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BOOK I

POINE IN HOMER

SECTION I: The general principles of blood-vengeance, analysed and illustrated: modes of vengeance of modern races in the Balkans, in the Mediterranean area, and in South America: modes of the ancient Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Welsh: Burgundian, Norman, Israelite systems 1-11

SECTION II: Nature of the Homeric Society: Views of Leaf and Ridgeway: feudal militarism and tribalism 12-22

The Pelasgian system of blood-vengeance: current views explained and criticised: author's view: proofs from the text of Homer: question of a distinction between murder and manslaughter, and between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide: collectivity in vengeance 23-63

The Achaean system explained according to author's theory: proofs from Homeric text: question of discrimination, amongst Achaeans, between murder and manslaughter, and between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide: no collectivity or solidarity in vengeance 64-77

Judicial aspect of homicide in early Greece: current views criticised: author's theory based on distinction between Achaean and Pelasgian societies: arguments from survivals in historical times: meaning of ?????????? ????????: the Trial Scene in the Homeric Shield of Achilles: origin of trials for homicide 78-94

Religious aspect of homicide in early Greece: current views: digression on evolution of Greek religion: ancestor-worship: nature-worship: animal sacra: image-magic: anthropomorphism: Achaean and Pelasgian contributions to Homeric religion: fusion of Achaean and Pelasgian dogma and ritual: religious aspect of kin-slaying amongst Pelasgians and Achaeans: origin and evolution of the Erinnyes: origin of homicide-purgation: comparison of Pelasgian with Achaean Erinnys, and of Homeric Erinnys with post-Homeric and 'tragic' Erinnys 95-126

BOOK II

POINE FROM HOMER TO DRACON

SECTION I: Social transitions: fall of Achaean Empire and its causes: Achaean survivals: political changes in post-Homeric times: post-Homeric migrations: Sparta and Boeotia: the Hesiodic age of chaos: tribal stability and decay: evolution of the Attic State; aristocracy and democracy 127-137

SECTION II: Religious and legal transitions in post-Homeric times: Asiatic-Greek intercourse: compromise between Asiatic and Greek ideas adopted in regard to homicide: origin of Apolline purgation system: Apollo and pollution: rise of Apolline influence: organisation of theocratic nobles: origin of the laws of Dracon: proofs of author's theory from Greek legends, from Plato and Demosthenes: extradition: pollution-doctrine and wergeld: question of legality of 'private settlement' for homicide in historical Athens 138-190

The Draconian Code: restored inscription of 409/8 B.C. and author's explanation: other Draconian homicide-laws derived from Demosthenes: Plato's code confirms and supplements these data: classification of Attic homicide-laws as follows: those relating to accidental homicide, to death caused by animals or inanimate objects, and to homicide by persons unknown: those relating to justifiable and to justifiably accidental homicide: those relating to manslaughter: those relating to wilful murder: some problems suggested by these laws: origin of confiscation of property: evolution of State-execution: parricide and kin-slaying: historicity of Plato's legislation regarding homicide 191-242

POINE IN ATTIC TRAGEDY

CONCLUSION 422-424

INDEX 425-427

POINE

BOOK I

POINE IN HOMER

INTRODUCTION

SECTION I

If we examine the various methods of blood-vengeance which have been adopted by different peoples throughout the ages, we shall find that they may be divided broadly into four groups or categories. Amongst rude and savage races there exists or has existed a system of vengeance which we may describe as a barbarous and unrestricted vendetta. In the absence of any social machinery for the determination of blood-guilt, or for the estimation of its varying degrees, a single deed of blood provokes an endless series of retaliations: a hideous orgy of revenge rages through the land, an orgy which no one may escape; for old men and women and children perish, whether one by one, or in a general massacre. The vengeance is at once collective and hereditary. It strikes at the neighbours and at the most distant relatives of the murderer: it strikes, too, at the children that are born when the murderer has been gathered to his fathers. It ends only when there is hardly anyone left to kill, or when a paltry sum of money is offered to placate a glutted thirst for blood. It is a strange fact that such a system should have survived up to comparatively recent times in the Balkan States. It is generally but, as we hope to show, erroneously maintained that such a system prevailed amongst the earliest inhabitants of Greece about whom we have any certain knowledge.

A second mode of vengeance we may describe as a personal restricted vendetta. It is distinguished from the mode which we have just mentioned by the absence of collective or hereditary punishment. It refuses to visit the sins of the father upon his children or upon his neighbours. The right to avenge remains with the relatives of the slain. They may lie in wait for the slayer or, if he flees, they may dog his footsteps over land and sea. But they dare not strike the innocent for the guilty. There is some power, whether of military autocracy, or of public opinion, which prescribes the bounds of their avenging. The system does not generally include a regular tribunal for the trial of homicide, whether because there is little difficulty, in certain social groups, in determining the identity of the murderer: or because some primitive method of evidence, such as the ordeal of medieval Europe, takes precedence of human witnesses: or because a recourse to arbitration, in the private domain of a king or of a squire, is too insignificant a procedure to have found its way into any historical records. It is such a system that seems to have prevailed in Serbia up to very recent times. It is such a system that, we hope to show, existed amongst the Achaean caste in Homeric Greece.

A third, and for our present purpose the most important, mode of vengeance is that which we may describe as the 'tribal wergeld' mode. It consists essentially of a compensation, in the form of goods or valuables, which is paid by the relatives of the slayer to the relatives of the slain. It differs from our first-mentioned mode of vengeance in the fact that satisfaction is paid in 'money,' not in blood, and in the fact that payment is fixed by custom or law and is not of an indefinite duration. It differs from the second mode in this, that the ideal penalty is not death, but compensation or exile, and that the punishment is collective rather than personal. The system is found only in tribal communities, where the life of the individual is subordinated to that of the group, and where property is frequently possessed and enjoyed in common. It is, of course, true that all tribal societies do not adopt this system, whether because temperament and environment foster a blood-lust that money cannot appease, or because a religious law has been superimposed upon the clans, or because a feudal or highly centralised government has become strong enough to resist the demands of the clansmen for compensation. But, apart from these special circumstances, tribal communities tend to adopt the 'wergeld' system of vengeance. We have the most ample evidence of its operation in pre-medieval Germany, and Wales, and Ireland and Scotland, amongst the Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, the Wisigoths and the Vikings. We can see in ancient Israel an instance of a land which has evolved beyond the wergeld stage. There came a time when a theocratic legislator was sufficiently powerful to attack the privileges of the clans, and to cry out, as with a divine voice, 'Ye shall not take satisfaction for the life of a man that is guilty of blood.' We hope to make it clear that it was this system which prevailed amongst the earliest inhabitants of Greek lands, who may, for convenience, be described as Pelasgians. Owing to the great number of the individuals who were liable to make or to receive compensation, and also because of the social organisation of the tribes, we are not surprised to find that a regular tribunal was frequently appealed to, and that a trial, concerned more often with the question of payment than with the question of guilt, was one of the most common events of interest in the life of Pelasgian tribesmen. No wonder is it then that the poet Homer gives a description of such a scene and tells us that Hephaestus had engraved it on the famous Shield of Achilles. This is the earliest reference to a trial of any kind in all European literature.

As an example of the practice of unrestricted vendetta, we may cite the case of the Montenegrins. This little people, up to quite recent years, practised a collective and hereditary vendetta, which continued from generation to generation, until the number of victims on both sides was equal, or until a blood-price of ten sequins was accepted by the feud-weary relatives of the original victim. Again, in Sardinia, until the close of the eighteenth century, a collective hereditary feud followed a single act of murder, and hundreds of lives were lost in a single year. In Corsica, in the eighteenth century, the vendetta-system caused the loss of a thousand lives each year: whole villages were depopulated: houses became fortresses where armed men lay in wait, hungry for vengeance, while the women tilled the fields. A similar barbarous blood-thirst was prevalent in Sicily, in Calabria, and in Albania, up to quite recent times. The establishment of an improved system of government and the operation of disciplinary penalties have fortunately checked and must ultimately abolish so hideous a mode of vengeance. These peoples of the Mediterranean area are probably, as Ridgeway holds, the racial descendants of the old Pelagasian race. For this, and for other reasons, there is a tendency to assume that the Pelasgians followed this system of blood-vendetta. But we hope to show that this view is probably incorrect, and that it is much more applicable to the Greece of post-Achaean days, that is, from 1000 B.C. to 750 B.C. than to the Greece of Achaean and pre-Achaean times.

As an illustration of the second mode of vengeance, we may perhaps cite the Serbians of recent times who adopted a restricted form of vendetta and who often allowed murder to remain unpunished. The restricted system seems to have existed amongst the Araucanians of South America, and amongst the Jivaros Indians, but only when the identity of the murderer could be established. In this latter case we find the alternative operation of a more civilised with a more barbarous form of vengeance. But we must not assume that these forms coexist as alternatives everywhere. A French authority holds that the essential motive of collective punishment was the production or identification of the murderer. 'So long,' he says, 'as the murderer is unknown, so long is the responsibility collective and diffused.' We cannot accept this statement as an explanation of the origin of unrestricted vendetta. We admit that collective penalties of a minor kind would form a strong inducement for the discovery of the criminal. It was for this reason perhaps that an Anglo-Saxon law levied a fine on the whole 'hundred' if the murderer was not produced. But it is one thing to bring pressure to bear on a district, whether by a fine, as in this case, or by an oath, as in the instance mentioned in Deuteronomy; it is quite another thing to destroy a whole town or village if the murderer was unknown. We shall see that the Homeric Achaeans often waited long for vengeance, and often allowed the homicide to go unpunished, rather than visit with unjust punishment the innocent relatives of the slayer. In this system there is no trace of collectivity. The relatives have not even to pay a sum of money. The flight of the slayer is not indeed accepted as a substitute for the normal penalty, which is death, but it postpones indefinitely, if not for ever, a vengeance which the slayer alone can suffer.

To illustrate the operation of the 'tribal wergeld' system, we naturally turn, in the first place, to the Germans of pre-Christian days. Tacitus says of them: 'It is an indispensable duty to adopt the private enmities of a father or a relative ... these, however, are not irreconcilable and perpetual. Even homicide is atoned for by a fixed number of cattle and sheep and the whole House accepts the satisfaction, to the benefit of the civic group.' Tacitus is obviously astonished at this system of compensation for homicide. The Romans, like the Germans, were familiar with the organisation of the clan, and of the tribe, but Roman law, as far back as we can trace it, did not permit wergeld. In Rome, from 450 B.C. onwards, the expiation of the insult which the homicide offered to the State and its gods had driven from view, and had therefore probably abolished, the material compensation of the clan. The chief detail of interest which Tacitus gives us is the collective acceptance of satisfaction by a whole House or Family. From other sources, which we shall presently discuss, we may infer that the House in this instance was a very large unit, including not merely the closer kindred which traced descent to a common living ancestor, but that wider group of kinsmen which is called the clan.

We note also, in Tacitus' account, a reference to a fixed number of cattle and sheep. Who was it that fixed the number? Who was it that paid? To answer these questions we shall cite some details of Welsh wergeld payments which have been admirably collected and explained by Mr. F. Seebohm.

It was not necessary that these payments should all be made at the same time, or immediately. They were frequently made in fortnightly instalments. The system of receiving wergeld seems to have been parallel. It is probable that the cows paid by the murderer's family went to the family of the victim: those paid by first cousins went to first cousins: those paid by paternal kindred went to paternal kindred: all being distributed in the last resort to individuals, if the clans involved had developed the principle of individual ownership at that particular period of time. It is clear from the Cymric codes that individual ownership was assumed as universally prevalent. But it is certain that such a condition is not a characteristic of all tribal communities. In the Salic law, which operated amongst the Germans from about A.D. 500 onwards, a distinction was made between the inheritance of 'wergeld' and that of the 'allod' or family-domain. While the latter could only be inherited by a family group which did not extend beyond second cousins, a group which in Wales was called a 'gwely,' the wergeld was inherited by all persons who could trace any kind of direct descent, however remote, from a common ancestor of the original receivers of the wergeld. This law seems to us to reflect an ancient system of communistic ownership in movable property amongst the Germans. Indeed we may infer the existence of such a system from the account which Caesar gives of the pre-Christian Germans. Even in the time of Tacitus the arable land of the Germans had not yet become private property.

Accepting this principle, we can understand more easily the punishment of kin-murder in tribal society. There are only three alternative penalties to wergeld: exile, bondage and death. It is natural to assume, and it has been rightly maintained, that death was a loathsome penalty in days when relatives alone could avenge. It was therefore rarely, if ever, exacted. Bondage or servitude also, though sometimes found as a punishment for homicide, would naturally be avoided as a sequel to kin-murder. There remains only the option of exile. Like Cain, the slayer of his brother, the kin-murderer must wander over the wide earth. Expelled from his clan, his home, his property and his gods, he goes forth to slavery or to death in other lands. As a French writer puts it, 'Alone, he has arrayed against him the universe.'

On the other hand we find a diminution in the collective punishment which tribal wergeld carried with it, in the law of King Edmund which may thus be rendered in modern English: 'If anyone henceforth slay any man, that he himself bear the feud unless with the aid of his friends he compensate it with full wergeld within twelve months. But if they will not pay, I will that all the kindred be free from the feud except the murderer, provided they do not afterwards give him food and protection.' In such laws as these we catch a glimpse of a system of blood-vengeance which once prevailed amongst tribal peoples, but which soon became a mere echo, a phantom shadow of its former self, in the march of mightier movements, in the onward course of civilisation.

We have wandered far afield in the search for definite details of the wergeld system, as we shall look in vain for such details in the ancient literature of Greece, though we can have no doubt that the system prevailed in Greece for many centuries. It is true that in the laws of Gortyn we find a classification of money-payments which were exacted for adultery and seduction at a period which no authority regards as earlier than the seventh century B.C., and which is generally believed to be the sixth or fourth century B.C. These payments varied according to the rank of the offender and of the injured party: and also according to the particular circumstances of the offence. But at the time of the Gortyn laws, Crete had passed out of the stage in which murder was materially compensated. Hence these laws contain no reference to the wergeld system. We must therefore be content to apply to the earliest societies of Greek lands the general principles of the payment of wergeld which we find operative in other tribal countries. We have in the text of Homer unmistakable evidence for the payment of some form of wergeld. The only question that arises is: was this payment a mere sordid termination of a sanguinary feud, such as characterised the Montenegrins up to recent years, or was it a genuine tribal wergeld? Before attempting to answer this question, it will be necessary to examine briefly the nature of the societies which existed in Homeric Greece.

SECTION II

Some of the difficulties presented by Ridgeway's reasoning are removed, in our opinion, by the more recent theories of Dr. Leaf. Before the advent of the Achaeans to Greece about 1400 B.C., there already existed in Greece, according to Leaf, two social and racial strata: a dominant non-Aryan caste who came originally from Crete, and who may be called Minoans: a primitive neolithic agricultural Aryan people who spoke Greek, who were, in fact, the nucleus of the Greek race, and who had imposed their speech upon their non-Aryan masters. The Achaeans, in Leaf's view, came as a wave or series of waves in the perpetual tide of invasion from the north. Settling first in Epirus, they pressed gradually southwards, subdued the Minyans of Iolcos, and the Pelasgians of central Greece, crossed later to the Peloponnese, and having conquered Elis, Laconia and Argolis, established themselves in all the strategic positions of the peninsula. They were not necessarily, in Leaf's opinion, of different racial origin from the Pelasgians: they may, in fact, have been remotely related to them. But the Achaean outlook and temperament were very different from those of the Pelasgian folk. The former were military freebooters; piratical adventurers, bound together by that rigid obedience to a single commander which was an essential condition of their survival and success. The latter were tillers of the soil, accustomed to political serfdom, paying such dues as their masters exacted, following them, on occasion, to battle and to death. One point of difference which Leaf mentions must be here especially emphasised, as it is of vital importance for our theory of Homeric blood-vengeance. The Achaeans, Leaf holds, had no tribal or 'kindred' organisations, and were merely soldiers of a common army. The Pelasgians, however, were for the most part organised on the model of tribal communities. Speaking of the Achaeans, he says: 'All the rites and taboos of the primitive Family-system have disappeared and obligation only attaches to the natural kinship of close blood-relationship.... This is what we should expect in a race of military adventurers. Family rites do not tend to military efficiency: the efficient soldier must break away from local ties. In so doing he takes a long step away from the foundations of primitive society and religion.' Thus Leaf conceives the society of Homeric Greece as composed of two elements: a military autocracy, ruling like the Spartans in Laconia, a small exclusive caste held together by the consciousness of a common origin and a common purpose and also by the danger of hostility from without: a tribal agricultural subject-folk who lived their primitive lives in rural areas, in villages, in unimportant towns, and even in cities within view of the Achaean garrison. Now this conception differs fundamentally from the traditional ideas of Homeric society, and in particular from the conception of the Achaeans as a tribal people, which we have associated with Ridgeway and H. Seebohm. We believe that an attempt to decide this question is necessary for the elucidation of many Homeric problems, such as that of blood-vengeance or of land-tenure. We shall adduce evidence, in our study of Homeric blood-vengeance, which will serve as a confirmation of Leaf's hypothesis. At present we will confine ourselves to some more general arguments which can be regarded as supplementary to the evidence which Leaf himself puts forward.

Such a theory of evolution in landed property within the tribe may, however, be complicated by the coexistence, in the same district, of tribal groups and of a dominant 'feudal' caste. Maine points out, in reference to Russian village-communities, that 'these villages are always in theory the patrimony of some noble proprietor, and the peasants have within historical times been converted into the predial and, to a great extent, into the personal serfs, of the seignior. But the pressure of this superior ownership has never crushed the ancient organisation of the village.' Now if we adopt the hypothesis of two distinct strata in the Homeric society, namely, of a dominant quasi-feudal Achaean caste, and of a tribal Pelasgian subject-folk, we shall be justified in assuming that some such 'superior ownership' coexisted with tribal ownership in the world of the Homeric poems. We shall expect to find a predominance of private ownership on the one hand, and a trace or 'reminiscence' of communal ownership on the other, in the verses of a poet who reflected in the main the atmosphere of the Achaean lords, but also, incidentally and fortuitously, that of the subject people. We must, then, consult the text of Homer if we hope to decide whether the Achaeans were quasi-feudal adventurers who ruled over the Pelasgians, without disturbing or destroying their normal tribal life: or whether the Achaeans, themselves a tribal nomadic people, adopted, by a social fusion, the tribal ownership which existed amongst their subjects, the chiefs alone possessing 'private land,' the others, common land. As the Homeric references to land-tenure are rare and obscure, it is obvious that the solution of the problem of Homeric land-ownership depends entirely on the answer to this wider and more important question.

Here we find kinship extending to second and third cousins. Such kinship exists everywhere in the world to-day, but it clearly does not constitute a clan or a tribe. When, therefore, in Homer, Theoclymenus is said to have killed a man who is described as ??????? in relation to his slayer, we must not suppose that the deceased was a tribesman. The word ??????? should be translated as kinsman, not tribesman. Several instances may be found in Homer of tribal phrases and expressions applied in non-tribal contexts. Thus the word ????? which ordinarily means 'clan' is used in Homer to denote a family in the modern sense, or to mean 'blood-descent,' and kinship. Rarely or never does it carry its proper meaning. If the social organisation of the Achaeans had been of a tribal character, surely the Homeric use of the word ????? would have been different from what it actually is. Leaf calls attention to the very rare occasions on which Homer refers to such groups as the clan, the phratry, and the tribe. Nestor says to Achilles that 'the lover of domestic strife is a man without hearth or law or phratry,' and the same Nestor urges Agamemnon to divide his fighting forces 'by tribes and phratries,' but these solitary references no more compel us to regard Achilles and Agamemnon as tribal chiefs than the tribal proverb concerning the tenth generation compels us to regard Odysseus as a tribal patriarch. Such references are rather, as Leaf says, 'reminiscences,' reflections, whether in the mind of a Minoan or of an Achaean, of conditions which prevailed universally amongst the subject Pelasgian peoples.

FOOTNOTES

P. 51.

P. 222.

Pp. 50-52.

Pp. 37, 247.

P. 252.

Pp. 37, 247.

Pp. 251-252.

Pp. 250, 251, 258.

Pp. 251-252.

xvi. 95 ff.

THE PELASGIAN SYSTEM

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

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

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