Chapter XII: Section I

Less than a hundred years[1] after the Trojan war, and some time about the year 1100 B.C., the great and glorious rule of the Achaeans over Greece came to an end. ‘Greece,’ as Leaf puts it,[2] ‘relapsed from the temporary union imposed upon it by its rulers into its normal congeries of loosely coherent cantons.’ The Achaeans did not, of course, entirely disappear, but they ceased to maintain that unified control and domination over Greece which they had enjoyed for two or three centuries. The causes of this change are variously estimated. Historical analogies, such as that of the Normans in England and in Sicily,[3] suggest in general the brief duration of such a hegemony. ‘The domination of a small military caste over a large subject population contains of necessity,’ says Leaf,[4] ‘the germs of its own destruction....’ ‘The _Iliad_ itself gives us vividly, in the portrait of Agamemnon, the inherent weakness of all hereditary military despotisms.... The time came ... whether through the effort of the Trojan war which had reduced their numbers, or through lack of moral grit following on too long a tenure of power, when the Achaeans had to cast in their lot with their former vassals ... the group system resumed its sway and the Achaeans were drawn into it.’[5] Ridgeway, arguing from analogous instances, attributes the decay of Achaean vigour partly to climatic influences, partly to the enervating effects of luxury and power. In regard to this latter factor, he says[6]: ‘It is a known fact that the upper classes in all countries have an inevitable tendency to die out ... the dwindling of the master races in the Mediterranean, whether they were Achaeans, Celts, Goths, Norsemen or Turks, must be in part accounted for by the mere fact that they formed in each case the upper and ruling class, and could therefore afford to lead a life of luxury which was the very bane of their race.’ For our part we are convinced with Leaf[7] that ‘an invasion of Southern Greece by rude tribes from the north or north-west swept away the Achaean civilisation after the Homeric age’; that a military confederation of hereditary monarchs and nobles, such as that of the Achaeans, could not have lost its unified control if these inherent factors of disintegration had not been supplemented by an invasion from without.

O. Müller[8] has pointed out that in Thessaly, the former realm of Peleus and Achilles, there existed in historical times three strata of social and political privilege: (1) the Thessalians, post-Homeric immigrants, who ruled directly over the central territory, including the towns of Larissa, Crannon, Pharsalus, Iolcus. (2) Perioeci or semi-independent vassals, such as the Perrhaebians, the Magnesians, and the Phthiotian Achaeans, who paid tribute and were bound to assist in war. (3) Penestae, of Pelasgian stock, like the Helots of Sparta, who cultivated the land and served in war, who had private rights but no political privileges, who were, in a word, serfs, but not slaves. He mentions, further,[9] that the Achaeans of the north coast of the Peloponnese remained in towns and fortified strongholds, keeping entirely aloof from the natives; they were still conquerors here, though they had become vassals elsewhere. In Sparta there appears to have been a mingling of Achaeans and Dorians. Thucydides says[10] that here ‘the few rule over the many, having obtained sovereignty by victory in the field.’ That this victory was not very decisive is suggested by the view, which is commonly held,[11] that one of the two Royal families of Sparta was Achaean. The Perioeci of Laconia were always considered Achaeans[12]; there were about a hundred towns of Laconian Perioeci, both inland and on the coast; they paid tribute to Sparta, but they had a monopoly of trade and commerce, and in the time of Nabis were liberated and federated as independent states of the Achaean league.[13] The Helots, of course, were serfs. They tilled the soil, and lived in hamlets which made up the greater part of the town of Sparta. They were probably Pelasgians, though they are called Achaeans by Theopompus.[14] Similarly, in Argos and in Corinth there are traces of pre-Dorian peoples who can probably be regarded as including some remnants of the Homeric Achaeans.[15]

Leaf suggests[16] that the Dorians may have followed methods of conquest similar to those of the Achaeans, yet he has no doubt that they were identical in social organisation with the Pelasgians.[17] ‘Hellenism as we know it,’ he says, ‘is founded on tribal distinctions, beginning with the great racial divisions of Dorian, Ionian, and Aeolian in the wide sense—the general name for all which did not belong to the other two;—passing thence to the local state, Athenian, Spartan and the rest. Each of these again is divided internally by tribe, clan, and family systems of the most complicated nature. Upon these ramifying subdivisions is based the polity, and largely the religion, of classical Greece.’

This statement is of first-rate importance for our theories concerning post-Homeric homicide. It means, in effect, that, in spite of conflicts and migrations, the dominant Hellenic or post-Homeric Greek society was based on clan and tribal organisations similar to those of the early Pelasgians. The militarist Achaeans of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ must then be regarded as a solitary accidental ephemeral phantom which crossed the stage of Grecian history never to return. The Achaeans who survived the invasions either remained in isolated groups as in Achaea and in South Thessaly, where they seem to have preserved for a time their military character,[18] though they may, in course of centuries, have evolved the mechanism of clan life: or they became subject Perioeci, and were rapidly merged in tribal organisations, or they were accepted as partners in government, as at Sparta, at Argos, at Corinth, and at Sicyon, and, like the Roman _Patres minorum gentium_, developed along the lines of tribal society. Their peculiar Homeric character disappeared: they were Hellenised—which is to say, with Leaf,[19] that they were ‘drawn into’ the ‘group-system,’ which, after Homer, ‘resumed its sway.’

It was perhaps because of special circumstances that _Sparta_ developed along peculiar lines of a quasi-Achaean and non-Hellenic kind. Thus, Müller holds[20] that the Spartans represent a continuation of the heroic age, a system of military rule over agricultural classes. So Holm[21] says that ‘The Spartan monarchy was a continuation of that of the Homeric age, only its authority was more strictly defined and became gradually more limited.’ Grote,[22] criticising the opinion of Müller, who holds that the Spartans were typical Dorians, maintains that the ‘institutions of Sparta were peculiar to herself, distinguishing her not less from Argos, Corinth, Megara ... than from Athens or Thebes.’ Crete, he says, was ‘the only other portion of Greece in which there prevailed institutions in many respects analogous, yet still dissimilar.’ The creator or inventor of the peculiar Spartan character, was, he thinks, Lycurgus. We consider these opinions much more probable than that of Gilbert,[23] who believes that the three Dorian tribes, known as Hylleis, Dymanes, Pamphyloi, existed in the earlier days, at Sparta, as a social organisation. The reference of Demetrius of Scepsis (about 100 B.C.) to the existence of twenty-seven phratries and nine tribes at Sparta, gives, of course, no basis for assuming their existence in post-Homeric times. We have a special reason for emphasising the peculiarity of Spartan institutions. A solitary reference in Xenophon[24] to a penalty of perpetual exile for involuntary homicide at Sparta, in contrast with the well-known penalty of temporary exile at Athens, has been taken to justify the opinion that the murder-laws of Athens were peculiar to herself. But, in our view, the peculiarity of Sparta[25] militates against the validity of such a conclusion. We hope to prove more clearly at a later stage that this conclusion is false.

The social evolution of post-Homeric Boeotia is a subject on which a wide diversity of opinions appears to exist. Ridgeway[26] thinks that the Boeotians were Achaeans: Leaf[27] supposes that they were Thessalians: Müller[28] believes that they were Pelasgian Aeolians driven out of the land which was afterwards called Thessaly, by invading Thessalians. Leaf argues[29] that the Achaeans did not occupy Boeotia at the time of their domination in Greece, but we do not see why they may not have occupied that district at a later date. Bury[30] contrasts the ‘Boeotian conquerors’ with the ‘older Greek inhabitants’ of Boeotia: Hogarth[31] distinguishes between Aryan Boeotians and the non-Aryan Asiatic Cadmeans of Thebes. We cannot attempt to decide between these various opinions, and, fortunately, it is not necessary that we should do so. We have indicated the probable fate of the Achaeans after the fall of Troy, and for the rest we may be satisfied with the description of Thucydides.[32]

‘The country which is now called Hellas was not,’ he says, ‘regularly settled in ancient times. The people were migratory and readily left their homes whenever they were overpowered by numbers. There was no commerce ... the several tribes cultivated their own soil just enough to obtain a maintenance from it. They were always ready to migrate. The richest districts were most constantly changing their inhabitants.’ Thucydides mentions, as rich districts, Thessaly, Boeotia and the Peloponnese (except Arcadia). Attica, however, of which the soil was poor and thin, enjoyed, he says, a long freedom from civil strife and retained its original inhabitants. Hence ‘... the Athenians[33] were the first who laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more luxurious mode of life.’ Again he points out[34] that ‘... Even in the age which followed the Trojan War, Hellas was still in a state of ferment and settlement and had no time for peaceful growth. The return of the Hellenes from Troy after their long absence caused many changes; quarrels too arose in every city, and those who were expelled went and founded other cities ... a considerable time elapsed before Hellas became finally settled ... after a while she recovered tranquillity and began to send out colonies.’

Glotz[35] paints a lurid picture of the homicide customs of what he calls the Middle Ages of Hellenism (Le Moyen Age hellénique). ‘Passé, le temps où toutes les forces du groupe se coalisaient spontanément, instantanément, contre toute agression, d’où qu’elle vint. Le meurtrier riche et puissant n’avait plus à craindre un aussi grand nombre de vengeurs: il n’était plus contraint de fuir par un aussi formidable soulèvement de haines.... Le meurtrier d’un parent pouvait avoir des accomplices ou trouver des complaisants parmi ses plus proches.... Ainsi les homicides commis à l’intérieur d’une famille étaient moins sûrement punis à l’époque où s’organisèrent les tribunaux de l’Etat que dans la période précédente, où la justice du γένος avait encore toute son efficacité.... Il y eut un moment où vraiment, dans certains cas, le parricide n’avait rien à redouter d’aucune justice.’ The references which Glotz here makes to the control exercised by the clan in cases of kin-slaying are quite in harmony with our theory of the nature of Pelasgian homicide customs, but they are quite inconsistent with Glotz’s general hypothesis as to the nature of Homeric blood-vengeance. This inconsistency is to be explained by the absence of that distinction between the Achaean and the Pelasgian attitude to homicide which we have made the basis of our reasoning. Moreover, Glotz is not quite sound in supposing that the age of chaos began about the year 800 B.C. The date of Hesiod is now generally regarded as approximately 850 B.C., and the condition of things which he depicts must have existed for a considerable time before that date. It was not a temporary or spasmodic condition of things. Substituting, therefore, the dates 1100 B.C.-700 B.C. for Glotz’s figures 800 B.C.-600 B.C. as the time-limits of the age of chaos, we may accept as trustworthy Glotz’s description of the Dark Ages. He quotes a Hesiodic passage to which we have already called attention.[36] ‘Rien que désunion de père à enfants, d’hôte à hôte, d’ἑταῖρος à ἑταῖρος: plus d’amour fraternel, comme jadis. Vite on jette l’opprobre sur les parents qui vieillissent: on leur parle un langage dur et insultant, impie, sans souci de la vindicte divine: on refuse à la vieillesse de parents les vivres qu’on a reçus d’eux dans l’enfance: car on ne connaît que le droit de la force.... Pas d’égards pour la bonne foi, la justice, la vertu: au crime et à la violence tous les honneurs.’ Into this chaotic condition, he says,[37] came the new religious doctrine of homicide as a pollution. ‘La religion force la société à intervenir dans les affaires de sang intrafamiliales, et la société agit non pas contre le coupable mais contre la famille qui refuse d’agir.... Une idée nouvelle se fait jour dans l’esprit des Grecs, l’idée de la souillure qui s’attache à l’homicide ... la purification du meurtrier n’est pas une coutume primitive ... n’était pas connue à l’époque homérique.’

In many such passages Glotz implies that in the Hesiodic age there was a general weakening of tribal authority and of clan-law, a break-up of the power of control exercised by the kindred, the phratry, and the tribe over their members, in cases of homicide, and in other matters.[38] Yet when Glotz comes to discuss the Solonian legislation, we find him still speaking[39] of an anti-clan policy, of the desire of Solon to weaken the clans. ‘Solon,’ he says, ‘fut nommé par la confiance de ses concitoyens arbitre et législateur. Pour remplir cette double mission, il lui fallut de toute nécessité affaiblir les γένη dans leur action extérieure et leur constitution intime.... L’esprit même de la constitution solonienne est opposé au classement des citoyens par γένη. L’Etat se met directement en rapport avec les individus. Les groupes, il ne les détruit pas, il les ignore.... Effet indirect des lois constitutionnelles, le démembrement du γένος est le but immédiat et constant des lois civiles ... cette signature de Solon, c’est l’hostilité envers les solidarités des vieux temps.’ Again, he says[40] that at the beginning of the sixth century B.C. ‘At a time when all cities had equally suppressed tribal or clan responsibility (_la responsabilité familiale_) in common law, Athens surpassed all others by the vigour of the blows which it struck at the internal organisation and the civic action (_l’action sociale_) of the clans.’ How can these apparently different view-points be reconciled? Can we express the facts so that the apparent discrepancy will disappear?

We have seen that in post-Homeric times the long submerged group-system of tribal society resumed its sway. Though the wars and migrations of the period must for a time have weakened its power, yet ultimately, as Thucydides says, ‘Hellas recovered tranquillity, and began to send out colonies.’[41] The new doctrine of Apollo, which regarded homicide as a ‘pollution,’ was, we think, adopted about the seventh century, which was pre-eminently the period of Greek colonisation. Henceforth the homicide was conceived as an enemy not merely of the ghosts of those whom he had slain but also of the gods of the new States which had evolved out of chaos through synoekism. But Attica, almost alone of all Greek States, was immune from the chaos of migrations and invasions and retained for the most part its original inhabitants. Therefore Attica, more than any other Greek State, required, for its political unification, a more strenuous law-making, a more violent attack on the civic action of the clan.

Yet we cannot suppose that the clans and tribes of the group-system were destroyed in Attica any more than they were in other parts of Greece. All through the historical era clans and tribes continued to exercise limited powers and jurisdictions; the old ties of kindred and of neighbourhood were maintained under the form of religious corporations long after the group-system had lost its political power. All this is merely to say that the old aristocracy of birth was replaced by plutocracy and democracy. The various stages in this transition will be made clear if we give a brief sketch of the political evolution of Attica, a sketch which is all the more necessary because of the analysis which we shall have to give, at a later stage, of blood-vengeance in Attic tragedy.

EVOLUTION OF THE ATTIC STATE

We need not allow ourselves to be detained by the obscure and conflicting legends which centre round the birth of the Attic nation. Coulanges[42] refers to the traditions concerning local kings of Attica before the time of Cecrops. Pausanias refers to a kind of religious amalgamation which was doubtless the concomitant of political synoekism: ‘Sacred to Athene,’ he says, ‘is all the rest’[43] of Athens and similarly all Attica; although they worship different gods in different townships, none the less do they honour Athene generally. He points out that four villages at Marathon were still in his time united in a local worship of Apollo, and that legend attributed to Cecrops a federation of Attica into twelve different states.[44] While Coulanges accepts the legend which attributes to Theseus the political unification of Attica, he thinks[45] that Plutarch[46] and Thucydides[47] are in error in supposing that Theseus abolished the local prytanies and magistracies. ‘If he attempted this,’ he says, ‘he certainly did not succeed; for a long while after him we still find the local worships, the assemblies, and the kings of the tribes.’

In theory the four tribes of ancient Attic society were Ionian tribes which, in the days of oligarchic power, imposed their will upon the rest of Attica. Müller[48] points out that there is a distinct change in Attic mythology when we come to the Ionian Kings, Aegeus and Theseus. But Leaf thinks it possible that the adoption of the four Ionian tribes in Attica does not represent an Ionian conquest, but was due to the fictitious self-inclusion of Attica in the Ionian race.[49] Bury holds[50] that ‘the statesmen who united Attica sought their method of organisation from one of those cities of Asia Minor which Athens came to look upon as her own daughters’: that the names of the four Attic tribes,[51] Geleontes, Aigikoreis, Argadeis and Hopletes, were borrowed from Ionian Miletus: and that Attica was united into a single state in the period of what is known as the life-regency (1088 B.C.-753 B.C.)

The tribal continuity of Attic life is most clearly indicated in the excellent analysis of F. de Coulanges. The people of Attica, at the birth of the Attic State, were governed, he says,[52] by noble clans called Eupatridae who had abolished, about 1050 B.C., the power of an hereditary monarchy. Some three hundred years later, these same noble clans limited the power of the life-regent (a member of the royal family) by insisting on an election being held every ten years. About 700 B.C. annual election was in force, and the royal family was represented by only one member in a government of nine archons elected from the Eupatrid caste. These Eupatridae, who dwelt in scattered groups in Attica,[53] created a united Attic State when they formed a confederation for the purpose of defence and common worship. But the absence of sustained danger from abroad and the development of mutual rivalry and internal feuds diminished, at length, their pristine vigour.[54] Non-privileged classes, herded together in towns and hamlets, saw in Eupatrid weakness their own opportunity.[55] The introduction of coinage in the seventh century and the expansion of trade and commerce led to the presence, in Attic ports and cities, of a new nobility of wealthy merchants who could not[56] aspire to enrolment in the exclusive Eupatrid tribes, who could not be permitted to worship at the altars of tribal gods, who were not, in fact, recognised as a functional element of the civic organism. Naturally, these merchants imported new worships; they seized on Oriental cults which, like Buddhism, excluded no caste. Conscious of the barriers which confronted them, they often had recourse to armed revolt.[57] The conflict ended at length upon the appointment of a legislator who was expected to revise and to codify the laws. Dracon, the first great Athenian legislator, certainly codified the laws, or some of them at least. But being too loyal a Eupatrid, he failed to remove the grievances of plebeian _nobiles_. Solon, a Eupatrid by birth, had the advantage of being a merchant by occupation.[58] He first attacked the large domains of the Eupatrids and their political power.[59] He assailed their monopoly of judicial authority[60] by setting up a timocratic, if not a plutocratic, Areopagus, as an alternative to the aristocratic Ephetae courts, and by the institution of popularly elected Heliastic juries which possessed at first, appellant, and later, universal jurisdiction in Attic law. But it was only in the time of Cleisthenes, about 510 B.C., that the four patriarchal tribes of Attica were removed from the pedestal on which they had stood so long and which was the basis of their political existence. Ten new tribes were created, on an entirely novel principle of local segregation: new hero-cults arose: new priests offered sacrifice, who were liable to annual election: and the four Ionian tribes ceased to have any political meaning.

But they did not, therefore, cease to exist.[61] Obscure and hidden, they still lived on. Clan-courts still sat to decide disputes regarding property, adoption, and inheritance.[62] In the time of Demosthenes[63] such courts imposed fines for the embezzlement of property. Homicide, in particular, which from the eighth century onwards assumed a ‘religious,’ which is to say, a theocratic or patriarchal aspect, was in historical times ‘purged’ and in certain cases ‘judged’ by the Ephetae and the Exegetae who were chosen[64] from Eupatrid families.

We shall now proceed to consider the advent in Greece of that new religious doctrine which for the first time declared the murderer to be a sinner against the gods and debarred him for ever from his country and his home.