It was natural that the Greeks of the ‘pollution’ era—that is, the historical period—should have referred to the chaotic vendetta which their ‘fathers’ had abolished. But the Achaean vengeance-system was not a chaotic vendetta, because Achaean military discipline and Achaean public opinion were able to maintain a distinction between murder and just revenge.[54] We have said[55] that it was only in the Dark Ages of chaos and migration—that is, from 1000 B.C. to 700 B.C.—when the control of tribal chieftains, of phratry-assemblies, and of clan-courts, and the public co-operation of organised groups were paralysed and rendered impotent, that the instinct and habit of vendetta was awakened from its slumber. In the seventh century the doctrine of pollution and the evolution of State power restored equilibrium by the institution of the historical system of homicide law. But it was erroneously supposed that the vendetta system which was thus abolished had always existed in prehistoric Greece.
If in historical Greece Clytaemnestra had slain her husband, she would have been tried by a regular State-court, and, as her husband was not a kinsman, she would have been permitted, as Tyndareus here implies, the option of exile. But Tyndareus does not correctly visualise the Achaean mode of vengeance. He argues as if trials for homicide had been always and everywhere operative. This anachronism, at least, is absent in Aeschylus, who could not have attributed such an attitude to his characters, since, in his view, the trial of Orestes was the first Greek murder-trial.[56] Hence it is that the condemnation of ‘private vengeance’ from the standpoint of social justice does not appear in Aeschylus—nor, we may add, in Sophocles.[57]
Further, the suggestion of Tyndareus that Clytaemnestra could have been sent into exile is an additional anachronism. In historical Greece a wilful murderer usually went into exile. But the autocratic Homeric Clytaemnestra remained in the royal palace with Aegisthus! Thus Tyndareus again fails to reproduce the essential elements of the Homeric story. Now Euripides elsewhere, as we shall see, frequently reproduces quite correctly the Homeric atmosphere. If then he attributes here[58] to Tyndareus a non-Homeric standpoint, it is not because he was incapable of correctly archaising, but because he deliberately depicted a non-Homeric Oresteian legend and attributed a non-Homeric attitude to the Argives. The views which he attributes to Tyndareus are quite consistent with the subsequent verdict of the Argive court, and with the sentence of death for unjustifiable kin-slaying, which is pronounced against Orestes and Electra.
There is a very archaic—an almost Homeric—tone in the words with which, we are told, the herald ushered in the Argive trial[59]:
Soon as th’ assembly sate, the herald’s voice
Proclaimed free speech to all who wished to speak,
Whether Orestes for his mother slain
Should die or not.
In historical times such a proclamation could only be associated with a trial which was known as an ἄγων τιμητός, concerning offences for which the penalty was not fixed by law, and for which, therefore, the penalty had to be determined by the court, as, for instance, the crime of Impiety.[60] We have argued[61] that there were no homicide-indictments (γραφαί φόνου) at Athens, but even if there had been there could not have been any assessment of penalties in such cases, since the penalties for homicide were fixed by law from time immemorial. It is therefore, we believe, from the Homeric ἀγορά rather than from the Athenian Heliastic courts that Euripides received his inspiration for such a proclamation. Moreover, his description of the composition and of the general procedure of this Argive court is very Homeric, and reminds us very forcibly of other archaic pictures in Greek drama, such as the Council of Achaean chieftains in the Ajax of Sophocles,[62] and the Assembly of the Greeks who condemn to death Helen[63] and Polyxena.[64] It is a herald who conveys the death-sentence pronounced by the Greeks against Astyanax, in the Troades[65] of Euripides. Thus we have in this play a strange mixture of the archaic and the historical. We sometimes feel as if the Achaean atmosphere had momentarily reappeared in the Draconian age, as if Homeric heroes had been suddenly transformed into historical Argives, without, however, having completely divested themselves of their Homeric usages.
Pollux assures us[66] that at the Athenian Areopagus it was not permitted to appeal to pity or to indulge in rhetorical persuasion, but it was necessary for the plaintiff and the defendant to confine themselves to the issues of guilt or innocence. Similarly, we may assume, at the Delphinium court no discussion of general principles would have been admitted, but merely evidential statements of fact. But at the Argive trial in this play there is no attempt at an investigation of facts. The speeches are entirely concerned with general principles. It is impossible to maintain that Euripides is explaining, in this trial, his ideas, based on contemporary practice, of the manner in which Orestes ought to have been tried.