Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

by Erwin Rohde

§ 1

In the renewal and development of the cult offered to the dead, an important part was again played by that priestly association which exercised such a decisive influence on the public worship of invisible powers in the Greek states—the priesthood of the Delphic oracle. On the occurrence of disturbing portents in the sky recourse was had to the god, who gave orders that in addition to the gods and Heroes “sacrifice should be made to the dead also on the appointed days, in accordance with custom and tradition, by their relatives.”[138] Individuals in doubt as to what the sacred law [175] required in the observance due to a departed soul applied at Athens to one of the “Exegetai”—probably one of that college of Exegetai that had been founded under the influence of Delphi.[139] The god protected the rights of the dead, too; the fact that his decisions confirmed the sanctity of the cult of the dead must have contributed a good deal to the consideration and awe in which that cult was held by the living.[140]

The decrees of Delphi were even more influential where they concerned a cult to be offered not to one who had died in peace, but to a person who had been robbed of his life through an act of violence. The treatment of such cases shows with striking distinctness the change which had come over the beliefs about the dead since the Homeric period.

In Homer, when a free man has been killed, the State takes no share whatever in the pursuit and punishment of the murderer. It is the duty of the nearest relatives or the friends of the murdered man[141] to carry on the blood-feud against the assailant. As a rule the latter puts himself out of reach of reprisals by flight. He withdraws to a foreign country which is unconcerned in his action. We hear nothing of any distinction between premeditated murder and unintentional or even justifiable homicide;[142] and it seems probable that at that time, when no regular inquiry was made into the nature of the individual case, the relatives of the murdered man took no account of the different varieties of killing. If the guilty man can escape by flight from those whose duty it is to avenge his deed, they on their part may forgo the full toll of vengeance, which would have required the death of the murderer, and may be satisfied with the payment of compensation, after which the doer of the deed is allowed to remain in his own country undisturbed.[143] The requirements of vengeance are thus in essence fulfilled, but the retaliatory murder of the murderer can be bought off. This decided relaxing of the ancient notion of vengeance can only be accounted for by an equally decided weakening of the belief in the continued consciousness, power, and rights of the murdered man, upon which the requirement of vengeance was founded. The soul of the dead is powerless; its claims can be easily satisfied by the payment of “weregild” to the living. In such a satisfaction as this, the departed soul is in reality not concerned at all; it remains a simple business transaction between living people.[144] In the midst of the general declension of the beliefs about the dead—amounting almost to complete extinction—which is found throughout the Homeric poems, this weakening of belief in one particular point is not very surprising. But [176] in this case, as in the general study of Homeric beliefs about the dead, it is clear that the conception of the soul as powerless, shadowlike, and feeble is not the primitive or original one; it has foisted itself gradually in the course of years upon a more ancient mode of conception in which the dead had undiminished sensibility and could influence the condition of the living. Of this older conception we have emphatic witness in the duty—not forgotten even in Homeric Greece—of prosecuting the blood-feud.

In later times the pursuit and punishment of homicide was organized in accordance with quite different principles. The State recognized its interest in the reprisals made for such a breach of the peace: we may take it as certain that in Greek cities generally the state took a share in the regular investigation and punishment of murder in its courts of justice,[145] though here, too, it is only in the case of Athenian law that we have precise information. At Athens, in accordance with the ancient code dealing with the legal prosecution of murder (which never fell into disuse after Drakon had established it by his penal legislation), the exclusive right—and the unavoidable duty—of prosecuting the murderer belonged to the next of kin of the murdered man. (In special cases only it was extended to include the more distant relatives, and even the members of the phratria to which he had belonged.) It is clear that this duty of making an accusation which fell upon the next of kin, preserves a relic of the ancient duty of the blood-feud which has been transformed by the requirements of the public welfare. It is the same narrow circle of relationship, extending to the third generation, united by a strict religious bond, to which alone belonged the right to inherit property and the duty of performing the cult of the dead. This circle of relatives is here again called upon to “succour” the unfortunate who has been violently done to death.[146] The reason for this duty—a duty evidently derived from the ancient blood-feud—is easy to understand: it, too, is a department of the cult of the dead which was binding as a duty upon exactly that circle of relatives. It was no mere abstract “right”, but a quite definite personal claim, made by the dead man himself, that the surviving relatives were required to satisfy. At Athens even in the fourth and fifth centuries the belief still survived in undiminished vigour that the soul of one violently done to death, until the wrong done to him was avenged upon the doer of it, would wander about finding no rest,[147] full of rage at the violent act, and wrathful, too, against the relatives [177] who should have avenged him, if they did not fulfil their duty. He himself would become an “avenging spirit”; and the force of his anger might be felt throughout whole generations.[148] Implacable revenge is the sacred duty of those—his representatives and executors—who are specially called upon to fulfil the needs of the dead soul. The state forbids them to take the law into their own hands; but it commands them to seek redress at the tribunals of justice. It will take over the duties of judge and executioner itself; but a decided consideration will be shown to the relatives of the murdered man at the hearing of the case. In duly conducted criminal procedure the courts specially appointed for this purpose will decide whether the deed is to be considered one of wilful murder, unintentional manslaughter, or justifiable homicide. In making these distinctions the state has struck a blow at that older code of the blood-feud in which the right of vengeance belonged entirely to the family of the murdered man. According to that code, as we cannot but conclude from Homer, nothing but the fact of the violent death of a relative was considered, not the character or motive of the deed itself. Now, however, the murderer is liable to a death penalty which he can avoid before the verdict is given by going into voluntary and perpetual exile. He disappears and leaves the country—at the boundaries of the country the state’s authority ceases, and so does the power of the indignant spirit of the dead, which is bound to its native soil—like that of all local deities, whose influence is confined to the place where they are worshipped. If, by such flight over the frontier, “the doer of the deed withdraws himself from the person injured by him—i.e. the angry soul of the dead man”[149]—his life is thereby saved, even if he himself is not justified. This alone is meant by the permission of such voluntary exile. Involuntary homicide[150] is punished by banishment for a limited period, after the expiration of which the relations of the dead man are to grant a pardon to the murderer on his return to his native land.[151] If they voted for it unanimously[152] they could even do this before he went into banishment, in which case this would not take place at all. There can be no doubt that this pardon had to be granted by them in the name of the dead man as well, of whose rights they were the representatives; indeed, the man himself lying mortally wounded could before his death, even in the case of wilful murder, pardon his assailant and thereby excuse his relatives the duty of prosecution;[153] to such an extent was the injured soul’s wish for vengeance the only point at issue, [178] even in the legal procedure of a constitutionally governed state, and not in the least the lawless act of the murderer as such. When there is no desire for vengeance on the part of the victim requiring to be satisfied, the murderer goes unpunished. When he suffers punishment, he suffers it for the satisfaction of the soul of the murdered man. He is no longer slain as a sacrifice to his victim; but when the relations of the dead exact vengeance from him by legally constituted processes, that, too, is a part of the cult offered to the soul of the dead.