That is your sentence: I must fly the land
With public execration on my head.
We have seen[21] that an option of exile would have been permitted in such cases in historical Attic law, for husband and wife were not usually akin in blood. But the Achaeans did not recognise the exile penalty in any circumstances. We have said[22] that the penalty of death and private vendetta were the characteristics of Achaean vengeance. They also characterised at various periods the blood-feuds of noble or royal families whose conduct was uncontrolled by law. Thus, in fourth-century Macedonia blood-vengeance was still of an Achaean or quasi-Achaean type. Pausanias[23] tells how Antipater, the brother of Alexander, ordered the Macedonians to stone to death the queen-regent Olympias, and himself poisoned the sons of Alexander: how in turn Alexander called in Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, and succeeded by his help in deposing his brother Antipater and in punishing him for his matricide. Thus Aeschylus, without knowing anything of the different modes of vengeance of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, was enabled, by the predominance of Achaean vengeance in Homer, and the occurrence of quasi-Achaean vengeance in outlying regions, to visualise[24] correctly the Achaean vengeance of Orestes, and the Achaean punishment of Clytaemnestra. Hence he makes the Chorus say[25]:
O that Orestes, if he lives to-day,
Might yet return auspiciously to Argos
And kill both tyrants in his pride of power!
Hence the exile to which Clytaemnestra[26] refers is an Achaean ‘flight from death.’ But the penalty of death was the ultimate aim of Achaean vengeance; and therefore the Chorus say[27]:
Robber is robbed: slayer slain: revenge is sure.
Firm stands, while Zeus remains upon his throne,
One law: who doeth shall likewise suffer.