At this critical moment the Pythian priestess intervenes, and requests Ion to desist. She holds that the attempt of Creusa was mitigated by ‘passion’—and that therefore she did not deserve to die. She says[318]:
Wives with inveterate hatred ever view
Their husbands’ sons sprung from another bed.
Thus does Apollo override the verdict of his priests! But he goes farther. Creusa, according to the oracular interpretation of her act, was guilty of an ‘extenuated’ attempt to kill, and should therefore in strict law[319] have been punished by a penalty of temporary exile. Yet she is permitted to return forthwith to Athens, her native country! In the following verses Ion is urged to ‘forgive’:
Banish from thy soul
This rancour, now the temple thou art leaving,
And on thy journey to thy native land.[320]
But we have not yet rendered the dénouement legally intelligible. We think that it can only be explained by one hypothesis, namely, by assuming that Apollo takes upon himself the responsibility for Creusa’s act. It was he who, by concealing the true facts, had provoked Creusa to attempted murder. It was he, therefore, who must take the blame. We have seen that there is no doubt that otherwise Creusa would have suffered death. That penalty is an archaic one, being based, as we think, on the notion of the absence of discrimination in early Greece between degrees of homicide-guilt. In the more subtle analysis of Apollo we may see perhaps a suggestion of Euripides as to the evolution of such distinctions, which characterised the historical period. But it is possible that such distinctions existed in Pelasgian groups, though not in Achaean or quasi-Achaean societies. If there is anything legally improbable in this legend, it is obscured by the dramatic interest which attaches to the recognition scene between the mother and the son. Moreover Euripides and therefore the legend which he follows were compelled to indicate the important fact that Creusa did return with Ion to Athens, and that the glorious mother of the Ionian race had not been stained by the guilt of kindred bloodshed.
The ‘Andromache’
In the Andromache there are two events of a homicidal character which we must discuss: (1) the attempted murder of Andromache, who was then a war-captive in the home of Neoptolemus, and that of her son, by Hermione, the wife of Neoptolemus, and by her father Menelaus: (2) the slaying of Neoptolemus, at Delphi, by the Apolline priests and magistrates on a false charge of sacrilege which was urged against him by Orestes. The first event is clearly a case of attempted murder, because the plot failed to materialise owing to the arrival of Peleus. The second event is more difficult to define. Objectively, it points to the execution of a normal penalty for an alleged sacrilegious attempt to despoil the temple and for a previous actual spoliation: but, subjectively, Orestes was guilty of contriving the death of Neoptolemus, and he advances, in private, a sham plea of justification, when he says that he regards Neoptolemus, who had married Hermione, his own fiancée, as a virtual adulterer.[321] From the words which are addressed by Thetis to Peleus at the end of the play,[322] we may infer that the plot of Orestes was viewed with disapproval by the gods. But, legally, he must escape punishment because the actual slayers could plead sufficient justification, and his private motives were not publicly proclaimed. Let us give some details of both episodes. Hermione, when her attempt to kill is discovered and frustrated, meditates suicide, because, we are told, she fears that her husband will slay her or send her into exile. Thus, a nurse in Hermione’s service says[323]: