Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance

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]:

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]:

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

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:

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]:

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]:

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]:

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]:

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]:

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]:

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]:

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: