[43] Rohde, Psyche, p. 240. Cf. Idem, ‘Paralipomena,’ in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 19 sq.; Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 125 sqq.
[44] Aeschylus, Choephori, 283 sqq. Cf. ibid. 400 sqq.; Plato, Leges, ix. 866.
[45] Dyer, op. cit. p. 68 sqq. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, ii. 19 sq.
[46] Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wirdarne, ii. 274; i. 473.
From one point of view, blood-revenge is thus a form of human sacrifice. Sometimes it even formally bears a strong resemblance to certain other human sacrifices which are offered to the dead. Among some Queensland tribes, when the assassin has been caught red-handed, the slayer and slain are buried together in the same grave;[47] and among the ancient Teutons the avenger by preference slew the culprit at the feet of the murdered man, or at his tomb.[48] Blood-revenge also resembles other kinds of human sacrifice so far that it serves as a safeguard for the sacrificer—in this case the avenger, who would otherwise expose himself to the persecutions of the revengeful spirit of the dead.
[47] Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 165.
[48] Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, pp. 170, 692.
But the practice of blood-revenge is not exclusively based on a desire to avenge the injury done to a fellow-creature and to gratify the angry passion of his soul. The act which caused his death is at the same time an injury inflicted upon the survivors. Hence, in many cases, a murder committed within the family or kin is left unavenged.[49] Among the Iroquois, says Loskiel, any one who has murdered his own relative escapes without much difficulty, since the family, who alone have a right to take revenge, do not choose to weaken their influence by depriving themselves of another member besides the one whom they have already lost.[50] Again, when the murderer belongs to an extraneous family, the injury inflicted on the relatives of the murdered man suggests not only revenge, but reparation.
[49] Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, ii. 159 sqq. Mauss, ‘La religion et les origines du droit pénal,’ in Revue de l’histoire des religions, xxxv. 44. Kovalewsky, ‘Les origines du devoir,’ in Revue internationale de Sociologie, ii. 86. Cf. Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 30, 42 (Welsh); Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 420; Idem, Marriage and Kinship in early Arabia, p. 25. Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco blood-revenge is taken for the killing of a cousin, but not for the killing of a brother.
[50] Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America, i. 16.