Deliver: tell him, too, if there be ought
Which ’gainst our guests he can allege, the laws[238]
Are open: but thou shalt not drag them thence—
imply that the right of suppliant was not potent to protect offenders but was only potent to secure for them a respite from merited punishment; moreover they imply that Eurystheus has no right to demand the extradition of offenders without the option of a trial.[239] We have already admitted that the right of sanctuary helped to determine the locality of certain courts, but we have maintained[240] that it had no essential connexion with the origin of the principle of trials for homicide, and that its connexion with murder courts is quite accidental. We have suggested that[241] in historical Greece trial was a possible option for extradition in case of homicide. Hence the refusal of Eurystheus to accept trial suggests what Demophon definitely asserts,[242] that the ‘offence’ of the Heracleidae was not criminal but political.
But if the Heracleidae are innocent, what shall we say of Eurystheus? Is he not as culpable as Lycus is in the Mad Hercules? Is he not guilty of plotting murder for political ends? If he is not yet αἴτιος φόνου, is he not guilty of βούλευσις? For this crime, we have said, in early Greece, the penalty was probably death.[243] It is, then, significant that in this play Eurystheus is put to death by the servants of Alcmene.[244] Both the penalty and its mode of execution are archaic. Either legend retained these elements unadulterated in their transition down the ages, or Euripides deliberately imported into the myth an archaic atmosphere. In neither case is Euripides giving us the ideas of his own time, for in historical Greece βούλευσις was not punishable by death.
Eurystheus was captured alive in the battle and hence he claims the right of a captive warrior and demands the protection of the Athenians![245] Alcmene, however, insists that he should be given up to her for execution![246] What a nice legal problem was this for a litigious Athenian audience! How replete it is with that intense human interest which was so dear to Euripides! The conflict is skilfully depicted in the dialogue which takes place between Alcmene and the messenger (or the Chorus?) after the battle.[247] Eurystheus’ appeal to the ‘laws of Greece’[248] implies the existence of international legislation concerning the rights of war-captives, but he himself had previously shown very little regard for the international status of exiles. In vain does he advance the plea of self-defence against these harmless but dangerous children! The Athenians decide to take no action. They cannot put to death a captive taken in war. But Alcmene claims that Eurystheus is a murderer. According to ancient practice, it is her privilege to avenge! Moreover, so far as Alcmene is concerned, she will not bury a man whom she believes to be a criminal.[249] But unfortunately there was an oracle of Apollo that Eurystheus should be buried in Athens.[250] The Athenians therefore are disposed to bury him.[251] At first Alcmene says[252] that she will not object to the burial of Eurystheus by the Athenians, but this assertion is incompatible with the command which she gives to her attendants later, to deliver the dead Eurystheus to the dogs. We may perhaps assume that she performed a mock ritual of ‘exposure’ of the dead, that she cast the body of Eurystheus beyond the boundaries, and that afterwards his relatives removed him for sepulture. Such is the attempt which Euripides seems to make to solve the deadlock between two elements of Greek law, namely that which permitted the burial of an enemy,[253] and that which forbade the burial of a murderer.[254] In the archaic atmosphere of the play, homicide and attempted homicide[255] are equated as identical. In the words of Eurystheus, who declares in vain that his death will cause pollution to his slayer, we discern at once the failure of Euripides to be consistently archaic and the failure of a dead man’s ghost to impose ‘pollution’ in the teeth of civic law and international religion.
The ‘Medea’
In regard to the origin and the evolution of the story of Medea which is the subject of this drama, we cannot do better than summarise the account which Verrall gives in his edition of the play. Verrall thinks[256] that Medea was a Phoenician moon-goddess who was worshipped at Corinth at an early period, and to whom were offered, in sacrifice, human victims, including children; that these rites, which in course of time assumed a more civilised form, (when a mock ritual of human sacrifice was accepted in the place of ancient realities,) were ‘transferred’ to the goddess Hera; that sacred legend retained indeed a memory of Medea, but the evolution of Corinthian religion degraded to the level of a priestess the Medea who once had been a goddess; and that hence arose the fiction that Medea had once slain children—in sacrifice! Later, Verrall thinks, this Corinthian story was expanded under the influence of eastern Greek colonisation, and legend traced in the route from the Euxine to Iolcos the natural course of Medea’s introduction to Greek lands. Weird Asiatic notions of sorcery and witchcraft clustered round her name; to her were attributed the atrocities which legend-memory recorded of the Aeolidae at Iolcos. Thus was Medea degraded not only from a goddess to a priestess, but also from a priestess to a sorceress, and from a sorceress to the vilest murderess whom Grecian legends knew.
If the creators of the story of Medea were ignorant of her original character, so also naturally was Euripides. For him, Medea is not a goddess who has assumed the form of a woman, but a woman who has not yet put off this mortal coil, and who as yet has done little to deserve that she should, after death, attain to divinity! As a woman, she is, despite her magic, subject to social laws. Her deeds of blood must be regarded from a legal standpoint, whether that standpoint is applicable to one era or to another. Let us consider how the deeds of Medea were avenged.
First of all, she slew her brother, Apsyrtus, in Colchis, to prevent his pursuit.[257] For this crime she paid no penalty, if we except the exile which destiny had, in any event, decreed for her. It was quite unnecessary for the legend-maker to invent this additional atrocity of fratricide, for to Colchis Medea was never to return! But as exile was an archaic Pelasgian penalty for wilful kin-slaying, this conception bears an antique stamp which is attributable either to the antiquity of the story or to the archaising of later minds.