Emblem of justice, by the sons of Greece,
Who guard the sacred ministry of law
Before the face of Jove! a mighty oath.
The time shall come when all the sons of Greece
Shall mourn Achilles’ loss,” &c.
—Lord Derby’s Translation, 275–285.
Here we have the term “dike” not merely in embryo, but in the compound word “dikaspoloi,” administrators of justice, implying something akin to judges, and a condition of things in which law was reduced to a state in which there was something to guard and administer. Not only so, but the staff, the “emblem of justice,” is borne by them when they guard the “Themistes” before the gods.
It will not only be curious to discover, but the discovery of vestiges in modern times of the old traditional modes and ceremonial will throw light upon the administration of justice in ancient times. I dare say many other instances may be indicated. I will adduce the following:—If my readers will turn to the Pall Mall Gazette (July 12, 1870), they will find an account of “The Manx Thing,” or “the ancient custom of the Ruler, his Council, and the Commons meeting together in the open air to proclaim the law to the people standing around.” “The Lieutenant-Governor is the representative of the King, and takes an oath to deal truly and uprightly between our sovereign lady the Queen and her people,” “and as indifferently betwixt party and party as this staff now standeth.” “He is assisted by two demesters or supreme judges, who must deem the law truly, as they will answer to the Lord of the Isle.” Here, as in Homer, there is reference to an emblem and a ceremonial repugnant to the notion that (infra) “every man under the patriarchal despotism was practically controlled by a regimen not of law but of caprice.”
Mr Adams describes the following scene in one of the islands in the archipelago off the mainland of Korea—“The chief, who really has something very noble and majestic about him, as is generally the case with men in high authority among the natives of these islands.... The demeanour of those of his countrymen who surrounded him was as free and independent as his own was reserved and dignified.... In his hand he held his badge of office, a wand of ebony with a green silken cord entwined about it like the serpent of Æsculapius.”—“Travels of a Naturalist in Japan and Manchuria,” by Arthur Adams, F.L.S. 1870. Compare also with infra, [p. 390].
[289] I feel very much supported in my argument by the following passage from Mr Gladstone’s “Homer” (ii. 420): “Mr Grote says that ‘the primitive import’ of the words ἁγαθὸς, εσθλὸς, and κακὸς, relates to power and not to worth; and that the ethical meaning of these is a later growth, which ‘hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted by his disciples.’ I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and wrong which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward and not upward.... But as to the words ἁγαθὸς and κακὸς, the case is far more clear; and here I ask, Can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ἁγαθὸς to that which is morally bad? or the word κακὸς to that which is morally good? If it can, cadit quæstio; if it cannot, then we have advanced a considerable way in proving the ethical signification.... In the word δικαιος, however, we have an instance of the epithet never employed except in order to signify a moral or a religious idea. Like the word righteous among ourselves, it is derived from a source which would make it immediately designate duty as between man and man, and also as it arises out of civil relations. But it is applied in Homer to both the great branches of duty. And surely there cannot be a stronger proof of the existence of definite moral ideas among a people, than the very fact that they employ a word founded on the observance of relative rights to describe also the religious character. It is when religion and morality are torn asunder, that the existence of moral ideas is endangered.”