Chapter II: Sophocles

‘Greek drama,’ says Jevons,[1] ‘owes its origin to religion and its development to art. It is but another way of stating this fact to say that one sign of the growth of the Greek drama was the diminution of its religious significance.’ The drama of Sophocles compared with that of Aeschylus is less theological and celestial, more human and terrestrial. From the artistic point of view it not only obeys the first alternative in the Horatian maxim[2] which we have already quoted and which prescribes adherence to traditional story; it also follows, even more closely than Aeschylean drama, the second alternative, which exalts the merit of consistency. Aristotle[3] has attributed to Sophocles a piece of self-criticism in which he asserts that he depicted his characters, ‘not as they are, but as they must be’ (οἵους δεῖ). We shall not attempt to enter into the controversy which this simple statement has evoked,[4] but we may suggest as a probable interpretation of the words that certain ideal criteria guided the characterisations of Sophocles. These criteria were, in our opinion,[5] consistency and tradition. ‘The characters of Sophocles,’ says Jevons,[6] ‘are bound up with his plots in an artistic and harmonious whole ... it is equally true that his characters depend upon his plots.’ But the plots and the characters of Sophocles were not, we think, his own invention. They were derived from pre-existing legend and tradition. If, then, Sophocles did not always represent his characters precisely as legend described them, the reason is that there were inconsistencies in the legends. To escape such inconsistencies, Sophocles sometimes had recourse to what we may term eclecticism. If, for instance, in Homer, Oedipus, after slaying his father, is said to have continued to rule over the Cadmeans,[7] Sophocles ignored this tradition because it was inconsistent with the sequel which post-Homeric legend indicated.[8] Euripides, on the contrary, often reproduced, in one and the same drama, various mutually inconsistent legends, and then introduced a _deus ex machina_[9] to cut the Gordian knot! Nevertheless it remains true that not only in Sophocles, but also in Aeschylus and in Euripides, the characters and the plots are to a great extent based upon pre-existing legends, and these legends are often very difficult to analyse because of the varying influences which were derived from the ages through which they passed. If religion is less prominent in Sophocles than in Aeschylus, the reason, we think, is that the personality of the dramatist selected those varieties of legends which emphasised the human element rather than the divine. But, for an Athenian of the classical period, there was one aspect of human nature which was always interesting and could never be ignored, namely the relation of man to the laws of the society in which he lived. Fear of the laws and of the penalties which they prescribed, a knowledge of the laws and their administration, a habit of legal casuistry, an almost morbid delight in legal problems, were essential elements of Athenian psychology. To say this is to imply that the Sophoclean drama, like that of Aeschylus, has an important legal interest, and cannot be made completely intelligible without an analysis of its legal aspect. Of the seven extant tragedies, six are concerned with themes of human bloodshed. These six plays we shall now briefly examine, from the standpoint of homicide law. With the _Philoctetes_ we have not any special concern.

THE ‘ELECTRA’

The plot of the _Electra_ corresponds, in the main, with that of the _Choephoroe_ of Aeschylus. It is regrettable that we do not possess the companion plays in which Sophocles represented, dramatically, the murder of Agamemnon and the trial of Orestes, but we may infer from the similarity of the _Electra_ to the _Choephoroe_ that these plays followed the Aeschylean model. We have said[10] that the trial of Orestes at Athens for the slaying of his mother at Argos is not legally intelligible unless we assume that Orestes fled to Athens with the intention of residing there, in the event of acquittal, until such time as the avenging Erinnyes permitted his return to Argos. But there is no evidence for this assumption in the Homeric story,[11] which merely implies that Orestes came from Athens to avenge his father’s death. Aeschylus, therefore, is following the Attic legend rather than Homer when he suggests that Orestes went to Athens after, not before, he slew his mother, and that it was from Phocis, not from Athens, that the avenging Orestes came. In Sophocles also it is from Phocis that Orestes comes. Moreover, we are definitely told that Phocis had been the place of Orestes’ exile since his expulsion from Argos.[12] With Athens, then, Orestes was not associated before he slew his mother! Aeschylus is not quite so precise upon this point, but from the words which Orestes utters when he arrives at Athens[13] after he had slain Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, we cannot infer that he had ever been there before. Sophocles, therefore, and Aeschylus seem equally to have ignored an important element of the Homeric narrative in their close adhesion to the Attic legends, in which the trial of the matricidal Orestes at Athens was an outstanding essential fact. The only reason which we can suggest for this strange omission is the fact that in post-Homeric times the legend was so completely permeated by the dominant figure of Apollo that Phocis, not Athens, came to be regarded by certain legend-makers as the natural refuge and place of residence of Orestes before he slew his mother. It is not, of course, altogether impossible to suppose that Orestes had lived for a time in Phocis, and for a time at Athens. The command of Apollo could have been issued to a pilgrim from Athens as well as to a resident of Phocis. But it is strange that Aeschylus and Sophocles do not emphasise this point. The story of Orestes’ trial at Athens must, we think, have been based, if the legend-makers had any care for legal issues, on the assumption that Orestes intended to reside at Athens after he had slain his mother. This assumption is implied in the story that an Apolline oracle directed him to Athens for trial. The Homeric narrative does not justify though it is not inconsistent with such an assumption. If therefore this narrative was ignored by Attic legend-makers, it must have been because the prestige of Apollo had obscured the Homeric story in a variant of the legend which we may call the Phocian legend of Orestes, and because this variant, though not originally identical with the Attic legend, became nevertheless at some time fused with it.

If we happened to possess the non-extant drama which contained Sophocles’ account of the trial of Orestes, we feel sure that the plea of Orestes would have been identical with the Aeschylean plea, namely that of justifiable matricide. Thus, in the Sophoclean _Electra_ Orestes says[14]:

I, when I visited the Pythian shrine
Oracular that I might learn whereby
To punish home the murderers of my sire,
Had word from Phoebus which you straight shall hear:
‘No shielded host, but thine own craft, O King!
The righteous death-blow to thine arm shall bring.’

The post-Homeric doctrine of pollution appears in the following words of Electra, who sees in the cohabitation, within her home, of two polluted murderers a horrible crime which well-nigh obscures their incestuous adultery.[15]

My mother—if she still must bear the name—
When resting in those arms—— Her shame is dead:
She harbours with bloodguiltiness and fears
No vengeance.

The atmosphere of ‘private execution’ which characterised the Homeric age and the earliest stratum of the pollution era is faithfully retained. Orestes is the sole avenger: without him there is little hope of vengeance. Electra may strike, in the last resort, but not before she has despaired of the return of Orestes. The deed of blood is calmly executed by Orestes, whose conscience is salved by the command of Apollo. The Chorus do not condemn the act. They have looked forward to it.[16] Thus they say[17]:

Behold they come, they come!
His red hand dripping as he moves
With drops of sacrifice the war-god loves.
My ’wildered heart is dumb.

The desire of Electra that Aegisthus should not be buried is clearly derived from the historical custom, for which Plato is our sole authority,[18] of refusing burial to wilful murderers and especially to kin-slayers[19] such as Aegisthus was. The Homeric account[20] is here of necessity abandoned. Electra says[21]:

Kill him at once!
And, killed, expose him to such burial,
From dogs and vultures, as beseemeth such.

The Sophoclean Erinnyes are even more ‘Homeric,’ and therefore less ‘tragic,’[22] than the Aeschylean Erinnyes. In Sophocles we do not find any reference to the Erinnyes of the slain Clytaemnestra. This is perhaps because he conceived Orestes’ act as clearly and unmistakably the act of a just avenger. Hence Electra prays[23]:

And ye, Erinnyes, of mortals feared,
Daughters of Heaven that ever see
Who die unjustly,
Avenge our father’s murder on his foe.

But Sophocles shares with his brother-dramatists two ideas which we have ascribed[24] to post-Homeric times, namely the notion of an ancestral curse and the notion of the blood-thirst of the dead, as is manifest from the following lines[25]:

The curse hath found, and they in earth who lie
Are living powers to-day;
Long dead they drain away
The streaming blood of those who made them die.

To the post-Homeric period we have also ascribed[24] the custom of μασχαλισμός, or mutilation of the limbs of the dead, which is mentioned in this play,[26] as it also is in the _Choephoroe_ of Aeschylus.[27] The ‘sacrifice’ of Iphigeneia is also referred to in the _Electra_. It is not described in detail, nor is it boldly emphasised, as it is in Aeschylus.[28] But it is mentioned as an argument by which Clytaemnestra seeks to seduce Electra from her desire for vengeance.[29] Since Agamemnon was a murderer, she argues, surely his death need not be avenged. In her reply, Electra utters a sentiment which at first sight seems inconsistent with her general attitude in the play; she says[30]:

But grant thy speech were sooth, and all were done
In aid of Menelaus: for this cause
Hast thou the right to slay him? What high law
Ordaining? Look to it, in establishing
Such precedent, thou dost not lay in store
Repentance for thyself. For if by right
One die for one, thou first wilt be destroyed
If Justice find thee.

What, we may ask, is the meaning of the ‘precedent’ to which Electra refers? Does it mean that no individual should have the right to take human life? Does it imply a condemnation of ‘private vengeance’ as distinct from social justice? We do not think that the ‘precedent’ which Electra mentions refers to private vengeance. We have seen[31] that, amongst the Homeric Achaeans, there was a distinction, vague and unwritten, but none the less real, which was enshrined in a public opinion of the caste, the distinction between murder and vengeance. The act of Agamemnon in sacrificing Iphigeneia (if we suppose for the moment that the sacrifice actually took place) would not have been regarded by the Achaeans as an act of murder. But the act of Clytaemnestra in slaying her husband would have been, and was, regarded as murder, and Orestes was conceived as a just avenger. Hence, in this play, when Clytaemnestra sets herself up as an isolated authority on questions of right and wrong in matters of homicide, she is violating what must have been an established precedent in the Achaean society. It is, we think, to some such precedent as this that Electra here refers. To suppose that Electra is referring to the precedent of ‘private vengeance’ would be to attribute an inconsistent and illogical character to Electra, for is she not whole-heartedly scheming to accomplish what, on this hypothesis, she verbally condemned?

Finally, Sophocles does not attribute to Electra, or perhaps even to Pylades, any actual share in the act of vengeance. In this he follows Aeschylus, whose object it was to make Orestes the central figure in the drama. Euripides, however, we shall see, suggests that the act of vengeance was, so to speak, ‘partitioned’ amongst three avengers. Both Electra and Pylades have to suffer punishment, as well as Orestes. Perhaps Euripides is following a legend which, while admitting a degree of guilt, sought to lessen the guilt by dividing it. This version Sophocles does not follow, nor does Aeschylus. But Pylades had been too long and too well established in the post-Homeric story to be omitted or ignored. He had come into the story almost as early as Apollo, for he is mentioned in a cyclic epic[32] by Agias of Troezen which belongs to the middle of the eighth century B.C. The connexion of Orestes with Pylades and with Phocis, rather than with Athens, belongs, probably, to the Phocian variant of the Oresteian story. This version was older, we think, than the Argive legend which we shall find in the _Orestes_ of Euripides, and it was also probably older[33] than the Attic legends which emphasised the trial of Orestes at the Areopagus. The Attic legend-makers should at least have followed the Homeric saga which suggested the connexion of Orestes with Athens before his act of vengeance; and if neither they nor the Attic dramatists refer to such a connexion, this must be attributed to the fact that the famous friendship of Pylades and Orestes and the famous purgation of Orestes at Delphi had in course of time obscured, in a fusion of legends, the previous association of Orestes with Athens, a fact which Apollo had not forgotten when he directed him to that State for trial and acquittal.

THE ‘KING OEDIPUS’

We have already mentioned[34] the Homeric legend of Oedipus, and the difficulties which it presents to the legal analyst. Homer[35] appears to think it strange that a parricide should have continued to rule in his native land. He hints that the dreadful deed was punished in the first instance by pain and suffering, and later by ‘pains full many’ such as the Erinnyes of a mother bring to pass. The story is complicated by the addition of the crime of incest, just as the story of Orestes is, to a less extent, complicated by the addition of adultery. We have suggested[36] that in pre-Homeric times the deed of Oedipus was already regarded, by Pelasgians, as at least involuntary parricide, and perhaps also, because of the provocative action of Laius, as quasi-involuntary homicide; and we have attributed the wonder which is expressed by Homer at Oedipus’ continued rule in Thebes to the absence, amongst the Achaean caste, of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying. In post-Homeric times the notion of an ancestral curse was added to the story, and also, if it was not already in the legend, the idea of provocation on the part of Laius. Furthermore, the pollution doctrine was applied to the legend, and Apollo was appealed to as the sole judge of guilt, as he was, we think, appealed to in the Phocian legend of Orestes.[37] It is strange that Attic legend-makers did not seek to connect Oedipus with the Areopagus court, seeing that he was said[38] to have been buried in Attica and to have been given a refuge there before his death.

We have seen[39] that Orestes was tried by the Areopagus, on a plea either of justifiable or of quasi-involuntary matricide, according to the different versions of the Attic legends. In the ‘second Attic legend,’ which is based on the plea of quasi-involuntary matricide, for which Orestes claimed that the penalty had already been paid, the Areopagus functions as a ‘court of reconciliation’ rather than as an ordinary homicide court. In the case of Oedipus there is a suggestion, in the _Oedipus Coloneus_,[40] of an informal trial of Oedipus on the part of Theseus, King of Athens. It was probably a legendary reference to his trial by Theseus which prohibited any connexion of Oedipus with the Areopagus.

In the present play Apollo threatens to send a plague upon Thebes if the Thebans do not search for and punish the murderer of Laius. The penalty which is mentioned by the oracle is of a general kind, that is, it does not definitely imply that the crime was parricide—such an implication would have militated against the development of the drama—but it assumes that the slaying of Laius was an act of wilful murder. Thus Kreon says[41]:

Sovereign Apollo clearly bids us drive
Forth from this region an accursèd thing
(For such is fostered in the land and stains
Our sacred clime), nor cherish it past cure ...
By exile or by purging blood with blood,
Since blood it is that shakes us with such storm.

It is of course possible to maintain that a penalty which permitted the option of death or exile was the punishment of parricide in the early stages of the ‘pollution system,’ though such an option was not permitted for kin-slaying in Attic law. We have suggested[42] that it was not the pollution doctrine which of itself abolished private execution, and exile was permitted, as we think,[43] until private execution was abolished. It is therefore legally possible that a legend of the early pollution era contained such an oracular penalty for parricide, in days when political synoekism had not yet established State execution. We might be inclined to interpret in this way the description of the oracle which is given—but only at the end of the play!—by Oedipus himself[44]:

His sacred utterance was express and clear,
The _parricide_, the unholy, should be slain;

and he requests Kreon to execute the penalty[45]:

Fling me with speediest swiftness from the land
Where nevermore I may converse with men.

But we cannot suppose that the word ‘parricide’ which is here used by Oedipus was actually mentioned by the oracle, as, if it had been, the greatest tragedy of ancient literature, the _King Oedipus_ of Sophocles, could never have been written. The whole dramatic evolution of the plot depends on the suppression of the murderer’s identity. The Thebans would not have understood such a description, seeing that, so far as they knew, Laius had no living child. Jevons refers to a dramatic characteristic which may help to explain this difficulty, namely the ‘irony of Sophocles.’ He says[46]: ‘For the full appreciation of the irony of Sophocles ... it must be remembered that whereas the torturing contrast between the condition of Oedipus as he fancies it, and as it really is, is only discovered by Oedipus at the last moment, this contrast is perpetually present from the beginning to the spectator.’ Oedipus implies that Kreon had used the word ‘parricide’ when speaking to him in connexion with the oracle. When Kreon replies[47] ‘Ay, so ’twas spoken,’ are we to interpret the answer literally? If Kreon had known the truth, he would have been compelled by religious fear to declare it. The character of Kreon, as revealed in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ and in the _Antigone_, is that of a loyal and religious citizen rather than that of a loyal kinsman. Hence we must either suppose that this reference to parricide is a dramatic slip, an instance in which the Sophoclean ‘irony’ overreached itself, or we must suppose that Oedipus and Kreon have incorrectly interpreted the oracle in the tragic excitement brought about by the dramatic developments of the plot. From the legal standpoint we consider it most probable that the oracular declaration of the penalty was of a non-committal character. Hence it is that when Kreon discovers the true facts of the case he decides to consult the oracle again before taking any action. To Oedipus’ request to drive him from the land, he replies[48]:

Doubt not I would have done it, but the god
Must be inquired of, ere we act herein....
In such a time
We needs must be advised more perfectly.

Does Kreon then anticipate that the second consultation of the oracle will elicit a severer penalty, namely death without the option of exile, which was the historical penalty for parricide, or is he well aware that the act of Oedipus, committed in ignorance of Laius’ identity, was, at worst, wilful murder, and, if he hesitates to decree a penalty of perpetual exile, is it because he is aware that the act was provoked by Laius and was therefore quasi-involuntary? The answer to these questions cannot be found in the _King Oedipus_ drama. The play ends while the homicide penalty of Oedipus is still undecided. We do not connect with the death of Laius the self-blinding of Oedipus or the suicide of Jocasta. These events, which are referred to explicitly or implicitly by Homer,[49] we connect rather with the crime of incest. The legal analysis of the story is complicated not only by the presence of this crime, but also by the post-Homeric doctrine of the ancestral curse in the house of Laius. But we hope to elicit from the companion play, the _Oedipus at Colonus_, a more satisfactory account of the legal aspect of the legend.

THE ‘OEDIPUS AT COLONUS’

Already, in the preceding play, we have been informed by Oedipus that his act was not only not wilful parricide but was not even wilful homicide. Describing the fatal scene, Oedipus said[50]:

When I drew near the cross-road of your tale
A herald, and a man upon a car
Like your description, there encountered me.
And he who led the car and he himself,
The greybeard, sought to thrust me from the path.
Then in mine angry mood I sharply struck
The driver-man who turned me from the way;
Which when the elder saw he watched for me
As I passed by, and from the chariot seat
Smote full upon my head with the fork’d goad;
But got more than he gave, for by a blow
From this right hand, smit with my staff, he fell,
Instantly rolled out of the car supine.

When the full revelation of his accursed destiny came home to Oedipus, he was so overwhelmed with grief, remorse and terror that he became for the time insane. But in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ he has once more regained his reason. He argues[51] with himself and with others as a rational Theban or Athenian of the historical era. What, he asks, was his crime? The guilt lies with the Curse and the Fates who accomplished it. Has he committed incest? No, for he did not know that his wife was his mother. Why, therefore, should he be punished? One crime only has he committed, yet not with malice and deliberation. He had slain an old man ‘with dark locks just sprinkled o’er with grey,’[52] and this old man was no slave or serf, but a free man and a prince. For this deed, according to Greek law, Oedipus must become an exile. But was the exile to last for ever? We have quoted from Plato[53] what we believe to have been the Greek legal penalty for slaying in a passion, namely a period of exile which sometimes extended to two, and sometimes to three, years, according to the degree of malice in the act. But we have argued that in such cases the duration of the exile depended in theory, if not in practice, on the consent of the relatives of the slain. Now Plato says that in no circumstances, not even in self-defence, was it lawful for persons to slay their parents.[54] Hence the legal position of Oedipus is a complex one. Objectively, he was guilty of wilful parricide; subjectively, he pleaded guilty to extenuated homicide. Such complex issues were not provided for in ancient law, not even in Plato’s penal code.

If therefore we find that Euripides[55] speaks of Oedipus as ‘imprisoned’ in Thebes, and that Sophocles speaks of Oedipus as an exile in Athens, and mentions also a projected arrangement by which Oedipus might live near Thebes—not in it, but just outside it[56]—may we not see in these accounts the efforts of legend-makers to keep their creations in harmony with legal facts, and may we not suppose that their failure to agree with one another, and especially with the Homeric narrative, was due to the twofold aspect, subjective and objective, of the deed of Oedipus? The Homeric account of the subsequent rule of Oedipus at Thebes could only be retained, in the ‘pollution’ era, by assuming that his act was not parricide, but homicide, that it was not wilful, but quasi-involuntary, and that the kinsmen of Laius unanimously consented to his return from temporary exile. If his act was conceived, objectively, as parricide, it would have been necessary to assume (1) that Laius ‘forgave’ him before he died and (2) that his kinsmen consented to his return. But no legend suggests that Laius forgave his slayer. Furthermore, the legends seem to have emphasised the fact that the kinsmen of Laius were not unanimous in consenting to the return of Oedipus. Hence the Homeric story of his continued existence at Thebes had, in the ‘pollution’ era, to be abandoned.

In the _Oedipus Coloneus_ Oedipus protests against his continued banishment from home, because, he maintains, his deed was involuntary. Thus, he says[57]:

If,
Born as I was to misery, I encountered
And killed my father in an angry fray,
Nought knowing of what I did or whom I slew,
What reason is’t to blame the unwitting deed?...
If to-day,
Here now, one struck at thee a murderous stroke,
At thee,[58] the righteous person,—wouldst thou ask
If such assailant were thy sire, or strike
Forthwith? Methinks, as one who cares to live,
You would strike before you questioned of the right,
Or reasoned of his kindred whom you slew.
Such was the net that snared me: such the woes
Heaven drew me to fulfil. My father’s spirit,
Came he to life, would not gainsay my word.[59]

Kreon, coming to Athens from Thebes, invites Oedipus to his home, not only on his own behalf, but on behalf of the citizens of Thebes[60]:

But I am sent to bring
By fair persuasion to our Theban plain
The reverend form of him now present here....
All Cadmus’ people _rightfully_
Invite thee with one voice unto thy home.[61]

But Oedipus does not regard this attitude as sincere. Previously, Ismene, his daughter, had warned him that Kreon would come:

To set thee near their land, that thou mayst be
Beyond their borders but within their power.[62]

In the opinion of Ismene, Oedipus can never return to his home; she says[63]:

The blood of kindred cleaving to thy hand,
Father, forbids thee.

This statement interprets the act of Oedipus as parricide rather than as homicide, for, assuming that the act was quasi-involuntary, the removal of pollution required, in the former conception, the forgiveness of the dying, whereas in the latter conception it required only the consent of the relatives to ‘appeasement.’ Ismene implies that, whatever attitude Kreon and the other relatives of Laius adopt, Oedipus can never return, because Laius has not forgiven his slayer.

Kreon betrays a similar attitude of mind when he says[64] to Theseus that he did not think the citizens of Athens would give refuge to ‘a man incestuous and a parricide....’ He says:

Such was the mount of Ares that I knew ...
That suffers no such lawless runaways
To haunt within the borders of your realm.

We have seen that in international Greek law exile was not permitted for wilful parricide or, more generally, for wilful kin-slaying, and therefore no State could open its doors to such slayers. But for involuntary or extenuated kin-slaying exile was recognised by law, and therefore whenever a foreign kin-slayer applied to be admitted as an exile into any State it was necessary to hold an inquiry, in order to discover whether his deed of blood was voluntary or involuntary, before admitting him to civic and religious communion. The attitude of Kreon in the last speech is, we believe, a rhetorical exaggeration, for it implies that in his opinion Oedipus was a wilful kin-slayer of full guilt, and it is legally incompatible with his previous proposal to escort Oedipus to his home. Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, promises[65] the same boon, if Oedipus will only forgive him and help him in his conflict with Eteocles. But Oedipus refuses to forgive his unfilial son and launches his curse against him, because he and his brother and his uncle are the cause of his continued exile[66]:

’Tis thou hast girt me round with misery;
’Tis thou didst drive me forth, and driven by thee
I beg my bread, a wandering sojourner.

Thus, if we make due allowances for rhetorical deceptions, we may conclude that, except in the mind of Oedipus himself, his act was regarded as voluntary rather than as involuntary: the oracle of Apollo took, on the whole, the same view, but made some allowance for the element of provocation in the act. Long before, it had foretold that Oedipus would not return to reign in Thebes or to die there, but that in Athens he would find rest and asylum. Oedipus quotes the oracle[67]:

When I should reach my bourne,
And find repose and refuge with the Powers
Of reverend name, my troubled life should end
With blessing to the men who sheltered me
And curses on their race who banished me.

There is reference in this quotation to a shrine of the Semnai Theai in the deme Colonus. It was at this shrine that Oedipus appeared as a suppliant for asylum and it was here that he had to submit to a ceremonial of ‘cleansing’ which we have already referred to[68] as a minor local purgation. This ceremonial was probably applied to all foreign homicide exiles who claimed the privilege of residing in a State. Orestes does not require it when he arrives at Athens, because he has not yet been tried and convicted, because Apollo has commanded him to go to Athens, and because Apollo has purged him of his guilt. The purgation ceremony in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ was similar to that which Croesus administered to the Phrygian kin-slayer, as Herodotus[69] records. We have said[70] that, in cases of kin-slaying, some kind of inquiry, an informal trial, was held to investigate the question of guilt. The Athenians[71] here do not at first accept the plea of Oedipus, but refer the matter to the decision of Theseus, King of Athens. It is ultimately upon the word of Apollo that Theseus grants him protection.[72]

Within the precincts of the shrine of the Semnai Theai, there was, in the time of Pausanias, a tomb which was called the tomb of Oedipus. Pausanias[73] does not believe the story of Sophocles that Oedipus died and was buried in Attic soil. Does not Homer,[74] he argues, prove that Oedipus was buried at Thebes? Yet the tomb of Oedipus was to be seen in the shrine of the Semnai! Pausanias inquired about this curious contradiction, and he discovered, as he thinks, the solution. The bones of Oedipus were, he says, transferred from Thebes to Athens! Nothing could better illustrate the credulity of the ancients and their want of historical logic. Oedipus was, in all probability, buried at Thebes. According to Homer,[75] he never left that city. But the doctrine of pollution, which was applied retrospectively to Oedipus, insisted that he did leave Thebes and that he could never return to it. Plato implies that a person who was stained with kindred bloodshed—even extenuated kin-slaying—could never be buried in the tomb of his fathers. To Corinth Oedipus did not return. To Phocis he could not go, for it was there that the deed of blood was wrought, and we have seen[76] that a foreign slayer could never return, whether his act was voluntary or involuntary, to the State in which the act occurred. As a blind exile could not be expected to go very far from home, the natural place for the exile of Oedipus was the Attic land beyond Cithaeron. Thither legend brought him, to constitute a further link in the eternal friendship between Thebes and Athens! In the time of Demosthenes,[77] just before the battle of Chaeronea, the Athenian reception of Oedipus was put forward as an argument for the alliance of Thebes and Athens. In Attica legend said that he was buried, and his tomb was there for everyone to see. But he could not have been buried in Attica, since, according to Homer, he was buried at Thebes. To reconcile Homer with later legend, it was necessary therefore to suppose that the bones of Oedipus were transferred from Thebes to Athens. Pausanias, however, unfortunately failed to see that, according to this hypothesis, the whole structure which post-Homeric legends of the ‘pollution’ era built round the name of Oedipus topples to the ground. The explanation lies in the evolution of the legend. The legend which Sophocles followed is absolutely incompatible with Homer; and this was the ordinary and, so far as we know, the only legend of the death of Oedipus which existed in post-Homeric days.

THE ‘ANTIGONE’

In the _Antigone_ drama, which is rightly famous not only for its dramatic art, but also for the problems which it presents and the conflicts of human passion which dominate it, there is no plain, direct and obvious matter for the student of homicide law. But there are points of interest on the borderland of homicide which cannot be entirely omitted. It is easy for the adverse critic to assert that in this play we find reference to civil war, to suicide, to judicial execution, and to quarrels about burial, but we find no reference to homicide. We venture to suggest that fratricide in civil war, judicial executions of which the justice is called in question, and suicide, are very closely related to homicide by the similarity, if not the community, of their nature. Lysias[78] tells how, in the political crises at Athens, men were prosecuted, sentenced, and executed as murderers who had merely acted as informers, or as we should say ‘secret service’ agents, in regard to that vague political crime which is called treason. According to Pausanias,[79] the Athenians accepted as a foundation legend for the Delphinium homicide-court the story that Theseus pleaded justification for having slain, in civil war, Pallas and his sons who were his kinsmen. Again, suicide and homicide, as they appear in drama, may be closely related, since Teucer was punished by his father, Telamon, because of the suicide of his half-brother, Ajax.[80] He was even said to have been tried for this deed, for the story of his trial is solemnly told by Pausanias[81] when he is describing the origin of the Attic murder-court Phreatto. In the _Antigone_ the judicial execution of Antigone by Kreon is assailed as murder by his son, Haemon. The messenger describes how Haemon attempted to slay Kreon in revenge[82]:

But with savage eyes the youth
Glared scowling at him, and without a word
Plucked forth his two-edged blade. The father then
Fled and escaped: but the unhappy boy,
Wroth with himself, even where he stood, leant heavily
Upon his sword and plunged it in his side.

What, we may ask, caused Haemon to commit suicide? We admit that his love for Antigone and the grief which he felt at her loss were essential causative factors; but we also feel that there was present in his heart an overwhelming fear that if he survived he would slay his father. We think that it was partly in order to avoid this horrible deed that he killed himself, just as in Homer,[83] Phoenix, through fear of parricide, fled from his home, his country and his kindred. The fact that even for Kreon the execution of Antigone was not merely repugnant to sentiment but was actually a source of conscience-conflict may be inferred from the extraordinary manner in which he caused her to die. He tells the Chorus[84]:

Where human footstep shuns the ground
I’ll hide her in a cave-like vault,
With so much provender as may prevent
Pollution from o’ertaking the whole city.

He places Antigone in a cave and leaves with her a little food. In his effort to avoid kin-bloodshed he proposes to starve the girl to death! Nature and Fate can take the guilt. This procedure of Kreon cannot have been entirely due to the aversion which human nature, even in very primitive societies, felt towards the shedding of kindred blood.

In Sophocles, Kreon is more devoted to the city than to his kindred. Otherwise he would have permitted the burial of the dead Polyneices without waiting for the compulsion of circumstances. Yet we feel that if the rebellious subject who sought to bury Polyneices had not been akin in blood to Kreon, he would have been immediately executed.[85] Hence we suggest that the starving to death of Antigone without bloodshed, in order to avoid pollution, implies a latent fear in the mind of Kreon lest her execution might be a judicial murder, for it was when the victim was a kinsman that the religious aspect of execution was most formidable and that the least doubt about its justice produced the greatest scruples. It is of course open to us to suppose that we have in this story a fusion of ideas which are derived from different atmospheres, and that in course of time pollution ideas became grafted upon an earlier story which represented the peculiar nature of this execution of Antigone as entirely due to human psychology and tribal custom. But, in the absence of any evidence for the existence of such a legend in early times, we may conclude that the act of Kreon is presented in this drama as an act which is open to the suspicion of being a judicial murder. For such murder there was no penalty in law or custom while the perpetrator remained in power, and the avenger was impotent to avenge. Teiresias the prophet takes this view of the matter and forebodes a terrible reckoning. He includes this execution in his recital of the crimes of Kreon when he says[86]:

Not many courses of the racing sun
Shalt thou fulfil, ere of thine own true blood
Thou shalt have given a corpse in recompense
For one on earth whom thou hast cast beneath,
Entombing shamefully a living soul.

The whole plot of the _Antigone_ really turns on the question of the burial of Polyneices, just as that of the _Ajax_ depends upon the problem of the burial of Ajax. Eteocles and Polyneices had fallen in mutual combat as leaders in a war between the Argives and the Thebans, a combat which, from the existence of blood-relationship between the leaders, assumed the external aspect of civil war. The problem of guilt is obscured by political complications. If we inquire whether the mutual slaughter of these two brothers was culpable fratricide, we must answer that, in the circumstances of the case, it seems obvious that either both slayers wore guilty or that both were justified. Theseus was justified,[87] according to legend, in the slaying of the Pallantidae, and, according to Kreon, in the _Antigone_, Eteocles was justified in slaying Polyneices, for he commands that Eteocles should be buried with full honours—and we know that culpable kin-slayers could not be buried. Polyneices, however, was not, in Kreon’s view, justified in slaying Eteocles. Here are Kreon’s words[88]:

... The man,
Eteocles—I mean—who died for Thebes ...
Shall be entombed with every sacred rite
That follows to the grave the lordliest dead.
But for his brother who, a banished man,
Returned to devastate and burn with fire
The land of his nativity, the shrine
Of his ancestral gods ... for Polyneices
This law hath been proclaimed concerning him:
He shall have no lament, no funeral,
But lie unburied for the carrion fowl
And dogs to eat his corse, a sight of shame.

The law which is here mentioned is not an archaic fossil recovered from an antique past. It is the law of ‘the mortal lawgiver’ which Plato gives and which we have already described.[89] Its application in this context implies that Polyneices was guilty of culpable fratricide, which in the special circumstances of the case has affinities with the crime of treason. Plato[90] gives a law which confirms this supposition. ‘If a brother,’ he says, ‘shall, in his own defence, during a fight occurring in a sedition, kill a brother while warding off the party who first had recourse to violence (τὸν ἄρχοντα), let him be considered free from guilt as he is who kills an enemy.’ In the laws of Dracon, also, as we know from the restored inscription and from Demosthenic quotations, the category of justifiable homicide included the slaying of the ‘first’ aggressor and of the ‘unjust’ aggressor.[91] According to our theory that Dracon codified existing laws but did not invent new laws, it would follow that Plato here refers to a very ancient and for a long time unwritten law of the Ephetae and the Exegetae. The attitude of Kreon to Eteocles is precisely that of the Platonic legislator. His attitude to Polyneices seems also, at first sight, to be legally correct, because Polyneices was technically _the unjust aggressor_. But the tendency of legislation concerning such cases is to condemn too swiftly, without due consideration and with a superficial examination of the facts. Such legislation assumes that a man must be either right or wrong, either wholly innocent or wholly guilty. Now we find it very difficult to conceive Polyneices as guilty of wilful fratricide. Before he became an ‘aggressor’ he had been banished from his country, because he refused to divide the throne with his brother Eteocles. Was not his expulsion a prior act of aggression? Perhaps therefore he can be regarded as fully justified[92] if one goes far enough back in one’s analysis of ‘aggression.’ But on such questions ‘justice’ is frequently a crude political hotchpotch even in the most civilised communities. We suggest that it is against such political ‘justice’ that Antigone in the play revolts. It is frequently asserted[93] that this play symbolises a conflict between religion and civil power; that Antigone and Teiresias champion the laws of the gods, while Kreon defends the laws of the State. But in ancient Greece there was ordinarily no distinction between Church and State. The State was identified with its gods. Treason was a kind of sacrilege; sacrilege was a form of treason. Again, it may be argued that the conflict between Kreon and Antigone symbolises an opposition between the State law which refused to traitors the privilege of burial, and the ancient Clan-law, according to which the burial of a dead kinsman was a religious duty, and its neglect a dangerous ‘sin.’ We regard this hypothesis as much more reasonable, but if it be pressed to its logical conclusions it compels us to see in the _Antigone_ an exaltation of tribalism over State power, or otherwise to attribute moral weakness to Antigone. But we suggest that tribalism had evolved the custom of refusing burial to traitors long before the advent of centralised civic government. In this respect, therefore, tribal law and State law were in unison, not in conflict. Hence this hypothesis compels us to assume that in this play there is an exaltation of moral weakness. There are passages in the play which support this interpretation. Thus Antigone says[94]:

But had I suffered my own mother’s child,
Fallen in blood, to be without a grave,
That were indeed a sorrow.

But, a few lines earlier,[95] she implies that there is something hideously novel and unorthodox about the edict of Kreon:

Nor thought I thy commandment of such weight
That one who is mortal thus could overbear
The infallible unwritten laws of Heaven.

Haemon, too, implies[96] that there is something very arbitrary in Kreon’s proclamation. All the citizens of Thebes, he says, repudiate the guilt of Antigone:

She perishes for a most glorious deed,
Who when her own true brother on the earth
Lay weltering after combat in his gore,
Left him not graveless for the carrion fowl
And raw-devouring field-dogs to consume—
Hath she not merited a golden praise?

Hence we think that the conflict in this drama lies rather between human nature and human reason on the one hand and the arbitrary tyranny of civic governments in political legislation and administration on the other. Antigone protests against the decree which declared her brother at once a traitor and a fratricide of full guilt.[97] If Polyneices had slain Eteocles and had become in his stead the ruler of Thebes, how different would Kreon’s appreciation of the facts have been! It is obvious that sedition, faction, and civil war, whether in ancient Greece or in modern Ireland, produce a contempt for civic law because of the despotic dogmatism which regards the same individual as now a patriot and now a traitor, now a hero and now a villain, according to the momentary swing of a political pendulum or the varying strength of political parties.

Finally, we may point out that in this play there is a veritable epidemic of suicide. But it is not suicide of the ordinary ignoble kind. There is a clear distinction, in the mind of the dramatist, and in the facts, which makes such self-slaughter more akin to sacrifice. Haemon, Eurydice, and Antigone one by one put off ‘this mortal coil.’ It is only when it is too late that Kreon is brought to see the selfish obstinacy of his point of view. The play ends with a warning against impious pride. But the gods have punished the humble with the proud! The legal analysis of suicide of this kind is rather difficult and unsatisfactory, but we shall offer some further remarks upon the subject in connexion with the following play, the _Ajax_, in which suicide forms a prominent feature of the plot.

THE ‘AJAX’

When the council of the Achaean chieftains on the plains of Troy decided to bestow upon Odysseus the arms of Achilles as the prize of martial valour, Ajax, the rival claimant for the prize, was overwhelmed with jealousy and wounded pride, and he resolved to slay Odysseus and, with him, other Achaean chieftains. This resolution he fortunately failed to execute, not through any fear of the consequences of his act, nor yet through moral or legal scruples, but simply as a result of the intervention of Athene, who directed his murderous hand against a herd of cattle and ‘mesmerised’ him into believing that those cattle were his human enemies. This fictitious imaginary slaying of men cannot easily be classified from the standpoint of historical law. Are we to regard Ajax as a plotter of murder or a contriver of murder or as guilty of ‘attempted murder’?

We have already seen that in historical Greek law[98] the contriver of murder and the actual murderer were more or less identical, and were tried by the same Areopagus court. Now, plotting to kill which did not succeed but which merely resulted in wounding would have been regarded as ‘malicious wounding’ (τραῦμα ἐκ προνοίας), whereas such plotting without wounding was ‘attempted murder’ (βούλευσις). From the probable fact[99] that the Palladium court tried cases of βούλευσις in the time of Aristotle, we have inferred that this offence was punished by temporary banishment; for the connexion of βούλευσις with the Palladium implies that the degree of guilt was regarded as more or less identical with that of manslaughter, even though the nature of these offences is very different. Now we have seen that amongst the Achaeans of the Homeric age there was no discrimination in regard to the penalties for murder and for manslaughter: but are we also to assume that there was no distinction between murder and plotting-without-wounding (βούλευσις)? The act of Ajax, as it is described in this Sophoclean drama, was, according to our definition of the words, an instance of βούλευσις. Now it is possible to maintain that in this play Ajax is regarded as a murderer, and that he would have been punished as a murderer if his act of suicide had not rendered it impossible to carry out such punishment. The fact that he slew some herdmen, with the cattle, is not, we think, of any legal importance, though the Chorus happen to mention it, for these herdmen were either slaves or inferior serfs whose death was not regarded as murder. In the _King Oedipus_ we are told[100] that Oedipus slew all the attendants of Laius at the famous Phocian cross-roads, but their death was unavenged and for their death the Delphic oracle demanded no punishment. In the _Ajax_ the Chorus proclaim the death penalty for Ajax[101]:

The man will die, disgraced in open day,
Whose dark-eyed steel hath dared through mad-brained error,
The mounted herdmen with their herds to slay.

Again it is possible to maintain that the attempt of Ajax was also, in a certain sense, treasonable, for it was an insult and a danger to the whole Achaean army. Now, the penalty for treason, we have seen,[102] was ‘collective,’ that is, it applied to the family of the traitor, not merely to himself, until the fourth century B.C. It is thus perhaps that we must explain the attempt which was made by the Achaean army to slay Teucer, the half-brother of Ajax, as the messenger records[103]:

They swarmed around him and with shouts of blame
From each side one and all assaulted him,
As brother to the man who had gone mad
And plotted ’gainst the host—threatening aloud
Spite of his strength he should be stoned and die.

But they did not slay Teucer, despite their threats, and this fact suggests that βούλευσις (equated with murder) rather than treason was the crime which they imputed to Ajax: for the penalty for murder was rarely collective. In the following dialogue between Teucer and Menelaus, Ajax is called a murderer[104]:

_Men._: Just, that my murderer have a peaceful end?
_Teu._: Thy murderer? Strange to have been slain and live!
_Men._: Yea, through Heaven’s mercy. By his will, I am dead.

Yet we cannot infer from the suggestion that the penalty of death would have been inflicted upon Ajax had he lived to suffer it, that such was the penalty for βούλευσις in historical Attic law. It is much more probable that Sophocles is here attributing, by an archaism, an absence of discrimination between murder and βούλευσις to the Homeric society.[105]

Teucer foresees that when he returns to Salamis he will be banished by his father, Telamon, because of the death of Ajax. Addressing the corpse of Ajax, Teucer says[106]:

Will Telamon, my sire and thine, receive me ...
Returning without thee?
... I shall leave my land a castaway,
Thrust forth an exile and proclaimed a slave.

We have quoted[107] from Pausanias the legend that the Attic court of Phreatto was first founded when Teucer pleaded innocence for the death of Ajax. Apart from the impossibility of assuming any real historical connexion between Teucer and Phreatto, we may naturally ask, why was it that Teucer was presumed to have been guilty of bloodshed, and what degree of guilt was attributed to him? We cannot very logically apply to Teucer the principle which was enunciated by a Delphic oracle which we have already mentioned[108]: ‘Thou, who standing near a comrade being killed hast not defended him, hast gone not pure away.’

Yet such oracles suggest that Teucer incurred some guilt through not having protected Ajax from himself. The only explanation which we can offer for the facts is this: Teucer was regarded by Telamon as partially culpable in regard to the death of Ajax. In Greek law, it was necessary for the accused to prove his innocence, and Teucer could not prove it. Ajax had died in a solitary place; but he was more or less insane, and he should not have been left without a protecting escort.[109] The guilt of Teucer, being of a minor kind, was connected with that of manslaughter. The court of Phreatto was based on the principle that the slayer who was guilty of involuntary homicide could not have returned to his native land until he had appeased the relatives of the slain. Therefore Telamon, the father of Ajax, was represented in legend as having refused to permit Teucer to land in Salamis. The fact that Ajax was a kinsman of Teucer causes further complications. But in the event of minor pollution the legal aspect of such a case approximates to that of ordinary manslaughter. We have seen that the Achaeans punished kin-slaying by death and that they did not distinguish between major and minor degrees of guilt. But this story of Teucer is not, we think, of Achaean origin: it was attributed to an Achaean by post-Homeric legend. We have seen[110] that in tribal society, before political synoekism, the penalty for kin-slaying was exile, and that tribal law discriminated meticulously between varying degrees of blood-guilt. Thus, the story of the banishment of Teucer can only be made intelligible by being considered in its obviously archaic atmosphere.

It remains for us to discuss the dispute which arose concerning the burial of Ajax in this play. Ajax has committed suicide, but there are different kinds of suicide. Plato[111] includes under the category of kin-slaying the act of a person who ‘by violence deprives himself of his lot of destiny, without being compelled either by a verdict of the city which decrees it, or by a very painful and unavoidable misfortune which has befallen him, or by being involved in a disgrace which cannot otherwise be tolerable, but through sheer indolence, weakness and cowardice.’ Such persons must not, says Plato, be buried in the family tomb, or with funeral honours, or where anyone else has been buried. Now, the case of Ajax might easily have been included in one or other of the categories of suicide which Plato regards as honourable. Because of his βούλευσις he probably regarded himself as under sentence of death: he was insane with grief and wounded pride. No one could accuse him of cowardice or weakness. Moreover, Plato admits that some kind of burial was accorded to all suicides. In the _Ajax_ some Achaeans demand the burial of Ajax with full military honours, but others object to any form of burial. Moreover, in the whole course of the dispute between the chieftains the word ‘suicide’ is not mentioned even once.

Hence we cannot with any probability attribute to the fact of Ajax’s suicide the quarrel which arose about his burial. The quarrel arose, we think, because he was a virtual murderer and, in a sense, a traitor. We know that in ancient society persons who were convicted of treason were not buried, and also that wilful murderers who had been ‘executed’ were not granted the rites of burial. In the course of the quarrel, Ajax is called a murderer by Menelaus,[112] a traitor and a rebel by Agamemnon.[113] It is only because of the intercession of Odysseus that the other chiefs eventually permit Teucer to bury him. We feel that Odysseus in this play acts as an intermediary who is used to bring the dramatic story into harmony with Homeric facts. In the _Odyssey_[114] Ajax is depicted as dwelling in Hades, the western Spirit-land which was a place of repose for the Achaean dead but which could only be entered when their bodies had been buried. If it had not been for this Homeric reference we feel that the dead Ajax, who, by his suicide, had become his own executioner, would, on account of treason and βούλευσις, have been exposed to the wild birds and the dogs.

THE ‘TRACHINIAN MAIDENS’

This drama centres round the name of Hercules, and records his tragic death under circumstances which to us suggest the presence, at the birth of the story, of a morbid passion for legal problematising. As we shall have to deal with the legends of Hercules at greater length when we discuss the Euripidean dramas which are based upon them, we shall postpone for the present our general remarks about this Hero-god. In this play there is an incidental reference to the murder by Hercules of Iphitus, the son of Eurytus, King of Oechalia, a deed which is mentioned by Homer.[115] The herald says[116]:

When Iphitus to the Tirynthian height
Followed the track where his brood-mares had strayed,
He, while the thought and eye of the man by chance
Were sundered, threw him from the tower-crowned cliff.
In anger for which deed the Olympian king,
Father of gods and men, delivered him
To be a bond-slave.

Now, in Homer, the Olympian Zeus takes no such action. It is merely stated that the act of Hercules was a violation of the etiquette of hospitality![117] The act is censured, but not punished. But in later times, when murder became a religious offence and legend-makers imported the pollution-doctrine retrospectively into pre-existing legends, Hercules could not have escaped the pollution which even Apollo was said to have incurred when he slew the Python. And just as Apollo was said to have served as a bondman with Admetus,[118] so Hercules had to endure also a period of bondage. We cannot suppose that the penalty of servitude in the ‘pollution’ religion was identical with the tribal penalty of ‘servitude’ which is sometimes found in primitive societies.[119] The latter penalty was domestic and local, being regarded as a substitute for wergeld; the former penalty could only have been served ‘abroad,’ and it was, we think, really a consequence of the helpless poverty of an exile. Thus it is quite in keeping with what we may call the ‘pollution’ bondage of Hercules that Deianira should say[120]:

For since he quelled the might of Iphitus,
We here in Trachis[121] dwell, far from our home,
Dependent on a stranger, but where he
Is gone none knoweth....
These fifteen months he hath sent me not one word.

If it be objected that bondage or temporary exile was not the ‘pollution’ penalty for wilful murder, we may reply that while in Homer, and perhaps also in Sophocles, the slaying of Iphitus is presented as wilful murder, we learn from other sources that Hercules slew Iphitus under the influence of frenzy. According to another version of the story, it was in Lydia, not in Trachis, that Hercules went into bondage. Moreover, Hercules was not an ordinary, real, historical man, and the multitudinous legends which hang around him render him a very unsafe basis of illustration for the operation of any law, human or divine!

The main theme of this play is the death of Hercules, which, by a tragic irony, was caused by poison concealed in a garment which his spouse Deianira had sent him in the belief that the garment would act as a love-charm. Subjectively, the heart of Deianira was pure from guilt, and ultimately, but too late, her innocence was vindicated by a discovery of all the facts. The poison of the fatal garment[122] was traced to the Centaur Nessus, who had assured Deianira that it was a charm for waning love. The dying Hercules sees in the fatal gift the work of destiny, and his son Hyllus proclaims the innocence of Deianira[123]:

She erred with good intent. The whole is said.

The suicide of Deianira prevents us from witnessing the ‘forgiveness’ of the dying Hercules, the ‘release,’ as it were, which the revelation of her innocence would have evoked. Instead we hear him utter,[124] while still he believes her guilty, a ‘curse’ such as in historical Attica would have declared her ‘polluted’ by blood-guilt and would have compelled her, if she did not prove her innocence, to become an exile or to die:

O may I see her falling, even so
As she hath thrown me, to like depth of woe.
... She who hath done this deed shall feel my power.
Let her come near that, mastered by my might,
She may have this to tell the world, that, dying,
As living, I gave punishment to wrong.

FOOTNOTES

[1] _Hist. Gk. Lit._ p. 213.

[2] _A.P._ 119; _supra_, p. 276.

[3] _Poetics_, 25, 1460 b 36.

[4] See Butcher _ad loc._

[5] See also Tyrrell, ed. of Eur. _Bacchae_, Introd. p. xxxii.

[6] _Op. cit._ pp. 213-14.

[7] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.

[8] See _infra_, p. 315.

[9] See Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 225.

[10] _Supra_, pp. 279, 292.

[11] _Od._ iii. 306-7.

[12] See _Electra_, 1073, 1353.

[13] _Eum._ 235 ff.

[14] _Electra_, 32 ff.

[15] _Ib._ 274 ff.

[16] 490 ff.

[17] 1415 ff.

[18] _Laws_, ix. ch. 11.

[19] _Ib._ ch. 12.

[20] _Od._ iii. 309 f.

[21] 1483 ff.

[22] _Supra_, p. 120 ff.

[23] 110 ff., _cf._ 490 and 1388.

[24] _Supra_, p. 122.

[25] 1419 ff.

[26] 445.

[27] 439.

[28] _Agamemnon_, 228 ff., 1527 ff.

[29] _Electra_, 525 ff.

[30] 575 ff.

[31] _Supra_, p. 76.

[32] _The Nostoi._

[33] See Verrall, Introd. to Aeschylus, _Choephoroe_, p. xxvi.

[34] _Supra_, p. 55.

[35] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.

[36] _Supra_, p. 171.

[37] _Supra_, p. 309.

[38] _Infra_, p. 318.

[39] _Supra_, p. 294.

[40] 280 ff., 550 ff.

[41] 98 ff.

[42] _Supra_, p. 229.

[43] _Supra_, p. 236 ff.

[44] 1440.

[45] 1436.

[46] _Op. cit._ p. 211.

[47] 1442.

[48] 1438 ff.

[49] _Od._ xi. 271 ff.

[50] _Oed. Rex_, 800 ff.

[51] See _O.C._ 965 ff.

[52] _O.R._ 741.

[53] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9; _supra_, p. 210.

[54] See _infra_, pp. 341 n.; 359 n.

[55] _Phoenissae_, 62.

[56] _Oed. Col._ 400 ff., 785 ff.

[57] 975 ff.

[58] _I.e._ Kreon.

[59] 992 ff.

[60] 732 ff.

[61] 741 ff.

[62] 400 ff.

[63] 407.

[64] 945.

[65] 1340.

[66] 1363 ff.

[67] 87 ff.

[68] _Supra_, p. 151.

[69] i. 35.

[70] _Supra_, pp. 292, 316.

[71] 295 ff.

[72] 665 ff.

[73] i. 28.

[74] _Il._ xxiii. 677.

[75] See _Od._ xi. 271 ff.

[76] _Supra_, p. 164.

[77] Dem. _De Corona_, 291, 187.

[78] See _C. Agorat._ 135, 56.

[79] i. 28.

[80] Sophocles, _Ajax_, 1006-20; _infra_, p. 327 f.

[81] i. 28.

[82] 1233 ff.

[83] _Il._ ix. 458 ff.

[84] 775 ff.

[85] 309.

[86] 1064 ff.

[87] _Supra_, p. 245.

[88] 195 ff.

[89] _Supra_, p. 231.

[90] _Laws_, ix. ch. 9.

[91] _Supra_, pp. 193, 216.

[92] See Eur. _Phoenissae_, 300-445, 460-635.

[93] See Jebb’s edition, Introd. p. xxi ff.

[94] 466.

[95] 460 ff.

[96] 697.

[97] _E.g._ 20 ff.; 450 ff. For an interesting historical parallel compare the conflict of opinion at Corinth in regard to the ‘fratricide’ of Timoleon. (Diodorus, xvi. 65; Plutarch, _Timoleon_, 1-8.)

[98] _Supra_, p. 223 ff.

[99] _Supra_, p. 251.

[100] 810 ff.

[101] 228 ff.

[102] _Supra_, pp. 188, 220.

[103] 724.

[104] 1127 ff.; see also 1060.

[105] The story of Ajax’s attempted murder and suicide is post-Homeric. See Jebb’s _Ajax_, Introduction.

[106] 1007 ff.

[107] _Supra_, p. 248.

[108] _Supra_, p. 161.

[109] 905 ff.

[110] _Supra_, p. 238.

[111] _Laws_, ix. ch. 12.

[112] 1126 ff.

[113] 1240 ff.

[114] _Od._ xi. 543 ff.

[115] _Od._ xxi. 27 ff.

[116] 268 ff.

[117] _Od._ xxi. 28.

[118] Aeschylus, _Eum._ 726; Euripides, _Alcestis_, 1-10.

[119] _Supra_, p. 44.

[120] 40 ff.; see also λατρεύοντα (35).

[121] See also Pausanias, i. 32.

[122] 1140.

[123] 1136.

[124] 1003-4, 1110-14; 1133.