The ‘Choephoroe’
In the Choephoroe Orestes slays his mother and her paramour. Two important deviations from the Homeric saga are manifest throughout the play: (1) the conception of homicide as a ‘pollution,’ and (2) the command which is given by the Delphian Apollo to Orestes, to slay his mother in vengeance for his father’s murder. Thus Orestes says[28]:
We shall not fail: Apollo’s mighty word
Will be performed, that bade me stem this peril.
High rose that sovran voice, and clearly spake
Of stormy curses that should freeze my blood,
Should I not wreak my father’s wrongful death.
There is no doubt about the meaning of these words. Apollo, the oracle-god of the Delphian Amphictyony, which, as we think,[29] contributed so much to the historical homicide code of Greece, has issued a definite command. It must be obeyed. If it is executed, its execution must be just. No penalties can attach to such avenging, but punishment unthinkable follows failure to avenge. Orestes tells us that he would at least have lost his life if he did not slay his mother. But a real Homeric Achaean would not have suffered for failure to avenge. Was this Aeschylean conception, then, derived from contemporary Attic law? Would an Athenian citizen of historical times have suffered in such circumstances? We have seen[30] that pecuniary ‘private settlements’ were actual events, though not, as we think, legal events in historical Athens. In such cases a relative of the slain would have benefited by failure to prosecute.[31] But we have also shown that in Athens a relative of a slain person who did not prosecute could be proceeded against on a charge of impiety: and it is probable that, if convicted, he would have been degraded from citizenship and sentenced to perpetual exile. Are we then to suppose that Aeschylus deliberately imported into the Homeric story conceptions which he borrowed from contemporary Attic law, and that he also imported Apollo as a deus ex machina whose rôle it was to propound Athenian law to an Achaean king? This hypothesis is very unsatisfactory. We prefer to believe that the non-Homeric elements in this play had gradually found their way into the legend as it was transmitted down the ages. It is, of course, unfortunate that the legend-makers did not remember that Orestes lived at a time when murder was not regarded as a ‘pollution’: but in a legend which evolved through a long period of time it was inevitable that sentiments and customs of a later age should have been attributed, anachronistically, to the people of earlier periods.
We have already referred[32] to the anger which it was believed that a slain person felt towards his relatives who did not avenge him, and which contributed to the ‘pollution’ of delinquent relatives. It is only from this standpoint that we can understand Orestes’ reference to the evils that would follow his failure to avenge[33]:
The darkling arrow of the dead that flies