Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance

by Hubert Joseph Treston

Yet we cannot infer from the suggestion that the penalty of death would have been inflicted upon Ajax had he lived to suffer it, that such was the penalty for βούλευσις in historical Attic law. It is much more probable that Sophocles is here attributing, by an archaism, an absence of discrimination between murder and βούλευσις to the Homeric society.[105]

Teucer foresees that when he returns to Salamis he will be banished by his father, Telamon, because of the death of Ajax. Addressing the corpse of Ajax, Teucer says[106]:

Will Telamon, my sire and thine, receive me ...

Returning without thee?

... I shall leave my land a castaway,

Thrust forth an exile and proclaimed a slave.

We have quoted[107] from Pausanias the legend that the Attic court of Phreatto was first founded when Teucer pleaded innocence for the death of Ajax. Apart from the impossibility of assuming any real historical connexion between Teucer and Phreatto, we may naturally ask, why was it that Teucer was presumed to have been guilty of bloodshed, and what degree of guilt was attributed to him? We cannot very logically apply to Teucer the principle which was enunciated by a Delphic oracle which we have already mentioned[108]: ‘Thou, who standing near a comrade being killed hast not defended him, hast gone not pure away.’

Yet such oracles suggest that Teucer incurred some guilt through not having protected Ajax from himself. The only explanation which we can offer for the facts is this: Teucer was regarded by Telamon as partially culpable in regard to the death of Ajax. In Greek law, it was necessary for the accused to prove his innocence, and Teucer could not prove it. Ajax had died in a solitary place; but he was more or less insane, and he should not have been left without a protecting escort.[109] The guilt of Teucer, being of a minor kind, was connected with that of manslaughter. The court of Phreatto was based on the principle that the slayer who was guilty of involuntary homicide could not have returned to his native land until he had appeased the relatives of the slain. Therefore Telamon, the father of Ajax, was represented in legend as having refused to permit Teucer to land in Salamis. The fact that Ajax was a kinsman of Teucer causes further complications. But in the event of minor pollution the legal aspect of such a case approximates to that of ordinary manslaughter. We have seen that the Achaeans punished kin-slaying by death and that they did not distinguish between major and minor degrees of guilt. But this story of Teucer is not, we think, of Achaean origin: it was attributed to an Achaean by post-Homeric legend. We have seen[110] that in tribal society, before political synoekism, the penalty for kin-slaying was exile, and that tribal law discriminated meticulously between varying degrees of blood-guilt. Thus, the story of the banishment of Teucer can only be made intelligible by being considered in its obviously archaic atmosphere.

It remains for us to discuss the dispute which arose concerning the burial of Ajax in this play. Ajax has committed suicide, but there are different kinds of suicide. Plato[111] includes under the category of kin-slaying the act of a person who ‘by violence deprives himself of his lot of destiny, without being compelled either by a verdict of the city which decrees it, or by a very painful and unavoidable misfortune which has befallen him, or by being involved in a disgrace which cannot otherwise be tolerable, but through sheer indolence, weakness and cowardice.’ Such persons must not, says Plato, be buried in the family tomb, or with funeral honours, or where anyone else has been buried. Now, the case of Ajax might easily have been included in one or other of the categories of suicide which Plato regards as honourable. Because of his βούλευσις he probably regarded himself as under sentence of death: he was insane with grief and wounded pride. No one could accuse him of cowardice or weakness. Moreover, Plato admits that some kind of burial was accorded to all suicides. In the Ajax some Achaeans demand the burial of Ajax with full military honours, but others object to any form of burial. Moreover, in the whole course of the dispute between the chieftains the word ‘suicide’ is not mentioned even once.

Hence we cannot with any probability attribute to the fact of Ajax’s suicide the quarrel which arose about his burial. The quarrel arose, we think, because he was a virtual murderer and, in a sense, a traitor. We know that in ancient society persons who were convicted of treason were not buried, and also that wilful murderers who had been ‘executed’ were not granted the rites of burial. In the course of the quarrel, Ajax is called a murderer by Menelaus,[112] a traitor and a rebel by Agamemnon.[113] It is only because of the intercession of Odysseus that the other chiefs eventually permit Teucer to bury him. We feel that Odysseus in this play acts as an intermediary who is used to bring the dramatic story into harmony with Homeric facts. In the Odyssey[114] Ajax is depicted as dwelling in Hades, the western Spirit-land which was a place of repose for the Achaean dead but which could only be entered when their bodies had been buried. If it had not been for this Homeric reference we feel that the dead Ajax, who, by his suicide, had become his own executioner, would, on account of treason and βούλευσις, have been exposed to the wild birds and the dogs.