Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeanceTreston, Hubert Joseph
History
Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance
Treston, Hubert Joseph
Criminal law (Greek law); Greece -- Civilization; Greek drama (Tragedy) -- History and criticism; Homicide (Greek law); Vendetta
We hope to show presently that this religious doctrine, which declared
in effect that homicide brought down the anger of the gods upon the
community which neglected to punish it, took definite shape in historical
Greece under the aegis of Apollo and his priesthoods and Amphictyonies.
In our view, the final form of the doctrine was a fusion or compromise
between the severer Semitic conception, on the one hand, and, on the
other, the tribal traditions of Greek homicide-customs, weakened
and disorganised, as they were, in the Hesiodic age of chaos, but
unmistakably local in their outlook, and reflecting still the attitude
adopted by the relatives and attributed to the victim. The Apollo of
the Greek race could not accept in its entirety the Asiatic doctrine
of pollution but had to modify it at the bidding of customs which were
sanctified by time. As we believe that the Draconian homicide-laws were
merely an eclectic codification of the seventh-century unwritten laws of
the aristocracies of birth, it would clearly anticipate our whole account
of the Draconian legislation if we were to explain at this stage the
detailed operation of the Apolline pollution system. We shall then give
here only an outline of the Asiatic-Greek compromise which we believe to
have arisen in the eighth or seventh century B.C.
In the first place wergeld was abolished, as amongst the Hebrews, for
wilful murder. This was the greatest concession which the new doctrine
extorted from tribalism. The new provision which declared the property
of the wilful man-slayer confiscated to the State when the slayer had
gone into perpetual exile we attribute to a third factor—the evolution
of State power: wergeld in the strict sense was also abolished for
manslaughter, but the slayer was allowed and commanded, after a period
of exile, to ‘appease’ by ‘presents’ the relatives of the slain. In this
we can clearly detect a concession wrung from what we call Apollinism by
the tribes. It is usually held[92] that in the case of manslaughter, and
Glotz holds[93] that even in the case of murder, ‘private settlement’
without trial was legal in historical Athens. We hope to show[94] at a
later stage that these opinions are incorrect, except in regard to one
special and rare contingency.
Secondly, there was a religious compromise which is reflected in the
ritual of purgation. In the Semitic doctrine of pollution, murder and
manslaughter could only be ‘purged’ by the blood of the slayer, which
meant, in practice, that the slayer could never be purged at all: but
the ancient traditions of the tribes and their capacity for discerning
the varying degrees of homicide-guilt led to a peculiar compromise, by
which Apollo and other State gods consented to accept the sacrifice of
a surrogate victim, when the atonement which the law prescribed had been
paid, the actuality of the atonement being _symbolised_, as it were, by
this Chthonian sacrifice of ‘reconciliation.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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