“. . . unless some god endure
Vicarious thy tortures.”
The idea of vicarious sacrifice, or punishment by substitution of one person for another, does not seem to have been very familiar to the Greek mind; at least, I do not trace it in Homer. It occurs, however, most distinctly in the well-known case of Menœceus, in Euripides’ play of the Phœnissæ. In this passage, also, it is plainly implied, though the word διάδοχος, strictly translated, means only a successor, and not a substitute. Welck. (Trilog. p. 47) has pointed out that the person here alluded to is the centaur Chiron, of whom Apollodorus (II. 5-11-12) says that “Hercules, after freeing Prometheus, who had assumed the olive chaplet (Welck. reads ἑλόμένον), delivered up Chiron to Jove willing, though immortal, to die in his room (θνήσκειν ὰντ᾽ ἁυτου). This is literally the Christian idea of vicarious death. The Druids, according to Cæsar (b.c. VI. 16), held the doctrine strictly—“pro vita hominis nisi hominis vita reddatur non posse aliter deorum immortalium numen placari.” Of existing heathens practising human sacrifice, the religious rites of the Khonds in Orissa present the idea of vicarious sacrifice in the most distinct outline. See the interesting memoir of Captain Macpherson in Blackwood’s Magazine for August, 1842.
“Seems he not a willing madman,
Let him reap the fruits he sowed.”
I have translated these lines quite freely, as the text is corrupt, and the emendations proposed do not contain any idea worth the translator’s adopting. Schoe. reads—
Τί γὰρ ἐλλείπει μὴ παραπάιειν
Ἐι τάδ ἐπαυχεῖ τί χαλᾷ μανιῶν;