Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance

‘The Achaians,’ says Leaf,[1] ‘shew no signs in Homer of anything corresponding to the minor classifications, so important in later Greece, which is recalled to us by the Attic names of γένος and φρατρία. They appear as a single unit divided only locally. The whole primitive family system, with its rites and taboos, has disappeared and the only kinship recognised as carrying a moral obligation is the natural obligation of close blood relationship ... this is only what we should expect in a people of military adventurers.... Homicide is a local and family affair.’

We have indicated the confusion of ideas which characterises the traditional views regarding Homeric homicide,[2] a confusion which is to be attributed to the failure of writers to discriminate between the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, between the individualistic quasi-feudal militarism of a dominant caste and the complex tribal organisations of a settled agricultural subject-people. We have suggested, as the most probable hypothesis, that the Pelasgian penalty for homicide was normally and essentially wergeld, except in cases of kin-slaying, for which the penalty was exile: we have argued that, within the Pelasgian tribe, or phratry, or village community, exile from his clan or phratry or State was accepted for the slayer as a complete or partial substitute for his wergeld debt: and that if the murderer in default of wergeld remained in his native place beyond a certain time, he could be killed with impunity, having been previously warned or threatened; we have said that bondage or servitude might be accepted in case of failure to pay the prescribed wergeld quota—whether on the part of the murderer himself or on the part of delinquent relatives—a bondage which was not necessarily perpetual, but was rather a temporary punishment proportioned to the ‘debt.’ The Achaean system, we have suggested,[3] was fundamentally different: it was a restricted ‘small family’ vendetta, in which blood for blood was the normal retribution, wergeld was unknown, and exile was merely a flight from death.

This view must now be defended from the text of Homer. In the Odyssey[4] we read that there came as a suppliant to Telemachus, at Pylos, a murderer from Argos, named Theoclymenus. He was a great-grandson of Melampus who was a contemporary of Nestor, and the family had been settled in Argos for four generations.[5] That the family was Achaean is rendered obvious by the Homeric text.[6] That the victim was probably a kinsman of the murderer appears from the words ἄνδρα ἔμφυλον.[7] We pointed out, in the Introduction,[8] how easily relatives could have accumulated in one or two hundred years, without, however, attaining to the reality, whatever may be said about the appearance, of a clan. But the important point to note is that, even in exile, Theoclymenus feared the death which was desired by those who were at once akin to him and to his victim. ‘I have fled,’ he says, ‘from my country, for the manslaying of one of mine own kin; and many brothers and kinsmen of the slain are in Argos ... and rule mightily over the Achaeans. Wherefore now am I an exile to shun death and the black fate at their hands.... Set me on board ship since I supplicate thee in my flight, lest they slay me utterly: for methinks they follow hard after me.’[9] Nothing could be farther removed than this from the recognised exile penalty of the wergeld system. The passage shows, moreover, that the supplication was not an appeal for homicide-purgation, as Müller would maintain[10]—we shall see later that this ceremonial was post-Homeric—but was merely an appeal for protection from the avengers of blood.

A similar supplication is mentioned in a passage in the Iliad,[11] in which we read that ‘Epeigeus, who ruled fair-set Boudeion of old, when he had slain a good man of his kin, came as suppliant to Peleus and silver-footed Thetis ... and they sent him to follow with Achilles.’ The locality of Boudeion is unknown.[12] While we cannot argue that Epeigeus was an Achaean from the fact that he is included amongst the Myrmidons (after his adoption by Peleus), still we may presume that he was an Achaean from the behaviour of Peleus and hence we may interpret his exile as a flight from death. We may therefore infer that death was the Achaean penalty for kin-slaying. This passage also illustrates the statement of Leaf[13] that homicide, among Achaeans, brings no disability other than exile from home. To an ambitious young man ‘exile under such circumstances is no punishment: a wealthy and generous king can give opportunities of advancement beyond all the hopes of a narrow family circle.’ Epeigeus, as Homer tells us,[14] was slain by Hector in battle before the walls of Troy. His enrolment among the Myrmidons saved him from the hands of the avengers of blood.

In another passage of the Iliad[15] we are told that Medon, son of Oileus and brother of Ajax, ‘dwelt in Phylace, far from his own country, for that he had slain a man, the brother of his stepmother Eriopis.’ The murder probably took place in Opus, a Locrian town, where also was perpetrated the death of the son of Amphidamas at the hands of Patroclus.[16] Like Patroclus, Medon came to Phthia, not to Peleus the king of the realm, but only, as Leaf would maintain,[17] to Protesilaus, a ‘baron’ of Achilles who ruled the town of Phylace. The typically Achaean method of procedure is maintained.

Again, we are told[18] that Lycophron, son of Mastor, of Cythera, slew a man in Cythera and came and dwelt with Ajax who made him his ‘squire’ or a member of his bodyguard. He, too, was slain in Troy, and when he falls Ajax says to his brother Teucer, ‘Our faithful comrade has fallen ... whom we honoured like our parents.’ Leaf[19] quotes this passage as an instance of the immunity of Achaeans from any real punishment for bloodshed. So far as tribal customs were concerned such men were entirely above the law.

In the Odyssey,[20] Eumaeus, swineherd of Odysseus, tells how a beggar appealed to him for help on the ground that he had slain a man, and that he knew Odysseus (which was a falsehood). From the poverty of the beggar it is not necessary to infer that he was a Pelasgian who had ‘wandered over a vast tract of land.’

Again, Odysseus,[21] inventing a fiction about his past, pretends that he is a murder-refugee from Crete (an Achaean dominion), having killed the son of Idomeneus. ‘I smote him,’ he says, ‘with a bronze-shod spear as he came home from the field, lying in ambush for him by the wayside, with one of my companions.’ He adds, very significantly, as we think: ‘and now I have come hither with these my goods; and I left as much again to my children.’ There is no trace here of that solidarity in the control of property, and of that ‘passive collectivity’ or distribution of punishment, which is so characteristic of clan wergeld. No tribal murderer could have taken any property away with him: his property, and therefore probably[22] that of his children, was distributed among the wider kindred who either retained it or used it to defray their share of the wergeld.[23] Odysseus, however, departs with half his property, and the relatives of the slain Orsilochus left the children in tranquil enjoyment of the rest! Of course, Odysseus did not really live through such an experience, but a ‘tribesman’ would have told a very different story.

Again, there is the story of Phoenix,[24] which opens up the question of parricide. Phoenix did not kill his father, but it occurred to him to do so, because his father cursed him with sterility, for having had amorous relations with one of his father’s concubines. Fearing to commit the dread deed of parricide, he decided to leave his home. His relatives and comrades endeavoured to dissuade him, holding a feast in his house for nine days, but on the tenth he fled. He went from Hellas to Phthia, to King Peleus, who made him king over the Dolopians. A portion of this passage[25] has been considered spurious by many editors, as it is not found in any Homeric manuscript, and Aristarchus is said by Plutarch to have omitted it, as being unsuitable to the character of Phoenix[26]; Glotz[27] holds that the feast in question was a kind of gathering of the clan. The father, he thinks, wished to banish the son, but could not do so without the solemn and formal ratification of the assembled clan. He says of Amyntor,[28] the father of Phoenix: ‘Comme Thésée, il a maudit son fils: s’il ne le bannit pas, comme Thésée, c’est qu’il a besoin d’obtenir le consentement du γένος.’ Now Euripides[29] in describing the curse which Theseus pronounced against his son, Hippolytus, whom he believed to be the real though not the actual cause of the death of his wife Phaedra the step-mother of Hippolytus, tells us also that Theseus commanded Hippolytus to depart from Troizen and forbade him ever to reside at Athens.[30] This sentence was pronounced without any consultation with the clans of tribal Attica, because Theseus, in the legends, is erroneously presented as an autocratic ruler, like Peisistratus, rather than as a tribal chieftain. But Amyntor was an Achaean, and we have argued that the Achaeans did not acknowledge or recognise clan-jurisdiction. Hence, a comparison of Amyntor with the legendary Theseus is logically valid but does not justify Glotz’s conclusions. Moreover, if it had been the desire of Amyntor to secure a formal decree from the clan for the expulsion of his son, why should the ‘clan’ have guarded Phoenix as if he were a prisoner? Surely it would have been sufficient to obtain a decree of banishment after the offender had fled. On this point, Glotz does not seem quite clear. ‘Sans doute,’ he says, ‘tous ses parents montent la garde autour de Phoenix de peur qu’il ne s’échappe. Mais ce n’est pas pour cela qu’ils sont venus. Ils sont venus sur convocation.’ But we can find no suggestion, in Homer, that the kinsmen were summoned by Amyntor to agree to a sentence of banishment for his son. We are told quite plainly that Amyntor and his son were exceedingly angry with each other, so much so that Phoenix contemplated parricide, and would have killed his father had not some of the immortals reminded him of the unpleasant reputation which the act would bring him.[31] Owing to his father’s curse, he looked forward to a childless old age. He tells us that he decided to leave his home.[32] For an Achaean such an exile involved no serious hardship, but might, on the contrary, have brought many advantages. His relatives came, as we think, to entreat and restrain him.[33] They ‘imprisoned’ him, or rather they sought to prevent his escape, in the hope that the feast would reconcile the father and the son. Can we imagine a group of clan-kindred, with a right of inheritance to the property of Phoenix, so very anxious to restrain him? We fear they would rather have celebrated his departure! But Homer makes no mention of clan-kindred. The ἔται and the ἀνεψιοί are the ordinary ‘comrades and cousins’ of the Achaean ‘small family circle’: the whole context supports the hypothesis of Leaf, of which Glotz is unaware, namely that the Achaeans of Homer lived in an atmosphere which is foreign to the clan.

The question remains: what was the consequential penalty which helped to deter the Achaean Phoenix, who had otherwise little regard for his father, from actually slaying him? We have seen[34] that kin-slaying, and therefore parricide, was punished by exile in the tribal system. How would it have been punished within the Achaean caste? We have little Homeric evidence to guide us here. Homicide amongst the Achaeans is a private affair which concerns a small family circle. In the Iliad[35] the Trojan Akamas says that it is desirable for a man to pray that ‘some kinsman be left in his home to avenge his fall.’ If Akamas avenges the slaying of his brother even in war, will a son not avenge the slaying of a father? Does not Orestes avenge the murder of his father, Agamemnon, even when that vengeance necessitates the shedding of his mother’s blood? Homer implies that Clytaemnestra was the murderer of Agamemnon and also of Cassandra[36]: he also implies that she was slain by her son Orestes.[37] Glotz[38] regards such vengeance as perfectly normal: ‘Loin d’être impossible,’ he says, ‘la repression des crimes commis par un parent contre un parent est plus certaine et plus sévère que la réparation des dommages causés par une famille à une autre. Si l’offenseur ... est parent de la victime ses auxiliaires naturels deviennent ses ennemis. Seul, il a contre lui l’univers.’ Hence it is probable that the ἔται and the ἀνεψιοί who were so anxious to heal the feud between Amyntor and his son[39] would have been equally anxious to avenge Amyntor if he had been slain by Phoenix. They would have put the parricide to death.

The portion of the Homeric story of Phoenix which is generally regarded as spurious[40] happens to be the passage in which parricide is referred to in a casual and frivolous manner. Plutarch states that such a reference was considered unsuitable to the character of Phoenix. We will go further and say that it is unsuitable to the ancient Greek conception of parricide, whether among the Achaeans, or, a fortiori, among the clans. This latter point will become more evident when we discuss the laws of Plato and the legends of the Attic tragedians. Our theory of the Achaean penalty for homicide must now seek further confirmation from a discussion of other Homeric passages.

In the Iliad[41] Phoenix tells Achilles the story of Meleager, son of Oeneus, King of Calydon, pointing out how he refused to fight for his people during a war between the Calydonians and the Curetes. The cause of his refusal was his indignation at the curse which his mother, Althaea, had launched against him because he had slain her brother, a prince of the Curetes, in the war. Homer, of course, does not mention the story which later legends contain, of the fateful brand, and the death of Meleager when the brand was burned by his mother.[42] But from the entreaties of his father, Oeneus, of his sisters, and even of his mother,[43] and from the presents which were offered to him by the priests and the elders of the Aetolians,[44] in the hope that he would lay aside his anger and continue to fight for the Calydonians, we may infer that he was not regarded in Homeric times as a kin-slayer of certain guilt. His own anger, too, indicates what the Homeric facts would seem to imply, that the slaying of his mother’s brother was in his own opinion justifiable as an act of war.[45]

When, in later times, the Roman poet Ovid makes Althaea say, as the Achaean avenger of a brother’s death would naturally say, mors morte pianda est, he implies, what the Homeric story of the ‘curse’ compels us to assume, that Althaea regarded her brother’s death as culpable kin-slaying, which required atonement. The curse of Althaea indicates her conviction that the death of Thestius was a crime and also her inability to avenge it at the time. But, in the general opinion, there was a doubt about the guilt of Meleager, and Meleager was sufficiently important to get the benefit of the doubt. There are, then, two conclusions which may be indirectly derived from this passage: (a) that kin-slaying, within the Achaean caste, was regarded as a crime which merited serious punishment, such as death; and (b) that the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable slaying was in certain circumstances admitted and upheld by the Achaeans.[46]

Our next quotation has reference to Tydeus, the brother of Meleager. Homer[47] tells us that Tydeus left his native Calydon, and ‘roaming thence settled at Argos, (for thus did Zeus and other gods decree,) and married there a daughter of Adrastus.’ In this connexion Leaf[48] points out that ‘Homer does not tell of any actual homicide, yet the picture he gives of the family feuds in Tydeus’ time is such as to make family bloodshed far from improbable.’ From later legends[49] we learn what Homer has not mentioned, namely, that Tydeus was a kin-slayer. We know that Tydeus was an Achaean, and his action in fleeing from Calydon and settling at Argos was a typical Achaean procedure. His ‘exile’ was really a flight from death, and such a flight suggests that even in the case of kin-slaying the Achaeans, unlike the Pelasgians, did not accept ‘exile’ as a penalty for bloodshed. This has already been demonstrated in connexion with the flight of Theoclymenus.[50] The alliance of Tydeus, by marriage, with Adrastus, King of Argos, helped to preclude the possibility of blood-vengeance at the hands of Calydonian avengers.

A clear and cogent illustration of the Achaean system of avenging bloodshed is to be found in the punishment inflicted by Orestes on his mother and her paramour in revenge for the slaying of Agamemnon. It is not of course a matter of absolute certainty that Orestes slew his mother or that she slew her husband, in the Homeric story, but it can, we think, be inferred with the greatest probability. Homer says[51] that, after the Trojan war, Menelaus wandered about with his ships ‘amongst men of strange speech’ for seven years: that meanwhile ‘Aegisthus planned baneful deeds at home: and for seven years ruled over rich Mycenae, having wrought the death of the son of Atreus, and subdued unto himself the people: but in the eighth year goodly Orestes came back from Athens as a retribution and slew the man guilty of his father’s blood (πατροφονῆα), Aegisthus of crafty counsel, who had wrought his father’s death. Now when he had slain him, he held a funeral feast with the Argives for his hateful mother and for Aegisthus powerless in defence (ἀνάλκιδος).’ In this rendering of the text, we have deliberately avoided translating κτείνειν as ‘to slay,’ since it can also mean ‘to seek to slay’[52] or, which is almost equivalent, ‘to plot the death of.’ From the point of view of homicide-guilt and retribution, the plotter and the perpetrator were probably equally culpable whether in the Homeric epoch or in historical times.[53] Hence it is that in other passages Homer presents Clytaemnestra as the plotter and Aegisthus as the executor. In both cases, of course, the guilt of bloodshed is aggravated by the additional stigma of adultery. In the Odyssey[54] Zeus tells how he warned Aegisthus not to kill Agamemnon or to woo his wife, for Agamemnon would be avenged by Orestes. Again,[55] we are told that Aegisthus brought Clytaemnestra to his house—‘a willing lover and a willing lady.’ In another passage[56] we hear of the famous scout whom Aegisthus placed in a tower, to watch for the homecoming of Agamemnon. This scout had been watching for the space of a year[57] when Agamemnon arrived. Immediately upon his arrival, he accepted an invitation to a feast in the house of Aegisthus, who had prepared an ambush to destroy him in the event of his refusal.[58] After the feast he was slain ‘as one slayeth an ox at the stall’; but not without a struggle. ‘None of the “companions” of the son of Atreus who attended him survived, nor any of the “companions” of Aegisthus, but they were slain in the house.’[59] We have pointed out that Clytaemnestra was living in this house with her paramour. The reference to the time of the deed—‘after the feast’—and to the manner of the slaying—‘as one slayeth an ox’—suggests the use of the axe and the fatal bath of Agamemnon which has been made so familiar by the Attic tragedians. We are definitely informed[60] that Clytaemnestra was an active agent in the terrible bloodshed which took place. The ghost of Agamemnon speaking to Odysseus in Hades says: ‘Aegisthus contrived my death and doom and slew me, aided by my accursed wife ... most pitiful of all I heard was the voice of Cassandra, daughter of Priam, whom, close to me, the guileful Clytaemnestra slew. As I was dying I strove to raise my hands to avert (or grasp)[61] the sword, but let them fall to the ground again, and that shameless woman turned her back, nor could she bring herself, even when I was going to the house of Hades, to close my eyes or my mouth with her hands! Surely there is nought more horrible and shameless than a woman since she planned a foul deed, and wrought the death of her wedded lord.’ Aeschylus, then, as we think, has kept very closely to the Homeric narrative, when, in the Agamemnon, he makes Clytaemnestra the actual slayer of her husband, and represents Aegisthus as concerning himself only with an ambush and a battle against the retainers of Agamemnon. In Homer, Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra were equally guilty. Orestes, therefore, slays them both, and gains renown among all men.[62] In the clan-system, Aegisthus, a first cousin of Agamemnon, would not have been slain, if he had gone into exile, nor would wergeld have been payable, as he was akin to the victim. Clytaemnestra’s kindred might have compensated the crime by a wergeld paid to the kindred of Agamemnon. How strange it seems that the children of Aegisthus would have received a share! In historical Athens, Aegisthus would most probably have been put to death without the option of exile, since he was a kin-slayer, while Clytaemnestra could have gone into exile on the second day of the trial.[63] To the minds of post-Homeric legend-makers it would have been necessary for Orestes,[64] if he wished to be unimpeachably correct, to obtain authority from the war-council of the chieftains, as Menelaus did in the case of Helen[65]; but in Homer Orestes is the natural avenger of a crime which would otherwise have gone unpunished. The slaying of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra was not murder, but just revenge, so far as that distinction was admitted and sanctioned by the traditions and public opinion of the Achaean caste. If there had been any tendency to revolt at the abhorrent nature of Orestes’ act in slaying two of his kindred—one of them the dearest of kin—this feeling would have perished on the recollection that Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra were not only murderers but adulterers. We find evidence of a strong public opinion against this twofold moral stigma in Homer. In the Odyssey,[66] for instance, Athene urges Telemachus to slay the suitors and quotes the act of Orestes as a parallel. The point of the comparison lies in the suggestion of adultery which attaches to the presence of the suitors in the home of Odysseus. ‘Hast thou not heard,’ says Athene, ‘what renown the goodly Orestes gat him among all men in that he slew the slayer of his father?... thou, too, my friend ... be valiant, that even men unborn will praise thee.’ But as we have elsewhere argued[67] that adultery alone would not justify, in private vengeance, the death of the offender, we must conclude that the justification for Orestes’ act consisted essentially in the fact that he avenged the murder of his father. From this episode we may, then, also conclude that the Achaeans, in certain circumstances, admitted the distinction between justified and unjustified homicide.[68]

We have now adduced sufficient evidence from the Homeric poems to justify the theory which we have propounded as to the nature of Achaean blood-vengeance, and to illustrate the contrast which it is necessary to make between the attitude to homicide adopted by a temporary dominant caste of a military quasi-feudal type and that of the tribal village communities in which we believe the Pelasgian subject-race to have lived. It remains for us to conclude this chapter by some brief remarks on certain questions which we have already raised and partly answered: e.g., whether there existed, in the Achaean caste, (a) the distinction between murder and manslaughter, (b) the distinction between justified and unjustified slaying, (c) the practice of collective and hereditary vendetta.

In regard to the first question, we have argued[69] that a legend as old as Homer must have presented as ‘involuntary’ the slaying of Laius by Oedipus. By this we mean that Oedipus neither intended to kill the old man whom he met at the ‘crossing of the three roads,’ nor was aware that the man whom he slew was his father. If we now assume that the Achaeans recognised no distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying, and that Homer lived in such an atmosphere, though the language and the social system of the Pelasgian people who lived around him were familiar with this distinction, we can more easily understand the astonishment which the poet seems to feel at the sojourn of Oedipus at Thebes after the gods ‘made known these things to men.’ We can also, on this assumption, more easily explain[70] the protest which is implicit in the words of the dead Patroclus to Achilles when he describes his flight from death ‘on the day when’ he slew the son of Amphidamas, ‘being a mere stripling and not intending (to kill) and being angered over (a game of) dice.’ If we add to these probabilities the fact that the Achaeans were men of a proud and haughty spirit, men of quick passions, and accustomed to bloodshed, men who knew no restraint beyond that of a temporary military discipline, and no fear of any greater punishment than that of expulsion from a fortress or from the councils of a military clique, we shall conclude that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying was not recognised by the Achaeans. Such a conclusion incidentally explains the general view of modern scholars[71] that in the Homeric epoch no such distinction was admissible.

In regard to the second question, concerning the distinction between just and unjust slaying amongst the Achaeans, we have indicated some evidence for this distinction in the public approval which greeted the vengeance of Orestes,[72] in the sentiments of the Aetolians concerning Meleager,[73] in the scruples felt by one of the suitors in regard to a conspiracy against the life of Telemachus,[74] in the approval given by Eupeithes,[75] and also, apparently, by the goddess Athene,[75] to the vengeance plotted for the slaying of the suitors. A distinction between the indiscriminate slaying of enemies which was permitted in war and the personal vendetta which was restricted to the person of the murderer, in peace, is illustrated by the contrast with normal modes of vengeance exhibited by the act of Akamas who avenged his brother’s death on Promachos, and not on Ajax, the actual slayer.[76] Pausanias[77] says that before the time of Theseus, and the establishment of the Delphinium court, there was no distinction between just and unjust slaying, and that ‘every manslayer had to flee for his life.’ This statement does not altogether harmonise with our conception of Homeric Greece. It does not take into account the control of Pelasgian tribes and the influence of public opinion amongst the Achaeans. His remarks are, we think, much more appropriate to the post-Homeric period when society was in a state of disintegration. Yet in regard to the Achaeans, we must point out that their sentiments or ideals of vengeance may not always have coincided with their acts. The arbitrariness of military control, the presence of subjects outside the caste, the necessity felt by the Achaeans of supporting their own side in every dispute, make the period of their domination an epoch to which the words of Pausanias are not entirely inapplicable.

Finally, if one asks whether the Achaeans practised a collective and hereditary vendetta, we may reply that the nature of the Achaean system of life, their consciousness of the paucity of their numbers in the midst of potentially hostile people, would have hindered any tendency to such a practice within the Achaean caste. An insult inflicted from without provoked, of course, the most savage retaliation. ‘Frightfulness,’ no less than military skill and strategic control, was one of the pillars of the Achaean fabric of power. But we have seen how Athene interfered to prevent the Achaean feud in the realm of Odysseus; in this rôle of peace-maker she may be regarded as a symbol of the restraining influence of military discipline and group-consciousness amongst the Achaeans. From certain passages in Homer,[78] in which there appears a kind of proverb, namely that a man is lucky to have a son or brother to avenge his fall, we may conclude that the danger of collective hypervengeance occurring amongst the Achaeans was much less probable than the danger of not being avenged at all. Similarly, in the Odyssey[79] we are told that an Achaean murderer had no fear that vengeance would fall upon his children. Thus, it is only in post-Homeric times, we think, that the Greeks lapsed into savagery and practised on a large scale a collective and hereditary vendetta. This will be still more manifest when we come to give an account of the Hesiodic society. From such a state of chaos the Greeks were saved by the seventh-century Apolline doctrine of pollution, which we shall describe in our Second Book, and also by the evolution of democratic civic government. When the State assumed responsibility for the trial and execution of criminals, including murderers, the lust of vengeance was gradually subdued. But all the more must we admire the comparative absence of collective and hereditary vendetta in the Homeric epoch, when, for Achaeans as well as for Pelasgians, the execution of vengeance devolved upon the relatives of the slain.