This view must now be defended from the text of Homer. In the Odyssey[4] we read that there came as a suppliant to Telemachus, at Pylos, a murderer from Argos, named Theoclymenus. He was a great-grandson of Melampus who was a contemporary of Nestor, and the family had been settled in Argos for four generations.[5] That the family was Achaean is rendered obvious by the Homeric text.[6] That the victim was probably a kinsman of the murderer appears from the words ἄνδρα ἔμφυλον.[7] We pointed out, in the Introduction,[8] how easily relatives could have accumulated in one or two hundred years, without, however, attaining to the reality, whatever may be said about the appearance, of a clan. But the important point to note is that, even in exile, Theoclymenus feared the death which was desired by those who were at once akin to him and to his victim. ‘I have fled,’ he says, ‘from my country, for the manslaying of one of mine own kin; and many brothers and kinsmen of the slain are in Argos ... and rule mightily over the Achaeans. Wherefore now am I an exile to shun death and the black fate at their hands.... Set me on board ship since I supplicate thee in my flight, lest they slay me utterly: for methinks they follow hard after me.’[9] Nothing could be farther removed than this from the recognised exile penalty of the wergeld system. The passage shows, moreover, that the supplication was not an appeal for homicide-purgation, as Müller would maintain[10]—we shall see later that this ceremonial was post-Homeric—but was merely an appeal for protection from the avengers of blood.
A similar supplication is mentioned in a passage in the Iliad,[11] in which we read that ‘Epeigeus, who ruled fair-set Boudeion of old, when he had slain a good man of his kin, came as suppliant to Peleus and silver-footed Thetis ... and they sent him to follow with Achilles.’ The locality of Boudeion is unknown.[12] While we cannot argue that Epeigeus was an Achaean from the fact that he is included amongst the Myrmidons (after his adoption by Peleus), still we may presume that he was an Achaean from the behaviour of Peleus and hence we may interpret his exile as a flight from death. We may therefore infer that death was the Achaean penalty for kin-slaying. This passage also illustrates the statement of Leaf[13] that homicide, among Achaeans, brings no disability other than exile from home. To an ambitious young man ‘exile under such circumstances is no punishment: a wealthy and generous king can give opportunities of advancement beyond all the hopes of a narrow family circle.’ Epeigeus, as Homer tells us,[14] was slain by Hector in battle before the walls of Troy. His enrolment among the Myrmidons saved him from the hands of the avengers of blood.
In another passage of the Iliad[15] we are told that Medon, son of Oileus and brother of Ajax, ‘dwelt in Phylace, far from his own country, for that he had slain a man, the brother of his stepmother Eriopis.’ The murder probably took place in Opus, a Locrian town, where also was perpetrated the death of the son of Amphidamas at the hands of Patroclus.[16] Like Patroclus, Medon came to Phthia, not to Peleus the king of the realm, but only, as Leaf would maintain,[17] to Protesilaus, a ‘baron’ of Achilles who ruled the town of Phylace. The typically Achaean method of procedure is maintained.
Again, we are told[18] that Lycophron, son of Mastor, of Cythera, slew a man in Cythera and came and dwelt with Ajax who made him his ‘squire’ or a member of his bodyguard. He, too, was slain in Troy, and when he falls Ajax says to his brother Teucer, ‘Our faithful comrade has fallen ... whom we honoured like our parents.’ Leaf[19] quotes this passage as an instance of the immunity of Achaeans from any real punishment for bloodshed. So far as tribal customs were concerned such men were entirely above the law.
In the Odyssey,[20] Eumaeus, swineherd of Odysseus, tells how a beggar appealed to him for help on the ground that he had slain a man, and that he knew Odysseus (which was a falsehood). From the poverty of the beggar it is not necessary to infer that he was a Pelasgian who had ‘wandered over a vast tract of land.’
Again, Odysseus,[21] inventing a fiction about his past, pretends that he is a murder-refugee from Crete (an Achaean dominion), having killed the son of Idomeneus. ‘I smote him,’ he says, ‘with a bronze-shod spear as he came home from the field, lying in ambush for him by the wayside, with one of my companions.’ He adds, very significantly, as we think: ‘and now I have come hither with these my goods; and I left as much again to my children.’ There is no trace here of that solidarity in the control of property, and of that ‘passive collectivity’ or distribution of punishment, which is so characteristic of clan wergeld. No tribal murderer could have taken any property away with him: his property, and therefore probably[22] that of his children, was distributed among the wider kindred who either retained it or used it to defray their share of the wergeld.[23] Odysseus, however, departs with half his property, and the relatives of the slain Orsilochus left the children in tranquil enjoyment of the rest! Of course, Odysseus did not really live through such an experience, but a ‘tribesman’ would have told a very different story.
Again, there is the story of Phoenix,[24] which opens up the question of parricide. Phoenix did not kill his father, but it occurred to him to do so, because his father cursed him with sterility, for having had amorous relations with one of his father’s concubines. Fearing to commit the dread deed of parricide, he decided to leave his home. His relatives and comrades endeavoured to dissuade him, holding a feast in his house for nine days, but on the tenth he fled. He went from Hellas to Phthia, to King Peleus, who made him king over the Dolopians. A portion of this passage[25] has been considered spurious by many editors, as it is not found in any Homeric manuscript, and Aristarchus is said by Plutarch to have omitted it, as being unsuitable to the character of Phoenix[26]; Glotz[27] holds that the feast in question was a kind of gathering of the clan. The father, he thinks, wished to banish the son, but could not do so without the solemn and formal ratification of the assembled clan. He says of Amyntor,[28] the father of Phoenix: ‘Comme Thésée, il a maudit son fils: s’il ne le bannit pas, comme Thésée, c’est qu’il a besoin d’obtenir le consentement du γένος.’ Now Euripides[29] in describing the curse which Theseus pronounced against his son, Hippolytus, whom he believed to be the real though not the actual cause of the death of his wife Phaedra the step-mother of Hippolytus, tells us also that Theseus commanded Hippolytus to depart from Troizen and forbade him ever to reside at Athens.[30] This sentence was pronounced without any consultation with the clans of tribal Attica, because Theseus, in the legends, is erroneously presented as an autocratic ruler, like Peisistratus, rather than as a tribal chieftain. But Amyntor was an Achaean, and we have argued that the Achaeans did not acknowledge or recognise clan-jurisdiction. Hence, a comparison of Amyntor with the legendary Theseus is logically valid but does not justify Glotz’s conclusions. Moreover, if it had been the desire of Amyntor to secure a formal decree from the clan for the expulsion of his son, why should the ‘clan’ have guarded Phoenix as if he were a prisoner? Surely it would have been sufficient to obtain a decree of banishment after the offender had fled. On this point, Glotz does not seem quite clear. ‘Sans doute,’ he says, ‘tous ses parents montent la garde autour de Phoenix de peur qu’il ne s’échappe. Mais ce n’est pas pour cela qu’ils sont venus. Ils sont venus sur convocation.’ But we can find no suggestion, in Homer, that the kinsmen were summoned by Amyntor to agree to a sentence of banishment for his son. We are told quite plainly that Amyntor and his son were exceedingly angry with each other, so much so that Phoenix contemplated parricide, and would have killed his father had not some of the immortals reminded him of the unpleasant reputation which the act would bring him.[31] Owing to his father’s curse, he looked forward to a childless old age. He tells us that he decided to leave his home.[32] For an Achaean such an exile involved no serious hardship, but might, on the contrary, have brought many advantages. His relatives came, as we think, to entreat and restrain him.[33] They ‘imprisoned’ him, or rather they sought to prevent his escape, in the hope that the feast would reconcile the father and the son. Can we imagine a group of clan-kindred, with a right of inheritance to the property of Phoenix, so very anxious to restrain him? We fear they would rather have celebrated his departure! But Homer makes no mention of clan-kindred. The ἔται and the ἀνεψιοί are the ordinary ‘comrades and cousins’ of the Achaean ‘small family circle’: the whole context supports the hypothesis of Leaf, of which Glotz is unaware, namely that the Achaeans of Homer lived in an atmosphere which is foreign to the clan.
The question remains: what was the consequential penalty which helped to deter the Achaean Phoenix, who had otherwise little regard for his father, from actually slaying him? We have seen[34] that kin-slaying, and therefore parricide, was punished by exile in the tribal system. How would it have been punished within the Achaean caste? We have little Homeric evidence to guide us here. Homicide amongst the Achaeans is a private affair which concerns a small family circle. In the Iliad[35] the Trojan Akamas says that it is desirable for a man to pray that ‘some kinsman be left in his home to avenge his fall.’ If Akamas avenges the slaying of his brother even in war, will a son not avenge the slaying of a father? Does not Orestes avenge the murder of his father, Agamemnon, even when that vengeance necessitates the shedding of his mother’s blood? Homer implies that Clytaemnestra was the murderer of Agamemnon and also of Cassandra[36]: he also implies that she was slain by her son Orestes.[37] Glotz[38] regards such vengeance as perfectly normal: ‘Loin d’être impossible,’ he says, ‘la repression des crimes commis par un parent contre un parent est plus certaine et plus sévère que la réparation des dommages causés par une famille à une autre. Si l’offenseur ... est parent de la victime ses auxiliaires naturels deviennent ses ennemis. Seul, il a contre lui l’univers.’ Hence it is probable that the ἔται and the ἀνεψιοί who were so anxious to heal the feud between Amyntor and his son[39] would have been equally anxious to avenge Amyntor if he had been slain by Phoenix. They would have put the parricide to death.
The portion of the Homeric story of Phoenix which is generally regarded as spurious[40] happens to be the passage in which parricide is referred to in a casual and frivolous manner. Plutarch states that such a reference was considered unsuitable to the character of Phoenix. We will go further and say that it is unsuitable to the ancient Greek conception of parricide, whether among the Achaeans, or, a fortiori, among the clans. This latter point will become more evident when we discuss the laws of Plato and the legends of the Attic tragedians. Our theory of the Achaean penalty for homicide must now seek further confirmation from a discussion of other Homeric passages.
In the Iliad[41] Phoenix tells Achilles the story of Meleager, son of Oeneus, King of Calydon, pointing out how he refused to fight for his people during a war between the Calydonians and the Curetes. The cause of his refusal was his indignation at the curse which his mother, Althaea, had launched against him because he had slain her brother, a prince of the Curetes, in the war. Homer, of course, does not mention the story which later legends contain, of the fateful brand, and the death of Meleager when the brand was burned by his mother.[42] But from the entreaties of his father, Oeneus, of his sisters, and even of his mother,[43] and from the presents which were offered to him by the priests and the elders of the Aetolians,[44] in the hope that he would lay aside his anger and continue to fight for the Calydonians, we may infer that he was not regarded in Homeric times as a kin-slayer of certain guilt. His own anger, too, indicates what the Homeric facts would seem to imply, that the slaying of his mother’s brother was in his own opinion justifiable as an act of war.[45]