One die for one, thou first wilt be destroyed
If Justice find thee.
What, we may ask, is the meaning of the ‘precedent’ to which Electra refers? Does it mean that no individual should have the right to take human life? Does it imply a condemnation of ‘private vengeance’ as distinct from social justice? We do not think that the ‘precedent’ which Electra mentions refers to private vengeance. We have seen[31] that, amongst the Homeric Achaeans, there was a distinction, vague and unwritten, but none the less real, which was enshrined in a public opinion of the caste, the distinction between murder and vengeance. The act of Agamemnon in sacrificing Iphigeneia (if we suppose for the moment that the sacrifice actually took place) would not have been regarded by the Achaeans as an act of murder. But the act of Clytaemnestra in slaying her husband would have been, and was, regarded as murder, and Orestes was conceived as a just avenger. Hence, in this play, when Clytaemnestra sets herself up as an isolated authority on questions of right and wrong in matters of homicide, she is violating what must have been an established precedent in the Achaean society. It is, we think, to some such precedent as this that Electra here refers. To suppose that Electra is referring to the precedent of ‘private vengeance’ would be to attribute an inconsistent and illogical character to Electra, for is she not whole-heartedly scheming to accomplish what, on this hypothesis, she verbally condemned?
Finally, Sophocles does not attribute to Electra, or perhaps even to Pylades, any actual share in the act of vengeance. In this he follows Aeschylus, whose object it was to make Orestes the central figure in the drama. Euripides, however, we shall see, suggests that the act of vengeance was, so to speak, ‘partitioned’ amongst three avengers. Both Electra and Pylades have to suffer punishment, as well as Orestes. Perhaps Euripides is following a legend which, while admitting a degree of guilt, sought to lessen the guilt by dividing it. This version Sophocles does not follow, nor does Aeschylus. But Pylades had been too long and too well established in the post-Homeric story to be omitted or ignored. He had come into the story almost as early as Apollo, for he is mentioned in a cyclic epic[32] by Agias of Troezen which belongs to the middle of the eighth century B.C. The connexion of Orestes with Pylades and with Phocis, rather than with Athens, belongs, probably, to the Phocian variant of the Oresteian story. This version was older, we think, than the Argive legend which we shall find in the Orestes of Euripides, and it was also probably older[33] than the Attic legends which emphasised the trial of Orestes at the Areopagus. The Attic legend-makers should at least have followed the Homeric saga which suggested the connexion of Orestes with Athens before his act of vengeance; and if neither they nor the Attic dramatists refer to such a connexion, this must be attributed to the fact that the famous friendship of Pylades and Orestes and the famous purgation of Orestes at Delphi had in course of time obscured, in a fusion of legends, the previous association of Orestes with Athens, a fact which Apollo had not forgotten when he directed him to that State for trial and acquittal.
The ‘King Oedipus’
We have already mentioned[34] the Homeric legend of Oedipus, and the difficulties which it presents to the legal analyst. Homer[35] appears to think it strange that a parricide should have continued to rule in his native land. He hints that the dreadful deed was punished in the first instance by pain and suffering, and later by ‘pains full many’ such as the Erinnyes of a mother bring to pass. The story is complicated by the addition of the crime of incest, just as the story of Orestes is, to a less extent, complicated by the addition of adultery. We have suggested[36] that in pre-Homeric times the deed of Oedipus was already regarded, by Pelasgians, as at least involuntary parricide, and perhaps also, because of the provocative action of Laius, as quasi-involuntary homicide; and we have attributed the wonder which is expressed by Homer at Oedipus’ continued rule in Thebes to the absence, amongst the Achaean caste, of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying. In post-Homeric times the notion of an ancestral curse was added to the story, and also, if it was not already in the legend, the idea of provocation on the part of Laius. Furthermore, the pollution doctrine was applied to the legend, and Apollo was appealed to as the sole judge of guilt, as he was, we think, appealed to in the Phocian legend of Orestes.[37] It is strange that Attic legend-makers did not seek to connect Oedipus with the Areopagus court, seeing that he was said[38] to have been buried in Attica and to have been given a refuge there before his death.
We have seen[39] that Orestes was tried by the Areopagus, on a plea either of justifiable or of quasi-involuntary matricide, according to the different versions of the Attic legends. In the ‘second Attic legend,’ which is based on the plea of quasi-involuntary matricide, for which Orestes claimed that the penalty had already been paid, the Areopagus functions as a ‘court of reconciliation’ rather than as an ordinary homicide court. In the case of Oedipus there is a suggestion, in the Oedipus Coloneus,[40] of an informal trial of Oedipus on the part of Theseus, King of Athens. It was probably a legendary reference to his trial by Theseus which prohibited any connexion of Oedipus with the Areopagus.
In the present play Apollo threatens to send a plague upon Thebes if the Thebans do not search for and punish the murderer of Laius. The penalty which is mentioned by the oracle is of a general kind, that is, it does not definitely imply that the crime was parricide—such an implication would have militated against the development of the drama—but it assumes that the slaying of Laius was an act of wilful murder. Thus Kreon says[41]:
Sovereign Apollo clearly bids us drive