Chapter XIII: Section II: Religious and Legal Transitions (1)

The evidence of mythology and archaeology points so clearly to frequent and continuous intercourse between the early Greeks and their non-Aryan neighbours of Egypt and Asia Minor that up to quite recent years it was possible to maintain that early Greek civilisation was derived from African and Asiatic sources. Thus—to quote a writer easily accessible—Mahaffy[65] held that to the Phoenicians and to the Egyptians is to be traced ‘the prehistoric culture of Argos, Mycenae, Orchomenus and Crete.’ There are, he thought,[66] Oriental, Assyrian and Syrian influences in Mycenaean remains. Egypt, especially, was regarded as the home of wealth and culture.[67] It is only in more recent years when the explorations in Crete have shown, for example, that ‘compared with the palace of Cnossus, the palaces of the Pharaohs were but hovels of painted mud,’[68] that the early Aegean culture came to be regarded as derived from an indigenous Cretan civilisation, and Minoans received the honour which was previously accorded to the Phoenicians. It is now recognised that the great period of Asiatic intercourse with Greece was the post-Minoan period. The fall of the Minoan thalassocracy opened the Aegean Sea to Asiatic traders. ‘The Phoenicians,’ says Bury,[69] ‘had marts here and there on coast or island, but there is no reason to think that Canaanites made homes for themselves on Greek soil.... Their ships were ever winding in and out of the Aegean isles from north to south, bearing fair naperies from Syria, fine wrought bowls and cups from the workshops of Sidonian and Cypriot silversmiths, and all manner of luxuries and ornaments: this constant commercial intercourse ... is amply sufficient to account for all the influence that Phoenicia exerted upon Greece.... The briskest trade was perhaps driven with the thriving cities of Ionia, and the Phoenicians adopted the Ionian name ... as the general designation of all the Greeks.’ In Ionia, Bury thinks,[70] occurred that fusion of Semitic consonants with Greek vowel symbols which produced the Greek alphabet. In close contact with the Ionian Greeks were the Lydians, who were the first people to coin money (about 700 B.C.[71]) and who transmitted the discovery to the Greeks and to other Asiatic peoples. Needless to say, this discovery was of great commercial importance, and incidentally rendered possible an accumulation of non-landed wealth. Now Greek coinage, as Bury points out,[72] ‘was marked from the beginning by religious associations, and it has been supposed that the priests of the temples had an important share in initiating the introduction of coinage. It was in the shrines of their gods that men were accustomed to store their treasures for safe-keeping.... Every coin which a Greek State issued bore upon it a reference to some deity.’

From these facts alone, apart from general considerations, it will be evident how easy and natural it was that the Greeks should also have received religious inspirations from their Asiatic neighbours.

It is very significant that the first mention, in Greek literature, of the religious purgation of homicide occurs in an epic poem, the _Aethiopis_, by Arctinus of Miletus,[73] who lived in the last half of the eighth century (750-700 B.C.). In this poem we are told that Achilles, having slain Thersites because he had ridiculed his tears for the death of an Amazonian queen, went to Lesbos to be purified. Glotz points out that the presence of Achilles at a sacrifice before his purgation implies that the doctrine was not, at that time, fully developed or understood.

Again, it is very significant that Herodotus[74] attributes to the Lydians rites of homicide-purgation which, he says, are almost the same as those which the Hellenes used. According to the historian, there came to Croesus, King of Lydia, about the year 550 B.C., ‘a man, in wretched plight, whose hands were not clean, a Phrygian by race, of royal blood.’ ‘Having reached,’ he says, ‘the house of Croesus, this man asked to have himself purified according to the customs of the place, and Croesus purified him.’ After the ceremony Croesus asked his visitor who it was that he had slain: the stranger replied that he had involuntarily slain his brother and that, in consequence, he had been expelled by his father and deprived of all his privileges. We shall see presently[75] that involuntary kin-slaying could be purged abroad, in the Greek purgation-system. We cannot conclude, because Croesus made no inquiries prior to the ceremony as to the details of the deed of blood, that therefore all kinds of homicide could be purged amongst the Lydians. The very fact that the slayer requested purgation would, in the religious atmosphere of the time, have been taken as sufficient evidence that his deed was at least capable of being purged.

The conception of homicide as a pollution or religious offence is known to have existed at an early date amongst the Hebrews, and we may hazard the conjecture, though we find no express reference to the fact, that a system of purgation was practised by the Hebrews, at least for minor degrees of guilt. The penalties exacted for homicide amongst the Hebrews, as amongst the Romans, were much more severe than those which prevailed amongst the Greeks. We have seen[76] that in the normal operation of homicide-purgation no religious ‘cleansing’ was valid while the civic penalty remained unpaid. In Roman law, death was the penalty prescribed for murder and for manslaughter: but for justifiable or justifiably accidental homicide[77] there was no punishment, and religious expiation could immediately take place. Amongst the Hebrews, a similar penalty was exacted for murder and manslaughter. ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’ is the general principle[78]; and again: ‘He that smiteth a man so that he die[79] shall surely be put to death: if a man slays presumptuously with guile, take him from my altar that he may die.’[80] For accidental or justifiable slaying, however, we find that a mode of escape from the avengers of blood was provided: ‘If God delivers a man into his hands,[81] I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee[82] ... and ye shall not take compensation for him that is fled to the City of Refuge that he should come home before the death of the high-priest. So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are.’[83] We may assume, with some degree of probability, that in this class of homicide, some form of purgation ceremony was customary. We mention the Hebrew custom here merely to show the general trend of Asiatic thought in regard to homicide.

We may, therefore, regard as highly probable the view which connects the origin of the post-Homeric Greek notion of homicide as a ‘pollution’ with the Semites and Asiatic peoples. Glotz merely states his view of this matter without giving reasons in support of his statement.[84] ‘Alors,’ he says, ‘les Grecs prendront aux Sémites les rites dramatiques de leurs cérémonies purificatoires.’ There were, however, some important differences between the original Semitic doctrine and the matured Greek adaptation of it, as will be evident from a brief explanation of the precise nature of the Greek ‘pollution’ doctrine.

THE GREEK POLLUTION DOCTRINE

At first, we think, there came to Greece a vague rumour of the doctrine through the medium of the Cyclic poets. Greek priesthoods in Asia had already adopted it because of their proximity to Asiatic races who had developed it. But originating, as it did, in the centralised theocracies which then existed amongst these races, the doctrine could be accepted only in a modified form by the Greek people whose predominant political institution was the city-state.

Traces of the doctrine in its early phase, prior to its formal adoption in Greece, appear in the story of Alcmaeon. Thucydides,[85] in his account of the islands known as the Echinades, in western Greece, which were gradually, owing to the silting up of the river Achelous, becoming part of the mainland, mentions the following legend: ‘when Alcmaeon, son of Amphiaraus, was wandering over the earth after the murder of his mother, he was told by Apollo that here he should find a home, the oracle intimating that he would never find deliverance from his terrors until he discovered some country which was not yet in existence and not seen by the Sun at the time when he slew his mother; there he might settle, but the rest of the earth was accursed to him. He knew not what to do till at last, as the story goes, he espied the deposit of earth made by the Achelous, and he thought that a place sufficient to support life must have accumulated in the long time during which he had been wandering since his mother’s death.’ This conception of pollution is very Semitic, and reminds us of the Biblical allusion to Cain[86] as ‘cursed from the face of the earth,’ but it is also to a certain extent Greek, since there was not in historical Greece any purgation for wilful matricide or, if we may trust Plato,[87] for wilful kin-slaying. In the Apolline era Greek kin-slaying was punished, according to Plato,[87] by death, and it was so punished in a later Israelite penal code. In the Pelasgian era, kin-slayers, condemned to perpetual exile, were often compelled to wander for years and years. Their wandering must have been almost proverbial, yet its meaning was understood. But the picture of a kin-slayer wandering till he finds an unpolluted piece of earth can only be attributed to the fanciful interpretation of a novel religious law which as yet was not fully comprehended. We have already discussed[88] Miss Harrison’s views in regard to Bellerophon and the ‘plain of wandering.’ Apollodorus tells us[89] that Bellerophon was purified by Proetus. Miss Harrison says[90] ‘in those old days he could not be purified.’ We agree that he could not be purged in Homeric times, because the rite was unknown: if in later times he was said to have been purged, it became necessary to suppose that the crime which he committed was involuntary. But Homer says nothing of Bellerophon’s kin-slaying.[91] It was probably an invention of later minds intended to explain the Homeric reference to the ‘Aleïan plain’ which was interpreted as ‘the plain of wandering,’ after the analogy of the ‘wandering’ in the legend of Alcmaeon.

We hope to show presently that this religious doctrine, which declared in effect that homicide brought down the anger of the gods upon the community which neglected to punish it, took definite shape in historical Greece under the aegis of Apollo and his priesthoods and Amphictyonies. In our view, the final form of the doctrine was a fusion or compromise between the severer Semitic conception, on the one hand, and, on the other, the tribal traditions of Greek homicide-customs, weakened and disorganised, as they were, in the Hesiodic age of chaos, but unmistakably local in their outlook, and reflecting still the attitude adopted by the relatives and attributed to the victim. The Apollo of the Greek race could not accept in its entirety the Asiatic doctrine of pollution but had to modify it at the bidding of customs which were sanctified by time. As we believe that the Draconian homicide-laws were merely an eclectic codification of the seventh-century unwritten laws of the aristocracies of birth, it would clearly anticipate our whole account of the Draconian legislation if we were to explain at this stage the detailed operation of the Apolline pollution system. We shall then give here only an outline of the Asiatic-Greek compromise which we believe to have arisen in the eighth or seventh century B.C.

In the first place wergeld was abolished, as amongst the Hebrews, for wilful murder. This was the greatest concession which the new doctrine extorted from tribalism. The new provision which declared the property of the wilful man-slayer confiscated to the State when the slayer had gone into perpetual exile we attribute to a third factor—the evolution of State power: wergeld in the strict sense was also abolished for manslaughter, but the slayer was allowed and commanded, after a period of exile, to ‘appease’ by ‘presents’ the relatives of the slain. In this we can clearly detect a concession wrung from what we call Apollinism by the tribes. It is usually held[92] that in the case of manslaughter, and Glotz holds[93] that even in the case of murder, ‘private settlement’ without trial was legal in historical Athens. We hope to show[94] at a later stage that these opinions are incorrect, except in regard to one special and rare contingency.

Secondly, there was a religious compromise which is reflected in the ritual of purgation. In the Semitic doctrine of pollution, murder and manslaughter could only be ‘purged’ by the blood of the slayer, which meant, in practice, that the slayer could never be purged at all: but the ancient traditions of the tribes and their capacity for discerning the varying degrees of homicide-guilt led to a peculiar compromise, by which Apollo and other State gods consented to accept the sacrifice of a surrogate victim, when the atonement which the law prescribed had been paid, the actuality of the atonement being _symbolised_, as it were, by this Chthonian sacrifice of ‘reconciliation.’

Since Greece, unlike Israel, was a conglomeration of local civic groups, and as tribal custom had accepted exile in default of wergeld and prescribed different periods of exile according to varying degrees of guilt, therefore, when the issue was knit between the new Semitic doctrine of ‘pollution’ and the ancient tribal laws, the resultant compromise produced a new law which decreed perpetual exile for all cases of wilful homicide, including, we believe, originally, even kin-slaying. The law of historical times which condemned the kin-slayer inevitably to death was not, we have reason to believe, a product of the Asiatic-Greek compromise. Like the law which decreed the confiscation of a murderer’s property, it is, we think, to be attributed to the evolution of centralised State government. In regard to manslaughter different periods of exile were, no doubt, decreed according to the different degrees of guilt: the despotic doctrine of theocratic Asia had, in this, to respect the long traditions of tribal Greece: accidental and justifiable slaying probably required no civic atonement. Apollo was compelled to admit such slayers to immediate ‘purgation.’ In other cases, ‘purgation’ was accepted when the prescribed atonement had been made.

Our account of this compromise in the Greek doctrine of pollution is complicated by the presence of a third factor which had become more and more important as Greek States increased in size and power, and which must be indirectly attributed to the doctrine of ‘pollution,’ namely, the conception of homicide as an insult to the State gods and to the State, not merely to the Sun, or to the Delphian Apollo, or to some still more distant Orphic deity in the underworld. This conception of homicide raises it at once from the position which it held in the system of ‘private vengeance’: the murderer, like the traitor and the man stained with sacrilege, now stands forth, if not as a criminal in the modern sense, at least as a quasi-criminal, a vile being who has jeopardised by his act the prosperity and the destiny of the State. He is henceforth liable to ἄτιμία,—he must be degraded from citizenship: if he waits for the verdict which declares him a State criminal, he must die. If he flees, his property must be confiscated to the State, as was the property of all ‘degraded’ exiles. Retribution to the relatives, which is the basis of tribal wergeld, has vanished into the air, but the murderer cannot now be buried in the tomb of his fathers: he can never frequent the temples of his gods: he cannot even attend the public games of all the Greeks lest the contact of his presence should pollute his fellow citizens or the gods who no longer can tolerate his presence. But, provided he avoids certain areas and festivals, he may live without fear. A law of Dracon[95] declares that to slay such an exile was murder. Thus we see how the old tribal custom which accepted exile as a complete atonement, (not, as it was amongst Achaean militarists, a mere flight from death,) was respected despite doctrinal innovations, because it had been sanctified by time.

Glotz holds[96] that this immunity in foreign states of exiles who were guilty of wilful murder in their home-land was due to occasional treaties of ἀσυλία between Greek States. We shall see that such immunity was more probably derived from Greek extradition law, and such law implies international authorisation. It was precisely because such laws could be made and enforced that Greek homicides required no ‘cities of Refuge.’ Thus, the Greek pollution-doctrine bears on the face of it the stamp of a compromise between tribe and State, between local gods and international religion.

But there was a further compromise, which we must also indicate, namely, that which inevitably took place between the ghosts of the slain and the purifying gods, the καθάρσιοι θεοί. We have argued[97] that the chaotic centuries which followed the Achaean domination produced a much more monstrous and bloodthirsty conception of the Erinnyes than that which existed in the Homeric age. We have suggested that the revolt of the clansmen against Apolline innovations which abolished material retribution for homicide may have rendered still more ferocious and implacable the Erinnyes of the slain. Yet when the Greek Apolline doctrine of pollution was finally accepted by Hellenic tribes and States, the Erinnyes, like the Titans, were subdued, and became so mild that they could be identified with the Semnai Theai and called Eumenides! They could live in peace again, as in Homer, with the Olympian gods whom they had learned to loathe.

They had succeeded at least in imposing many old Pelasgian traditions upon the autocrat of Delphi. In historical Greece, at least before the third century B.C.,[98] the State could never take the initiative in a direct prosecution for homicide, as modern States do. It could, of course, bring a charge of Impiety against delinquent relatives of the slain[99]: but the initiative rested in theory with those relatives. The wish of a dying man who had been fatally wounded was expressed in a formal ‘charge’ which he gave to his relatives, and this very often determined the course of subsequent proceedings. ‘Forgiveness’ by the dying man precluded a charge of murder. If a Greek of the historical era, who had been fatally wounded, thus ‘released’ his slayer before he died, the relatives were not bound to prosecute[100]: they could be persuaded to refrain from prosecution by what is known as a ‘private settlement’ with the slayer and his relatives. This, of course, was not a genuine wergeld; and even if it was, we could not infer that pollution could coexist with wergeld, for ‘pollution’ did not arise, in any real sense of the word, as the Greeks interpreted it, when the dying man forgave. Now we cannot conceive such considerations as these affecting the theocratic ‘pollution’ doctrine of the Hebrews. The law which decreed by divine command that: ‘Ye shall not pollute my land wherein ye are: for blood defileth the land,’ takes little account of the wishes of the dying or of the relatives of the slain. We must, of course, distinguish ‘release’ from ‘forgiveness’ in Greek law. ‘Release’ implies the absence of any ‘charge’ by the dying man. In cases of involuntary homicide, unless the dying man commanded his relatives to prosecute, no trial or formal proceedings were necessary[101]: ‘private settlement’ was permitted. Whenever therefore a trial for involuntary homicide took place in historical Greece, we must assume either that the accused denied the guilt and refused ‘private’ compensation or that the dying man charged his relatives to prosecute. In this latter case the slayer was polluted and had to undergo purgation when the civic atonement had been made. Hence we may truly say that, within certain limitations, Greek ‘pollution’ depended on the will of the victim and of his relatives.

In the light of these details we can more easily explain the peculiar fact that a man who had no relatives—and it was sometimes possible that a metic, or a stranger, or a casual vagrant should have no relatives—could not be avenged if he were slain. In the _Euthyphro_ of Plato[102] we are told how a poor freeman who had killed a slave was put in chains by his employer—it was a kind of informal arrest—till the verdict of the Exegetae should be heard. The freeman died. It was not wilful murder, but there was a certain degree of guilt, a certain amount of neglect on the part of his captor, a certain ἀφυλαξία which laid the employer open to a charge of manslaughter. Euthyphro, a son of the employer, feeling that he was ‘polluted’ by the fact of living with his father, proposed to charge him before the Archon Basileus at Athens; Socrates asks Euthyphro in the dialogue if he was a relative of the slain. Euthyphro replies that he does not see what difference it makes whether one is a relative of the deceased or not; the important thing is that he is polluted unless he accuses his father. Socrates implies that such an accusation is impious. We can only regret that Plato does not tell us the sequel of this fanciful drama. We think that Plato is sophistically exposing, if not covertly sneering at, the inconsistency[103] of the pollution doctrine. He objects, apparently, to the law which made prosecution the prerogative of the relatives of the deceased, a law which was derived, we think, from tribal traditions of ‘private vengeance,’ just as in other passages he objects to the legends of the gods which more primitive generations had created.[104]

We have said that ‘pollution’ was not confined to the murderer, but extended, as if by contagion, to all persons who harboured or protected him or neglected to punish him. Thus Plato says,[105] in regard to kin-slaying: ‘The relative of deceased as far as cousins, male and female, who does not prosecute ... shall take upon himself the pollution and the anger of the gods.’ In this we see an aspect of the Greek ‘pollution’ doctrine which expressed the autocratic will of Delphi and of State-gods in alliance with Delphi. But if the dying man ‘forgave’ or, in certain cases, did not solemnly ‘charge’ his relatives to prosecute, this autocratic will could be ignored. Thus, the Erinnys of a slain man had a determining effect on the obligation of prosecution and on the nature of the penalty. In the Oresteian legends as they were staged by Attic dramatists, this twofold aspect of ‘pollution’ is never quite forgotten; but there are complications in these legends which prevent us from dwelling at any length upon them here.

In the case of kin-slaying in a ‘passion,’ the influence of the ghosts’ will was especially vigorous. Plato says[106] that even when the ‘involuntary’ slayer had served a term of three years’ exile, and had returned to his native land, he could never return to his family and his home, or share with his kindred in domestic rites. Thus the Erinnys of the slain kinsman refused to be controlled by a centralised autocracy at Delphi, or even by the will of native State-gods. Hence, perhaps, it is that in the dramatised versions of the Oresteia, Athene has to use ‘Persuasion’[107] to induce the Furies of Clytaemnestra to become Eumenides. Hence the Furies say of Orestes[108]:

‘His mother’s blood upon the Earth he spilled.
Shall he in Argos dwell—his father’s home?
What phratry-altar can him e’er receive?
What common lustral water can he share?’

Hence, also, as Glotz points out,[109] the preliminary plea on oath of the accuser and the accused, in homicide cases, was taken before the altar of the Erinnyes or the Semnai Theai; and the defendant who was acquitted of murder by the Areopagus, as well as the returned exile who had paid the penalty of involuntary homicide, offered sacrifice there.

THE RITUAL OF HOMICIDE-PURGATION

In regard to the ceremonial of purgation by which the slayer, in certain circumstances, was ‘cleansed’ or purified, we have already[110] pointed out what we consider to have been the origin of the rite; and we have shown how the analogies which existed between such a ceremonial and the general Chthonian sacrifices of ‘expiation,’ ‘placation,’ and ‘aversion’ caused these rites to be confused with one another in the minds of ancient and of modern writers. The ceremonial of homicide-purgation appears at first sight so simple and elementary in character that we would be inclined to assume _a priori_ that it could have been duly performed by any ordinary person. But, in fact, we shall see, the performance became the privilege of priests or theocratic nobles. An animal, generally a pig,[111] but sometimes a calf or a lamb,[112] was bled to death and the warm flowing blood was poured over the hands of the slayer, passing away into the sea or into a running stream. The dead animal was then thrown into the water, or was buried, but it could not be eaten.

We may compare the Chthonian ceremony of swearing, in which the slain animal was conceived as at once symbolising and magically inducing a similar fate in case of perjury. The Roman formula is well known. Livy tells[113] how a certain M. Valerius, one of the Fetiales, or Roman priests, swore on behalf of the Roman State, to the Almighty Juppiter, in a treaty with ancient Alba. ‘Audi, Iuppiter: audi, pater patrate populi Albani: audi tu, populus Albanus ... si prior defexit publico consilio, dolo malo, tu illo die, Iuppiter, populum Romanum sic ferito ut ego hunc porcum hic hodie feriam: tantoque magis ferito quanto magis potes pollesque.’ Now, all such ceremonies, simple as they may appear, were hedged round with the most minute regulations as to formulae and procedure, and were thus removed from the competence of ordinary individuals.

Moreover, each locality developed differences of usage which, however slight, could never be ignored. Herodotus,[114] speaking of homicide purgation, implies that all Greeks used the same rites. But that there were minor local variations may be inferred, perhaps, from a peculiar ceremony in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ of Sophocles. Oedipus, having gone as an exile from Thebes to Attica because he had slain his father, is told[115] that he cannot hold converse with the Athenians while he is still uncleansed. The ban is removed when he is admitted to ‘purgation,’ but for the due performance of the rite he is entirely dependent on local direction. We shall give the relevant dialogue between Oedipus and the Chorus[116]:

_Oed._ Kind sir,
Be my good guide. I will do all thou biddest.

_Ch._ Propitiate these holy powers, whose grove
Received thee when first treading this their ground.

_Oed._ What are the appointed forms? Advise me, sirs.

_Ch._ First see to it that from some perennial fount
Clean hands provide a pure drink-offering.

_Oed._ And when I have gotten this unpolluted draught?

_Ch._ You will find bowls, formed by a skilful hand,
Whose brims and handles you must duly wreathe.

_Oed._ With leaves or flocks of wool, or in what way?

_Ch._ With tender wool ta’en from a young ewe-lamb.

_Oed._ Well, and what follows to complete the rite?

_Ch._ Next, make libation toward the earliest dawn....

_Oed._ With what contents
Must this[117] be filled? Instruct me.

_Ch._ Not with wine,
But water and the treasure of the bee.

_Oed._ And when leaf-shadowed Earth has drunk of this,
What follows?

_Ch._ Thou shalt lay upon her then
From both thy hands a row of olive twigs
Counting thrice nine in all—and add this prayer—

_Oed._ That is the chief thing—that I long to hear.

It may be said that we have not here a genuine instance of homicide-purgation. There is no animal sacrifice, no ‘cleansing’ by a bath of blood. Water and honey were regular offerings to the dead, and the express prohibition of wine-libations reminds us very forcibly of the sacrifice to the Erinnyes made by Clytaemnestra in the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus.[118] Has Sophocles in mind, then, a local rite of placation to the Erinnys of Oedipus at Colonus, which he interprets as a commemoration of purgation rites? We have seen how easily such rites may be confused. Or are we to assume that the purgation rite for involuntary or extenuated homicide was different from the rites by which a wilful murderer could be purged ‘abroad’ or from those by which a justifiable slayer was purged at home? Was the sacrifice which was offered to the Erinnyes or the Semnai Theai[119] by involuntary slayers after their return from exile, and by accused persons who were acquitted by the Areopagus, a regular purgation rite? These questions we find it difficult to answer either in the affirmative or in the negative. Plato’s references[120] to greater and lesser ‘cleansings’ according to different degrees of guilt imply that the average Greek did not understand the exact nature or purpose of ‘purgation’ and that the secrets of this magic art of reconciliation were the exclusive privilege of theocratic nobles whose interest it was to obscure rather than to clarify the details of the system. The passage we have quoted from the _Oedipus Coloneus_ possibly points to variations in the ‘purgation’ ritual according to degrees of guilt—variations which suggest moreover the ambition and the power of local deities and priesthoods to retain their distinctive peculiarities in the execution of a central Apolline doctrine.[121]

In the _Iphigenia Taurica_ of Euripides[122] we find a mock purgation ceremony arranged by Iphigeneia to save the lives of Orestes and of Pylades. The image of Artemis is said (it was a fiction invented by a loving sister) to have turned in its seat and to have closed its eyes when the blood-stained Argive cousins entered the temple! Iphigeneia proposes to ‘cleanse’ the pollution by the blood of young lambs shed in solitude by the sea and such other things as she has ordered as purifications. King Thoas, not being himself appealed to, leaves the whole question of purgation entirely in the hands of the priestess of Artemis.

From the legend that Bellerophon was cleansed by his host Proetus,[123] the king of Tiryns, we might be inclined to argue that the purgation rites for certain forms of kin-slaying were performed by private non-sacerdotal individuals. But every king was a High Priest in primitive religion; and, further, we have already seen that Proetus could not have performed the post-Homeric ceremony which is attributed to him. It is however possible that Croesus personally ‘purged’ the Phrygian homicide mentioned by Herodotus.[124]

It is probable that in Greece the ‘cleansers’ of homicide-guilt were always ‘priests’ of some kind. Epimenides of Crete purged the city of Athens on a famous occasion, yet not from murder but rather from sacrilege[125]; moreover, Müller points out[126] that he was a native of Phaestus in Crete where there was a very ancient cult of Apollo; hence Epimenides was more than probably a member of an Apolline sacerdotal guild. Müller is, however, we think mistaken in regarding purgation for homicide as the exclusive privilege of Apolline priests. The Euripidean reference to purgation by a priestess of Artemis which we have just cited,[127] Athene’s interpretation[128] of the supplication of Orestes as a supplication for purgation, in the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, and many passages in the _Laws_ of Plato,[129] reveal the error of this opinion.

The purgation of Orestes by Apollo is described by Aeschylus in the _Eumenides_. It is no priest or priestess of Olympian or Chthonian gods, but Apollo himself,[130] the chief of the καθάρσιοι θεοί, who performs the rite. We cannot interpret the ceremony as the purgation of a wilful matricide ‘abroad,’ as we think that such purgation was impossible, at least in historical times.[131] It is the ‘purging’ rather of a deed which is either justified or extenuated by Apollo’s express command, a ‘purging’ which would normally take place in the slayer’s home-land but which is here attributed to a divine Delphian purifier either because Apollo was the patron of the Greek ‘purgation’ system or because the deed was such that no one could have cleansed it save the god who had commanded it, or because a Phocian legend made Phocis, not Athens, the place to which Orestes fled after the slaying of his mother. Orestes tells[132] Athene that he is not a suppliant for purgation at Athens, because he has been already ‘purged.’ We may infer from this that a homicide-exile had not to be ‘purged’ more than once in his changes of residence abroad, but we think it probable that such ‘extern’ purgation did not dispense with the need for ‘domestic’ purgation if the exile was ever permitted to return to his home.[133] Orestes says[134]: ‘There is a law that the shedder of blood is debarred from human intercourse until at the hands of a man who purifies from bloodshed the blood of a young animal has been poured upon him. Long ago have I been thus made clean by others who live elsewhere, by animal victims beside running water.’

From this passage, and from the reference which we have cited from Euripides’ _Iphigenia Taurica_, as well as from more general considerations we conclude that homicide-purgation normally included the shedding of animal blood when some element of guilt was admitted. It is possible, therefore, that the rite described by Sophocles, in the _Oedipus Coloneus_,[135] was not conceived as a genuine purgation-rite but rather as an exceptional local procedure which was intended to supplement a presumed anterior purgation.[136] That Attica was noteworthy for its scruples regarding ‘pollution’ may be inferred from the remarks of the Corinthian Chorus in the _Medea_ of Euripides.[137]

We are entirely on the side of Müller[138] and Philippi[139] in the view that purgation, in historical Greece, was applied to the authors of justifiable bloodshed.[140] This we may regard as a further confirmation of our opinion that homicide-purgation was not a placation of ghosts or an expiation offered to gods, but a solemn and sacred symbol of reconciliation between the slayer and his native gods.[141]

Our hypothesis of the origin of the Greek doctrine of homicide as a pollution will receive still further confirmation when we describe in more detail the historical Greek system of penalties for bloodshed and the conceptions of those penalties which are found in Attic tragedy. We will now give the reasons which have led us to associate the Greek ‘pollution’ doctrine with the Delphian Apollo and his Amphictyonic League, after which we shall be in a position to discuss[142] the influence of the ‘pollution’ doctrine on ‘wergeld’ and the legality of ‘private settlement.’ The following account is intended as a supplement to Müller’s analysis, which errs only in attributing purgation-rites exclusively to Apollo and his priests.

APOLLO AND POLLUTION

In Homer, Apollo has already established at Pytho a temple of many treasures.[143] The reference to ‘sacred Crisa’ side by side with ‘rocky Pytho’[144] suggests, if the Greeks were right in their interpretation of ‘Crisa’ as ‘the Cretan land,’ that the region was already revered in the days of the Minoan thalassocracy. Aeschylus in the _Eumenides_[145] reproduces the Greek tradition regarding oracle-deities at Delphi, before the advent of Apollo. The Delphian priestess accords priority to Ge, the Earth-goddess, ‘the first of prophets,’ and then she prays to Themis, as the second deity who gave oracles there. This legend probably originated in a joint worship of Ge and of Themis under the forms of the Mother and the Maid; for, just as the cult of Demeter and Kore represented the joint worship of the Earth and its produce, so the cult of Ge and Themis represented the worship of the Earth and of the deified uniformity of the Earth’s fertility. Next the priestess prays to Phoebe, another daughter of Earth, who in turn transmitted the oracle to her son, Phoebus Apollo. It was supposed that the temple which is mentioned by Homer was the fourth[146] temple which had been built on that site. This temple was destroyed in 548 B.C., according to Pausanias.[147] Hence it is much less probable that the oracular shrine had been handed down by continuous succession as an inheritance within a ‘divine family’ than that it was repeatedly destroyed and desecrated by successive invaders. The destruction of Crisa in 585 B.C. by the Amphictyonic League furnishes an historical illustration of its chequered career in prehistoric ages. The octennial festival known as the Stepteria,[148] which commemorated the conquest of the Python by Apollo, had probably an historical foundation. For the Python, a large snake, was worshipped as a symbol of the Earth’s fertility: it was therefore associated with Ge and Themis, who ‘handed down’ the oracle according to legend. The famous Omphalos at Delphi, of which the origin and significance were so mysterious to the Greeks, was really the tombstone of the Python. But Earth, though buried, still lived in the tomb! It was from a cavern of Earth that the Pythian priestess received the vapours which produced her ‘anaesthetic revelation.’[149] In the Apolline shrine was the Hestia, or sacred Hearth, derived from pre-Olympian ancestor worship and necromantic art. Before the pilgrim entered the shrine of the Olympian oracle, he had to perform a Chthonian sacrifice, and offer a πέλανος, a mixture of milk, wine and honey, which was a characteristic offering at the tombs of the dead.[150] Around the tomb of the Python stood Gorgon-images,[151] which were probably suggested by ‘image-magic’ as a placation of the wrath of the Erinnyes, who sought the life of the slayer of the Python. It was from these images, we think, that Aeschylus derived his conception of the Erinnyes, and the famous scene[152] which depicts them as sleeping a loathsome sleep in the temple of Apollo, whom they hate but also fear. We find in Aelian and Plutarch the legend[153] that Apollo, in the days of his conquest of Delphi, fled to Tempe, after slaying the Python, to be purified from the pollution. The Stepteria festival was believed to commemorate his flight! In this legend, however, as in that in which Zeus purifies Ixion,[154] we see the effect of aetiological myth-making and the operation of a principle of primitive religion whereby man makes the gods in his own image and attributes to them the emotions and the observances of his own day.

As we cannot regard Apollo, notwithstanding Müller’s[155] reasoning, as the special product of Dorian religion, so we cannot attribute his exaltation in post-Homeric days exclusively to the Dorian invasion. The Achaeans worshipped Apollo as a prophet-god and as a powerful ally in war, but their hegemony in Greece was based on military control rather than on theocratic manipulation. The Delphians are not mentioned in Homer. They were a Dorian dominant caste which conquered the Phocian masters of the ‘Homeric’ temple at Pytho,[156] about 1000 B.C. Undoubtedly they could not have retained the fruits of their conquest for any period of time, if they had not been supported by the power of the Dorian invaders of Southern Greece. Thus, in 448 B.C., when the Phocians had reoccupied Delphi, it was the Dorian Spartans who sent an army to restore it to the Delphians.[157] Yet the Athenians, who were then supreme in Central Greece, restored it to the Phocians for a time. But, about 585 B.C., when anti-Dorism was at its height in Greece, it was to a northern league of Greek States, in which the Dorians were subordinate, that Delphi looked for help against the Phocians of Crisa.[158] The fact that Cleisthenes of Sicyon, an anti-Dorian, championed the Delphians in this campaign, proves that their Dorian nationality was already subordinated to the prestige which they had won as the High Priests of Greek prophetic religion: and the loan of fifteen talents which a Spartan king gave to the Phocian general who had once more seized Delphi in 356 B.C. shows how Dorism had lost its primal solidarity.[159]

We think, then, that the prestige of the Delphian Apollo, though originating in the Dorian migration, was due to a combination of two forces: (1) the widespread cult of Apollo in Greece and in Asia Minor: and (2) the skill by which the Delphians (who controlled the oracular decrees) impressed the Greeks and foreign peoples with the unrivalled divinity of their local shrine in matters of prophecy and healing-magic; and organised under their banner the local priesthoods of Greece by annual processions and pilgrimages, by the construction of sacred roads, and the establishment of religious Amphictyonies.[160] While other ‘sacerdotal’ nobles in Greece worshipped a number of deities, Olympian and Chthonian, the Delphians seem to have concentrated on Apollo. They were definitely theocratic—being a select caste of nobles, whose High Priests were elected by lot.[161] They formed a criminal court which exacted the death penalty for sacrilege. It follows that when homicide became a religious offence, these judges would not only have decided all cases within their territory,[162] distinguished between different degrees of guilt, and pronounced upon the possibility of purgation, but they would also have used the prestige of the oracle to make their decisions imitated elsewhere. Thus, the Attic Eupatridae, who worshipped Apollo Patroos, and their judges, the Ephetae, who swore by him before their trials,[163] would naturally have adopted the decisions of the central Apolline oracle. Moreover, the annual processions of representatives (θεωροί) of Greek states to Delphi, the Pythian Games, a festival in which all Greeks participated, and the formation of religious international leagues or Amphictyonies made obedience to Apolline oracles almost a matter of obligation.

The great Thessalian Amphictyony of Demeter at Anthela, a very ancient association, including Thessalians, Locrians, Phocians, Boeotians, Athenians, Dorian and minor states, came in the sixth century[164] to meet also at Delphi, and the temple was placed under the control of international Hieromnemones who met twice a year and promulgated laws to be obeyed by all its members, called Amphictyonic laws. It is significant that, in historical Athens, murder exiles were prohibited from Amphictyonic festivals.[165] This law was clearly of Amphictyonic origin.[166]

We have quoted Thucydides’[167] account of the command which was issued by the oracle of Apollo to Alcmaeon, the matricide, directing him to travel to the Echinades Islands. This legend bears, on the face of it, an antique stamp, and the function which is here ascribed to the Delphic oracle is a first-rate piece of evidence for the connexion of Apollo with the historical doctrine of ‘pollution.’

We have quoted Herodotus’[168] account of the story concerning Phrixus and Athamas, in which a Delphic oracle was said to have commanded the Thessalians to ‘purge’ their country by slaying Athamas in sacrifice. This legend we regard as ‘unhistorical’ and pseudo-aetiological, but the rôle which it assigns to Delphi may be cited in support of our present hypothesis.

In historical Attica, the rites of homicide-purgation were performed by three persons called Exegetae or Interpreters who, Suidas[169] assures us, were appointed or controlled by Delphi (Πυθόχρηστοι). Plato,[170] speaking of the appointment of Sacred Interpreters, says: ‘It is right to bring from Delphi the laws relating to all “divine matters” and to follow these laws, having appointed interpreters for them.’ Speaking of their appointment he says that from the names of candidates which stood first on the list after election, nine should be sent to Delphi, and ‘the god’ was to select three of these names. The homicide laws of Dracon, as we shall see later, were not a complete code of homicide-law. Many details were omitted, and these details, we believe, were worked out in the unwritten code of the Ephetae and the Exegetae. In the _Euthyphro_[171] of Plato, a poor freeman who had killed a slave was put in chains and cast into a trench on the wayside to await the decision of the Exegetae concerning his guilt! The man died from hunger and neglect before the decision arrived, and the question of avenging his death forms one of the problems of the dialogue.

Coulanges points out[172] that the Spartans regarded, not Lycurgus, but Apollo, as the author of their laws. These laws were Πυθόχρηστοι. If they operated, concerning homicide, in a comparatively severe manner, this was because the Spartan military system absorbed without much modification the autocratic tendencies of Delphic law, but we must not attach too much importance to a single statement of Xenophon’s which can perhaps be otherwise explained.[173]

Solon, the Athenian legislator, abolished all the laws of Dracon except those which related to homicide.[174] These particular laws were themselves an anomaly in the Draconian code. Plutarch says that the laws of Dracon were said to have been written with blood, not with ink.[175] Death was the penalty for minor thefts, yet the wilful murderer was accorded the option of exile, and the involuntary slayer, the further option of ‘appeasing’ the relatives of the slain! The life of a murderer in exile was ‘protected’ by the decree of a State whose jurisdiction ceased at its boundaries! We believe that the Draconian homicide-laws are an eclectic codification of existing traditions and that these traditions were a compromise between tribal customs and the seventh-century Apolline doctrine of ‘pollution.’ Coulanges says[176] that Solon did not change the murder laws of Dracon, because they were ‘divine,’ and to disobey or tamper with such laws was regarded as sacrilegious. In our view Apollo and the Delphic oracle constituted one of the sources, and clan-traditions another, from which sprang the laws which Dracon codified.

Plato,[177] speaking of the penalties for wilful kin-slaying, refers to a myth or legend ‘clearly told by priests of old’ to the effect that Justice, the avenger of kindred bloodshed, has ordained that the perpetrator of such an act shall suffer the same doom as he has himself inflicted.[178] We have seen[179] that in the clan-system, kin-slaying was normally punished by perpetual exile, but not by death. We do not agree with Caillemer[180] that the fate of such exiles was more pitiable than that of ordinary homicide exiles, but we support the following opinion of his in regard to the attitude of the kindred. ‘Ils hésitent,’ he says, ‘souvent à verser le sang de leur parent: ils se bornent au bannissement du coupable.’ In Plato,[181] the penalty for kin-slaying is inexorably death. It was, we believe, the pollution doctrine which indirectly produced this change, through the abolition of ‘private vengeance.’[182] It could not have _directly_ produced it, as is clear from the fact that amongst the Israelites, who still retained the avenger of blood, Cain, the murderer of his brother, was punished only by exile; but when, as in Greece, the pollution-doctrine caused the State to interfere in the trial of homicide and in the execution of its penalties, State judges came to execute a penalty which the relatives of the slain would never have inflicted upon a kinsman in the days of ‘private vengeance.’ We shall discuss more fully, later,[183] the problems concerning parricide in Attic law. The fact that parricide was not expressly mentioned in Dracon’s laws does not prove that such a crime was not punished by State officials in historical times. Thus the myth which is attributed by Plato to ‘priests of old’ may be regarded as another proof of the ‘divine,’ which is to say, the Apolline inspiration of historical Greek homicide law.

Again,[184] in regard to suicide, Plato says that it is necessary for the relatives of the deceased to inquire of the ‘Interpreters’ as to the proper methods of purification and of burial.

But the most decisive argument to be derived from Plato as to the connexion of Apollo with purgation and with Greek homicide law can be found in the scholium to a passage in the _Laws_, a scholium which incidentally supplies a proof of the historicity of Plato’s murder laws. The passage enunciates different cases of justifiable homicide, or rather justifiably accidental homicide—the essence of such discrimination lies in the fact that certain kinds of accidental slaying were foreseen and provided for, in advance, whether by custom, or by public opinion, or by written codes—and the cases which are here enunciated are identical with those of the Draconian law regarding justifiable bloodshed.[185] We cite only a section of the passage,[186] which is sufficient for our present purpose. ‘If any person unintentionally slays a fellow-citizen (φίλος) in a “contest” or at the public games ... or during war, or in military exercises ... in imitation of warfare ... let him be purified according to the law brought from Delphi about such matters and be immune from punishment (καθαρός).’ The scholiast gives the Delphic law, as follows.[187] ‘_The law or oracle_ brought from Delphi regarding a man who kills his friend (_i.e._ fellow-citizen, as distinct from public enemy) involuntarily:—“Thou hast slain thy comrade (ἑταῖρον) while intending to defend him (ἀμύνων)—his blood doth not pollute thee: thou art purer than thou wast before: but thou, man, who standing near a comrade being killed hast not defended him—thou hast gone not pure away.”’ That such important cases of justifiably accidental homicide should be provided for by Delphic legislation is a most noteworthy fact. Such cases are mentioned in Dracon’s laws, and we presume that they found a place in other Greek written codes. The reference to ‘public games’ suggests unmistakably an international code of laws. Here, then, we find Plato, a member of that Attic State which prided itself on the early foundation[188] of the Delphinium court, for the trial of justifiable homicide, in the time of its first Ionian Kings, advising a conformity to Delphic legislation in homicides of this kind! This scholium, if properly weighed and considered, would in itself be almost sufficient to demonstrate our theory of the Delphic origin of historical Greek homicide-laws, and of the universal similarity of these laws. We cite it here, however, as a mere link in a chain of evidence which is still very far from completion.

We have already referred[189] to the exclusion of homicide-exiles from Amphictyonic festivals in Greece, and we have maintained that such a law probably originated in some Amphictyonic league such as that of Apollo at Delphi. The same reasoning applies to the law quoted by Demosthenes[190] as a law of Dracon, which protected the lives of homicide exiles abroad. The law reads: ‘If anyone shall slay a murderer or cause his death while he abstains from market-places on the State boundaries and from (public) games and Amphictyonic festivals, such a person shall be liable to the same penalties as if he had killed an Athenian citizen.’ We have already[191] suggested the origin of such a law. It was, we think, due to the influence of tribal custom in conflict with the new doctrine of ‘pollution,’ in the seventh century B.C. Demosthenes does not understand correctly the origin of the law, though he is reasonably successful in explaining the law.[192] ‘What,’ he says, ‘was the legislator’s object? (He thought) that if we slay people who have fled to other countries, others will slay those who have fled to us: if this happens, the only refuge left for the unfortunate wretches will be abolished ... also he strove to prevent an indefinite series in the avenging of (such) crimes.... He considered that if a man who is tried for murder, and condemned, once escapes securely, though he ought (also) to be expelled from the native State of the victim, it is not righteous to kill him in every place.’ Demosthenes forgets that it was quite possible for ancient Greek States to make an international compact such as appears to operate between States of the modern world, whereby all murderers who fled abroad would be _extradited_—not slain where they had taken refuge, but handed over to the State of the ‘victim.’ We shall see presently[193] how the Greeks did evolve a system of extradition of a special kind. All the objects which Demosthenes attributes to the legislator are the creations of his own rhetorical mind. Why should he expect pity for ‘unfortunate wretches’ in a legislator who decreed that, if these wretches remained at home until the verdict of the court was given, they would inexorably be put to death? Why should a murderer expect pity from the relatives of the slain who were polluted by his presence? No, such a law must have originated in a central international Amphictyony or oracular authority which, in its legislation, had to respect the traditions of tribal village communities and of tribal aristocratic States, traditions which had come down from distant ages, and could not be suppressed without a struggle. Tradition held that ‘exile’ saved the murderer’s life, and it was not felt that such a penalty was not a sufficient deterrent. New social conditions, new religious doctrines may have changed men’s conceptions of the deterrent power of exile, but they had, nevertheless, to respect the old tradition. The homicide laws of historical Greece are, we believe,[194] a compromise between central autocratic deterrence and tribal ‘private vengeance.’