It has not been my purpose in writing this book to occupy myself in expanding or discussing some articles written on Greek criminal law in a learned dictionary of antiquities. While it is true that ancient law, however crude and obscure its expression, is not so repulsive, so inhumanly technical as medieval or modern law, and while it is also true that a writer on Greek blood-vengeance cannot avoid an occasional reference to legal formulae and technique, nevertheless I feel that a merely legal t

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

The opinions which have hitherto prevailed among scholars in regard to early Greek blood-vengeance are more or less unanimous. They seem to be based on an assumption of homogeneity in the society depicted by Homer. Expressed in terms of the modes of vengeance which we have described in the preceding chapter, the customs of Homeric Greeks in regard to homicide have been conceived as a confusion of modes I, II, and III—as a mixture of restricted and unrestricted vendetta and wergeld. Thus, Eichhof

‘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 peop

In discussing the trial-scene which is found in Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles, [1] we were compelled incidentally to give, in anticipation, the main results of our inquiries as to the existence, in Homeric Greece, of tribunals for the trial of homicide. Previous writers on the subject, who are unaware of the differences in the organisation and nature of Pelasgian and Achaean societies, have naturally maintained that homicide in early Greece was entirely a ‘private’ affair and tha

There is a considerable variety and conflict of opinions about the religious aspect of homicide in Homeric Greece. We have already explained by quotations from Glotz [1] and Bury [2] the theory which conceives the shedding of human blood as a deed which, in those days, did not touch the gods or draw down the anger of the gods on the community. On the other hand, Leaf, who indicates a clear and emphatic distinction between the religious beliefs and customs of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, hold

Less than a hundred years [1] after the Trojan war, and some time about the year 1100 B.C. , the great and glorious rule of the Achaeans over Greece came to an end. ‘Greece,’ as Leaf puts it, [2] ‘relapsed from the temporary union imposed upon it by its rulers into its normal congeries of loosely coherent cantons.’ The Achaeans did not, of course, entirely disappear, but they ceased to maintain that unified control and domination over Greece which they had enjoyed for two or three centuries. The

The only direct source of evidence which we possess for the historical murder-laws of Attica—for the murder-laws of other Greek States we have no direct evidence at all—is a fragmentary inscription of the year 409-8 B.C. , containing a few lines written in the old Attic alphabet, which, though ‘restored’ in a manner sufficiently satisfactory to render it trustworthy and intelligible, gives us nevertheless the most rudimentary information about the Attic murder-code. The real value of this inscri

In an earlier section [1] of this work we have explained what we consider to have been the origin and the evolution of judicial investigation in matters of homicide. We have said [2] that ‘the evolution of early Greek judicial authority is not a transition from a crude arbitrary local jurisdiction to an efficient central compulsory jurisdiction but rather a gradual extension to wider areas, in accordance with increasing political synoekism, of the judicial functions which had been previously dis

The ruthless hand of callous Fortune has robbed the world and civilisation of all save seven of the dramatic works of Aeschylus, the first and perhaps the greatest of European tragedians. Of these seven extant plays, there are only three which directly and formally present any problems of blood-vengeance. These three plays are concerned with a single theme, the murder of Agamemnon, King of Argos, by his wife Clytaemnestra and by her paramour Aegisthus, and the subsequent vengeance of Orestes. In

‘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 prescrib

The extant dramas of Euripides are permeated with references to homicide. It will be necessary to examine seventeen out of the nineteen extant plays. We need not discuss the Cyclops or the Rhesus . The Oresteian dramas will be our first concern. In attempting a legal analysis of Euripides we are confronted with a difficulty which is present only in a minor degree in the case of Aeschylus and of Sophocles, namely the difficulty of deciding how far Euripides followed mythological tradition, or how

Having now concluded our inquiry into the origin, the nature, and the evolution of Greek systems of blood-vengeance, it may be desirable to give here a brief synoptic summary of the theories which we have sought to establish. Our summary naturally falls into two sections: (A) chronological and (B) literary. (A) (1) From the earliest times there existed in Greece a code of homicide-customs which is a well-known characteristic of the tribal or ‘group’ system of primitive human society; wergeld was