[263] Digesta, xlviii. 19. 26. Cf. ibid. xlviii. 19. 20.
[264] Seneca, De ira, ii. 34. Cf. Cicero, De officiis, i. 25.
[265] Deuteronomy, xxiv. 16. Cf. 2 Kings xiv. 6.
[266] Koran, xvii. 35.
[267] Laws of Edmund, ii. 1.
[268] Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 103, 334, 335, 399. Wilda, op. cit. p. 174.
[269] Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine, p. 248. In Montenegro it was enjoined by Daniel I. (Post, Anfänge des Staats- und Rechtsleben, p. 181).
Passing to the vengeance of gods: according to the Atharva-Veda, Agni, who forgives sin committed through folly and averts Varuna’s wrath, also frees from the consequence of a sin committed by a man’s father or mother.[270] Theognis asks, “How, O king of immortals, is it just that whoso is aloof from unrighteous deeds, holding no transgression, nor sinful oath, but being righteous, should suffer what is not just?”[271] According to Bion, the deity, in punishing the children of the wicked for their fathers’ crimes, is more ridiculous than a doctor administering a potion to a son or grandson for a father’s or grandfather’s disease.[272] The early Greek notion of an inherited curse was modified into the belief that the curse works through generations because the descendants each commit new acts of guilt.[273] The persons who prohibited the sons of such as had been proscribed by Sylla, from standing candidates for their fathers’ honours, and from being admitted into the senate, were supposed to have been punished by the gods for this injustice:—“In process of time,” says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “a blameless punishment, the avenger of their crimes, pursued them, by which they themselves were brought down from the greatest height of glory, to the lowest degree of obscurity; and none, even, of their race are now left, but women.”[274] Among the Hebrews, Jeremiah and Ezekiel broke with the old notion of divine vengeance. The law of individual responsibility, which had already previously been laid down as a principle of human justice, was to be extended to the sphere of religion.[275] “Every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.”[276] “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”[277]
[270] Atharva-Veda, v. 30. 4. Cf. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 98.
[271] Theognis, 743 sqq.