The Chorus, however, imply that Polymestor has been justly punished[341]:
Hapless man,
How art thou visited by woes too grievous
To be endured: but by dread Jove, thy foe,
On him whose deeds are base, it is ordained
That the severest punishments await.
This passage suggests that the poet is reproducing an archaic atmosphere. Now the Achaeans, we have seen,[342] ordinarily held no trials for homicide. The pleadings before Agamemnon, which we find here, do not, strictly speaking, constitute such a trial. We have seen[343] that the Achaeans recognised a distinction between murder and just revenge. Athene upholds that distinction in the Odyssey. Agamemnon upholds that distinction here. He decides in favour of Hecuba, saying to Polymestor[344]:
Know, then, to me thou seem’st not to have slain
Thy guest through an attachment to my cause,
Nor yet to that of Greece, but that his gold