which Oedipus endured? Was it remorse of conscience? Or was it his self-inflicted blindness? Euripides[150] tells how the sons of Oedipus confined their father under bolts and hid him away that his sad fate might be forgotten. We shall see, later, when we analyse the Oedipodean legends as given by the Attic dramatists, how Oedipus is filled with natural grief, but is free from that sense of moral guilt which we should expect him to have felt. He constantly pleads that he did not know that the man whom he slew was Laius, his father. Was this plea invented in later years, or was it part of the original legend? Seebohm[151] has told us that in primitive clan societies ‘accidental homicide within the kindred does not seem to be followed even by exile.’ Was it, then, because of ‘accidental’ or involuntary[152] parricide that Oedipus continued to rule over the Cadmeans? Oedipus was not an Achaean. Minoan or Cadmean, which was he? It does not matter, for our purpose, if he obeyed the ‘dooms’ of private vengeance in tribal society. Homer is equally vague about the working of the mother’s curse. Why did Epicaste curse Oedipus? The Attic dramatists do not mention this. Oedipus is cursed in Homer for one reason, and, as we think, for one reason only. It is because other slayers of kinsmen who did not suffer punishment were usually cursed. Thus Meleager, who in a quarrel slew his uncle, was cursed by his mother Althaea.[153] It is an Homeric maxim that the Erinnyes command men to honour their parents.[154]

The second passage which we shall cite is from the _Iliad_,[155] a passage in which the ghost of Patroclus tells Achilles how his father Menoitius brought him away from home to the realm of Peleus on the day when he slew the son of Amphidamas, though he was but a boy and did not intend it, and was angry over dice.[156] As this is the only passage in Homer which contains an explicit reference to involuntary homicide, and as the slayer is compelled to flee for ever precisely as if the act had been wilful murder, this passage has been quoted[157] as a proof that in early Greece there was no distinction made between murder and manslaughter. If, however, we are right in our discrimination between the Pelasgian and the Achaean attitudes to homicide, it would almost seem as if the passage could be regarded, not indeed as a proof, but perhaps as an indication, of the existence of this distinction in Homeric Greece. May we not suppose that the words of Patroclus are not an expression of subjective innocence by a member of a caste which regarded only objective facts, but a ‘reminiscence’ of a higher ethical code which obtained in the tribal villages around the fortress, and which had enshrined itself in the language which the Achaeans learned from the Pelasgians? In the words of Patroclus we think we can find an echo of a distinction which, in later times, is made the basis of grades of penalties in certain laws of homicide. Plato, whose penal code is probably modelled on the unwritten laws of tribal institutions, points out that a person who slays another in a passion but with intent to kill shall be exiled for a period of three years, while a person who slays in a passion without intent to kill is punished by exile for two years. He adds that ‘it is difficult to give laws on such matters with accuracy.... Of all these matters, therefore, let the guardians of the laws have cognisance ... and let the exiles acquiesce in the decisions of such magistrates.’ We cannot, of course, ignore the main fact given by Homer that Patroclus was compelled to flee from death because of involuntary or quasi-involuntary homicide. But Patroclus was an Achaean and we do not associate with the Achaeans any tendency to discriminate between degrees of guilt. The Achaean system of military control within a small dominant caste was merely capable of preventing indefinite retaliations. It was not interested in homicide as an offence against the stability of social organisations. It had no homicide tribunals, no elaborate code of penalties. We could not expect it to manifest any subtle power of delicate discrimination. It is possible that the military system of historical Sparta was equally crude in its conceptions of homicide-guilt as it was, apparently, equally severe in its punishment.[158]

We shall see, later,[159] when we analyse the laws of Plato’s homicide-code and of the ancient Hebrew code that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying was much more likely to have arisen in the tribal customs of village-communities accustomed to the most minute differentiations in their wergeld system than in systems emanating from centralised political or religious authority. The Homeric poems give us, it is true, no reliable evidence which would help us to arrive at a definite decision on the existence of such a distinction in early Greece, but from the passages we have cited we may at least extract a suggestion that the distinction was really appreciated, and we have suggested a source from which that sentiment may very easily have sprung.

JUSTIFIABLE AND UNJUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE

We come now to a kindred problem, namely, the question whether the Pelasgians[160] were aware of a difference between justifiable and non-justifiable slaying? Most writers will admit that there was no vengeance set in motion by death on the field of battle. It was a recognised challenge of strength, an ἄγων, the issue of which was accepted as the will of the gods. But in local blood-vengeance, arising, let us suppose, out of failure to pay wergeld, or when the murderer’s clan defended him at home or did not expel him and feud followed, was there no distinction between murder and just revenge? Glotz, as we should expect, holds that there was no distinction between murder and revenge.[161] ‘Coupable ou non coupable, il est responsable. Qui a versé du sang doit du sang.’ It is thus, certainly, with modern Montenegrins, Albanians and others. But are the creators of Mycenaean civilisation to be compared with these? Glotz conceives the blood-vengeance of early Greece to be what we have called unrestricted vendetta, but this mode of vengeance is not usually associated with settled tribal communities who are otherwise known to accept wergeld, and we maintain that the Pelasgians had reached this stage at the dawn of Greek history. Glotz bases his view for the most part[162] on those numerous ‘flights’ of murderers which Homer records. Now, these references concern murderers, not avengers of murder; and there is no instance, in Homer, of an avenger of blood becoming in turn the object of vengeance. The non-Homeric instances cited by Glotz,[163] such as the trial of Ares for the murder of Halirrhothius, who had dishonoured his daughter; the flight of Hyettos from Argos to Orchomenus, after slaying Molouros, who was caught in adultery with his wife, are derived from Pausanias, Apollodorus, or Euripides, and are therefore irrelevant for the interpretation of the Homeric age.

We admit, with Glotz, that in cases of adultery and seduction slaying was unjustifiable in Homer which would have been justifiable in historical Greece. Glotz[164] points out that the system of compensation for adultery and seduction which is found in the laws of Gortyn recalls, in a certain manner, the custom applied by Hephaestus to Ares in the _Odyssey_.[165] He says of this system: ‘Nous y retrouvons aussi, exprimées avec précision, quelques-unes des règles que les coutumes ont transmises aux législations[166].... Entre la ποινή de Gortyne et celle de la fin des temps Homériques la ressemblance est frappante.’[167] This is as much as to say that ‘towards the close of the Homeric epoch’ custom (or, as we should say, tribal unwritten law) compelled the husband of an adulterous wife to accept, in certain cases, compensation from the paramour, and to arrest, but not to slay him. In the _Odyssey_,[168] Hephaestus, having surprised Ares in the arms of his wife, decides to imprison them, saying ‘the snare and the bond will hold them till her sire give back to me the gifts of wooing.’ The other gods, among whom ‘laughter unquenchable arose,’ say that ‘Ares owes the adulterer’s fine’ (μοιχάγρι’ ὀφέλλει). In the _Iliad_[169] the wife of Proetus falsely accused Bellerophon of attempted adultery,[170] and begged her husband to slay the offender. But Homer tells us that Proetus feared to slay him, and sent him forth to Lycia with the famous σήματα λυγρά—a written injunction to the King of Lycia to put Bellerophon to death—an act which suggests that the death penalty for adultery was not customary in Greece.[171] And surely the existence of a prescribed μοιχάγρια suggests that even amongst the Achaeans the slaying of an adulterer was unjustifiable. We may further infer that amongst the Pelasgians there existed some authority, whether tribal tradition, or clan-custom, which discriminated between the cases in which death could and those in which it could not be inflicted with impunity. The collective execution of death in case of refusal to obey clan-laws regarding the payment of wergeld, or μοιχάγρια, is a clear manifestation of that social justice which claims the right to decide between justifiable and unjustifiable slaying.

We cannot, of course, find any evidence in the Homeric poems for a tabulation of instances of justifiable homicide such as is found in the laws of Dracon.[172] But the Homeric poems present us with a picture which is mainly, if not exclusively, Achaean, and we cannot infer from the absence of Homeric evidence that the Pelasgian tribes which had developed, as we think,[173] a capacity for discriminating between degrees of homicide guilt, had not also evolved a definite conception of the distinction between just and unjust slaying. We shall see[174] later that even the Achaeans recognised at least a distinction between murder and just revenge. Thus, the Achaean Orestes who slew his mother to avenge his father is said by Homer to have ‘gained renown amongst all men.’[175] In the _Odyssey_,[176] Amphinomus, one of the suitors, refuses to join a conspiracy to murder Telemachus without consulting the gods: ‘I for one would not choose to kill Telemachus: it is a fearful thing to slay one of the stock of kings: nay, first let us seek the counsel of the gods, and if the oracles (θέμιστες) of great Zeus approve, myself I will slay him and bid all the rest to aid; but if the gods are disposed to avert it, I bid you, too, refrain.’ The θέμιστες here attributed to Zeus must be regarded as a reflex of the public opinion of the Achaean caste, which, therefore, had evolved a distinction between just and unjust slaying. In another place[177] Eupeithes, the father of a slain suitor, says ‘It is a scorn if we avenge not ourselves on the slayers of our sons and brothers; rather would I die!’ It is obvious that an act which is a duty prescribed by caste or law or custom cannot be regarded as a crime. So,[178] when the feud arose between Odysseus, who regarded himself as justified in slaying the suitors who had insulted his family, and the suitors, who were contriving what they considered a just revenge, Homer tells us that Odysseus would have slain them all, had not Athene intervened and ordered both sides to desist and to enter into a solemn covenant of reconciliation. This act of Athene[179] signifies that in her opinion both sides are justified in shedding blood, and hence that the feud can be cancelled without disturbing the balance of justice. Now Glotz[180] rightly points out that the ancients attributed to their gods such opinions as they themselves professed; and if Achaeanised Athene acted thus, how can we avoid assuming the existence of at least as high a standard amongst the Pelasgians? In Homer then we may conclude that there existed some distinction between just and unjust slaying. For Glotz, this distinction arises only when the State takes justice into its own hands and legitimatises private vengeance after trial. The date of this evolution, he thinks, is the age of Dracon. But we maintain that, long before Dracon, or perhaps even before Homer, there existed, in Greece, States within States, that is, clans and tribes and phratries, whose interest it was, at the dawn of civilised society, to create the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable bloodshed, which is so vital to domestic peace.

COLLECTIVITY IN VENGEANCE

Nothing that has been said in this chapter is incompatible with the view that punishment, in early societies, tends to be collective and hereditary. Feuds of blood must have occasionally occurred amongst the early Pelasgian folk, but we cannot ignore the control of tribal authority, and the Achaean domination which may have acted as a check. However, it is one thing to declare war on a group which refuses to fulfil the law of a district or of a tribe; it is quite another thing to refuse the ‘satisfaction’ prescribed by custom, and to make a single murder an invariable cause of incessant bloodshed. This is the state of Homeric society as conceived by Glotz, and by most writers on the subject of early Greek homicide. We prefer to emphasise the triumph of reason over passion which is symbolised by a wergeld system of local vengeance, by the worship of common ancestors, real or fictitious, by the early political synoekism of many Greek districts, and by international Amphictyonies of immemorial antiquity. We think that it was in post-Homeric times, when the Achaean control was removed, and the Migrations broke up the solidarity of Pelasgian clans, that Greek societies developed unrestricted vendetta. Glotz[181] has difficulties about the Homeric age. He has to admit that there is no infallible system of collective punishment in Homer. ‘Dans l’Iliade et dans l’Odyssée,’ he says, ‘les querelles strictement personnelles ne lient plus infailliblement au sort de l’offenseur tous les siens. On n’y voit point, après un meurtre ἐμφύλιος, les vengeurs du sang poursuivre la famille du meurtrier.’ The difficulty is obviated by our theory of Achaean restricted vendetta. The vengeance of Achilles[182] for the death of Patroclus is no objection to our theory, as it is not revenge for homicide proper: war is distinct from peace. Achaean kings confiscate property, transfer and destroy whole cities[183]: this is but the autocracy of a quasi-feudal militarism; it is not a punishment of moral guilt.

Euripides[184] makes Tyndareus utter a sentiment regarding the legitimate modes of homicide-vengeance which seems to us to be very applicable to early Greek societies. Tyndareus objects to the infliction of death as a penalty for the slaying of Agamemnon, on the ground that such penalties, in the absence of State-control, would inevitably lead to an indefinite series of retaliations. ‘Right well,’ he says, ‘did our ancestors in olden times enact these ordinances ... they punished (the murderer) with exile, but they suffered no one to slay him in return, for (in that eventuality) each successive avenger would be liable for bloodshed.... I will support the law, and try to check this brutal murderous practice destructive alike of individual States and of the world.’ We shall see later[185] that Euripides is either consciously archaising in this passage or that the view of Tyndareus was somehow preserved in the legend which the dramatist follows. In either case, it seems to us to contain a valuable principle regarding the fear of unrestricted vendetta, of collective and hereditary punishment, which is found in civilised tribal societies in a condition of private vengeance. Such societies have either to abandon civilisation, and to fall back into a chronic state of chaotic barbarism, or to adopt a system of ‘social justice’ which, by definite rules and regulations, expressive of tribal authority, by public opinion and religious sanctions, prevents, as far as possible, the innocent from suffering with the guilty.

The penalty of wergeld was, in a certain sense, collective because it was diffused throughout the kindred. But this penalty is clearly far removed from the collective punishment of a barbarous hypervengeance. It arises, we have said, from the simple fact that property, in early society, was to a great extent collective or common; and also from the fact that the individual of tribal life was not the isolated personality which feudal and modern civilisations have evolved, but was rather a branch of one great wide-spreading tree in which he lived and moved and had his being. Finally, in regard to the Homeric society, we must remember that the Achaeans stood on quite a separate plane. Amongst them there is little or no suggestion of collective punishment. Achaean military discipline prevented it. Such traces of this punishment as are found in many later legends must be attributed, as we shall see, to post-Homeric influences.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See _Blutrache bei den Griechen_, chapter i.

[2] See _History of Greece_ (second edition), p. 172.

[3] _History of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 32.

[4] See _Manual of Greek Antiquities_, p. 407.

[5] P. 408.

[6] _La Solidarité de la Famille_, Book I. (_passim_).

[7] See _s.v._ φόνος, p. 439.

[8] See _supra_, p. 11.

[9] _Loc. cit._ p. 440.

[10] See, _e.g._, Glotz, _loc. cit._ pp. 56-7: ‘Les Grecs ont toujours senti et manifesté avec une vivacité extrême le bonheur de se venger. Le cannibalisme qu’ils avaient pratiqué à l’époque de la sauvagerie primitive, resta dans leur langue, s’il disparut de leurs mœurs.’ On p. 57 they are compared to Montenegrins and Arabs.

[11] Pp. 253-5.

[12] _Il._ xxiii. 85.

[13] _Il._ ix. 565.

[14] _Il._ xv. 334; _Il._ xxiv. 480.

[15] _Il._ xviii. 490-508.

[16] P. 516.

[17] See also _J.H.S._ xiii. 123-6 (1887). The view was first suggested by Müncher (1829); see Glotz, p. 116.

[18] See _infra_, p. 37 ff.

[19] See _supra_, p. 21.

[20] _Op. cit._ p. 162 ff.

[21] _Op. cit._ p. 105.

[22] Pott, Corssen, Curtius, quoted by Glotz, _loc. cit._

[23] _E.g._ _Il._ ix. 131-2, ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα.

[24] _Op. cit._ p. 110.

[25] _Op. cit._ p. 114.

[26] Compare the weeping of Hrethel, when his eldest son was killed by his second son—and no vengeance was possible within the ‘family.’ _Beowulf_ (2464), quoted by F. Seebohm, p. 63.

[27] _Il._ viii. 500 ff.

[28] _Il._ ix. 378-386.

[29] _Il._ ix. 625.

[30] See _infra_, p. 43.

[31] See _Iliad_ xii. 422 and _supra_, p. 17.

[32] _Op. cit._ p. 115. ‘Rien ne prouve ici que la justice sociale intervienne à quelque titre et de quelque manière que ce soit, ni pour imposer ou conseiller un accommodement, ni pour indiquer le montant de la composition.’

[33] _Il._ ix. 634 suggests an ‘arrangement’ by which either (_a_) exile absolved the clan from punishment (_cf._ _Laws of King Edmund_, Seebohm, p. 356) or (_b_) exile was accepted in lieu of the murderer’s _share_ of the wergeld (_cf._ Canones Wallici, quoted by Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 109).

[34] See Soph. _Antigone_, 456-7.

[35] _Il._ xviii. 490-508.

[36] _Op. cit._ pp. 473-4.

[37] See his Edition of _Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. 340-1.

[38] See Monro, _loc. cit._

[39] P. 516; _supra_, p. 25.

[40] P. 312.

[41] See also _J.H.S._ xiii. pp. 123-6 (1887), and Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 116.

[42] P. 516.

[43] 490-508.

[44] ἴστωρ, see _infra_, p. 43.

[45] _E.g._ Hofmeister, Leist, Dareste; see Glotz, _loc. cit._

[46] _Op. cit._ p. 116.

[47] P. 312 ff.

[48] For a fine illustration of Achaean ‘arbitration’ in homicide, see Euripides, _Hecuba_ (1130 ff.).

[49] P. 258.

[50] Minoans or Achaeans.

[51] _Cf._ Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 122. Aussi celui, qui traite au nom d’une famille lésée, doit avoir pleins pouvoirs d’agir au nom de tous ou en référer au groupe qu’il représente.

[52] See _Das Attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren_, Einleitung, pp. iv. ff.

[53] That is, if he was proved to be innocent of the crime.

[54] See Leaf’s note in edition of _Iliad_ (1902), p. 611 ff.

[55] _Od._ xv. 388.

[56] _Od._ xv. 429.

[57] _Od._ xv. 452.

[58] _Il._ x. 378.

[59] _Il._ xxi. 41-80.

[60] _Il._ ix. 264.

[61] _Od._ iv. 525.

[62] See _supra_, p. 10; Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 123 ff.

[63] _Ancient Law_, p. 313. See Leaf, edition of _Iliad_ (1902), p. 612.

[64] _Op. cit._ p. 119.

[65] Seebohm, _op. cit._ pp. 43-5.

[66] See _supra_, p. 11; Seebohm, _op. cit._ pp. 328, 356.

[67] See _supra_, p. 7.

[68] λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον.

[69] ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί.

[70] κήρυκες δ’ ἄρα λαὸν ἐφήτυον.

[71] Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 356.

[72] Leaf, edition of _Iliad_ (1902) p. 611; Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 118 ff.

[73] _Op. cit._ p. 118.

[74] Seebohm, _op. cit._ pp. 203-5; 409-11.

[75] _Il._ ix. 634.

[76] _Op. cit._ p. 129.

[77] Glotz, _op. cit._ p. 118.

[78] _Cf._ also _Il._ xxi. 41; _Od._ xv. 388, 452.

[79] _Il._ ii. 666.

[80] _Op. cit._ p. 162.

[81] _Op. cit._ p. 163.

[82] _Op. cit._ p. 29, and Plutarch, _Solon_, 23.

[83] P. 130.

[84] Pp. 164, 173.

[85] iii. 4. 2.

[86] Hesiod, _Theog._ 937.

[87] P. 173.

[88] Apollod. iii. 10. 4. _Cf._ Euripides, _Alcestis_, 1-10.

[89] Apollod. ii. 6. 2.

[90] _Il._ xxi. 442 ff.

[91] The same remark applies to _Od._ xv. 388, 452, where the ‘ransom’ and temporary bondage are connected with kidnapping by pirates.

[92] A murderer’s children are condemned to bondage for two or three generations in the Salic Law. Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 164.

[93] _Cf._ the Chrenecruda of Salic Law by which poorer members throw the burden on the richer. Seebohm, p. 141.

[94] Seebohm, p. 328.

[95] Seebohm, p. 323.

[96] Seebohm, pp. 93-4.

[97] P. 42.

[98] P. 71.

[99] P. 129.

[100] P. 19.

[101] P. 22.

[102] _Op. cit._ pp. 125-126.

[103] Coulanges, _loc. cit._

[104] _Op. cit._ p. 24.

[105] See Bk. II. chap. iii.

[106] Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 129.

[107] _Il._ ii. 662 ff.

[108] Müller, _Dorians_, i. pp. 411-46.

[109] _Il._ xix. 99 ff.

[110] P. 64.

[111] P. 170.

[112] Glotz, p. 170. See also p. 51.

[113] See Coulanges, _Ancient City_, pp. 169 ff.

[114] For the exile of Amphitryon, father of Hercules, who had slain Electryon, father of Likymnius, see Euripides, _Her. Fur._ 15 ff. For the slaying by Hercules of Iphitus, his guest, an act which appears to bring no punishment save the vengeance of the gods, _cf._ _Od._ xxi. 27.

[115] _Il._ ix. 632 ff.

[116] _Supra_, pp. 32-3.

[117] Seebohm, p. 356.

[118] _Ib._ p. 109; _supra_, p. 9.

[119] _Od._ xxiii. 118-120.

[120] _Od._ xxiii. 133 ff.

[121] _Od._ xxiv. 421 ff.

[122] _Ib._ 526.

[123] _Ib._ 533.

[124] _Ib._ 483.

[125] _Il._ xxiv. 480 ff.

[126] Reading ἀφνειοῦ.

[127] _H. and H._ p. 253.

[128] _Eumenides_, pp. 104-5.

[129] See _infra_, pp. 111 ff., 139 ff.

[130] We should perhaps also add the ‘reminiscence’ in _Il._ ix. 63, where the lover of domestic strife is said to be a lawless wretch without home or phratry. It is possible but not necessary to suppose that the wretch in question was outlawed because of homicidal tendencies which continued to manifest themselves afterwards. See Leaf, _H. and H._ p. 251. For a possible reference in the phrase ἀτίμηντος μετανάστης (_Il._ ix. 648), see Ridgeway, _J.H.S._ vol. vi.

[131] Caillemer, art. φόνος in Daremberg and Saglio, p. 439; Philippi, _Areopag und Epheten_, pp. 3-4; Eichhoff, _Blutrache_, chap. i. p. 8.

[132] P. 48.

[133] Glotz, _op. cit._ pp. 164-173.

[134] P. 48.

[135] P. 302.

[136] P. 48.

[137] _Encycl. Laws England_, ed. Renton, vol. ix. p. 32.

[138] P. 128.

[139] _Cf._ the phrase _si telum fugit magis quam iecit_.

[140] Seebohm, p. 126.

[141] P. 71.

[142] Quoted by Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 63.

[143] Seebohm, _op. cit._ pp. 106-8.

[144] Seebohm, _op. cit._ p. 103.

[145] _Supra_, p. 7.

[146] P. 107.

[147] See _La Monarchie franque_, pp. 473-4 (Glotz, p. 107).

[148] For the contrary view of Dareste in regard to Aryan races, see his _Études d’histoire du droit_, pp. 252-275. Glotz, p. 106.

[149] xi. 271 ff.

[150] _Phoenissae_, 60 ff.

[151] P. 71.

[152] _Infra_, pp. 171, 310 ff.

[153] _Il._ ix. 563-570.

[154] _Cf._ _Il._ xv. 204 οἶσθ’ ὡς πρεσβυτέροισιν Ἐριννύες αἰὲν ἕπονται.

[155] xxiii. 88 ff.

[156] νήπιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων, ἀμφ’ ἀστραγάλοισι χολωθείς.

[157] See, _e.g._, Eichhoff, _Blutrache_, chap. i. p. 8.

[158] See Xenophon, _Anab._ iv. 8. 25.

[159] See _infra_, pp. 140 f., 197.

[160] For Attic legislation, see _infra_, p. 213 ff.

[161] P. 50.

[162] P. 51; see _infra_, ch. iii.

[163] P. 50.

[164] P. 383.

[165] viii. 318, 332.

[166] _Op. cit._ p. 385.

[167] P. 386

[168] viii. 318 ff.

[169] vi. 160 ff.

[170] For an interesting parallel _cf._ Euripides, _Hippolytus_.

[171] The subsequent solitary wandering of Bellerophon in ‘the plain of wandering,’ and the death of his sons and daughter through the anger of the gods, is not presented by Homer as a punishment for an act of adultery of which he was not guilty (200 ff.).

[172] _Infra_, pp. 193, 215 ff.

[173] _Supra_, p. 55 ff.

[174] _Infra_, p. 76.

[175] _Od._ i. 298 ff.

[176] xvi. 400 ff.

[177] _Od._ xxiv. 420.

[178] _Ib._ 530-555.

[179] See also _Od._ i. 290 ff.

[180] P. 565.

[181] P. 191.

[182] _Il._ xviii. 336, xxiii. 181.

[183] _Supra_, p. 19.

[184] _Orestes_, 500.

[185] _Infra_, p. 348 ff.