From the pollution ruthless murder brings;
Thou, too, by many tongues wilt be accused[329]
Of this vile deed, with her will they confound
Thee, the abettor.
Do we not seem to have here a legend which evolved? First of all we have private vengeance. Everything depends on Neoptolemus. Then pollution enters the story and the people have a religious interest in homicide. Yet the main fact could not be got rid of, namely that Hermione escaped punishment. If Euripides is archaising, could he not have been consistent? Or is he thinking of that vaguely defined post-Homeric age in which the conception of murder as a pollution existed, but in which homicide is still, as amongst the Hebrews, a matter for the avenger of blood? But why, then, does he mention the people? Is he thinking of the pressure of public opinion, such as was already gathering in Achaean times? Andromache seems to take a different view from that of Hermione. The issue of the plot confirms Hermione’s outlook, which is Achaean. Is it not more natural to suppose that an Achaean story became partially ‘Apollinised’ in later times than to suppose that Euripides gives us two different archaisms side by side?
Andromache’s attack on Spartan homicide becomes intelligible if we remember the anti-Spartan sentiments of the democrat Euripides. ‘Is not murder abundant at Sparta?’ asks Andromache.[330] When, we ask, was it abundant? Is this statement merely a retort to Hermione’s assertion that murder was common in barbarian Troy?[331] Or is Euripides deliberately asserting that Sparta was inferior even to barbarians? According to the latter hypothesis we must assume that he is speaking of historical Sparta, and his opinions are to be attributed to anti-Spartan prejudice.[332]
In the second homicide episode of this drama, Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi. Orestes who plots and in part executes his death escapes all punishment, for reasons which we have already indicated. The Delphians who are prepared, in the Ion, to condemn to death a person guilty of attempted murder, are here themselves engaged in slaying a visitor to their temple. But Neoptolemus was an enemy. He has already despoiled the temple. His life is therefore forfeit. To slay him was, like the projected execution of Creusa, a just revenge. Yet Fate has dealt harshly with Neoptolemus. He now visits the temple not to despoil it, as Orestes falsely alleges, but to make atonement for a previous offence which he had committed against Apollo.[333] Despite the false evidence of Orestes, Apollo, the prophet who knows all things, should have intervened. Thus the messenger utters a criticism which suggests the sentiments of Euripides and of fifth-century Athens[334]:
Thus Phoebus,
Who prophesies to others, mighty King,
And deals out justice to the admiring world,