We shall return to this question in our next chapter, when treating of manslaughter in Attic law, but we may for the present conclude, as the most probable hypothesis, that in historical Athens ‘private settlement’ as a means of absolution from homicide guilt was sinful and legally punishable, in all cases where the dying victim did not grant a ‘release’ and where a public prosecution was otherwise legally possible. This hypothesis, if correct, shows that amongst the Greeks, as amongst the Semites, wergeld was abolished by the religious doctrine of homicide as a ‘pollution,’ as an offence against supernatural beings.
Assuming, as a result of our general reasoning in this chapter, and for other reasons which will presently appear, that the historical murder laws of Greece were as universal and as uniform as the Greek purgation-rites for homicide, assuming that the novelties which they contain, in regard to their ideals of punishment, and their insistence on compulsory State trial, were not the creation of local legislators, but the product of international Amphictyonies which expressed their compacts in oracular decrees—compacts which were only gradually evolved in a compromise between local customs or desires and a new religious doctrine which was adopted from Asiatic peoples—we will now proceed to a brief colligation of the Laws of Dracon concerning homicide, and after giving such commentaries as these laws may seem to demand, we will then review the Attic murder-courts and offer an explanation of their origin and evolution.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Thuc. i. 12.
[2] H. and H. p. 259.
[3] Op. cit. p. 54.
[4] Ib. p. 255.
[5] Op. cit. p. 259.
[6] E.A.G. p. 405.
[7] P. 330.