Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance

by Hubert Joseph Treston

Fortunately, as a result of recent archaeological exploration we are now entitled to assume, what the ancient Greeks so naturally believed, that the Iliad and the Odyssey, the pioneer epics of European literature, are valuable historical documents for the period which preceded and followed the Trojan war. For our present purpose it does not very much matter whether the poems were composed by one great poet or by a number of rhapsodists, whether they were composed in Greece or in Asia Minor. The important thing is that they refer to actual places and events, to men and women who really lived and died. Just as Seebohm accepts the poem Beowulf as sole evidence for early Scandinavian tribal custom, even though he describes[45] the poem as an ‘Anglian or Northumbrian recension of a story founded on Scandinavian tradition and designed for recital at some eighth-century royal court,’ so we see in the Iliad and the Odyssey a genuine historical picture of Greece under the Achaean domination, even though these poems were not the work of contemporary hands, and contain certain passages and verses[46] which are clearly of later origin than that of the poems as a whole. It is only necessary for us here to refer to two recent works[47] of Dr. Leaf which furnish a cogent justification for this assumption. Professor Ridgeway, too, who has done so much to remove the veil of obscurity which has hung for so long over early Greece, has never wavered in his belief[48] in the historicity of Homer. We should indeed prefer to be wrong with Leaf and Ridgeway rather than to be right with such critics as Gilbert Murray[49] and Miss Harrison,[50] who see in the Homeric poems the culmination of centuries of literary work, which took final form and shape in the Athens of Solon and Peisistratus, in the atmosphere of the Persian rather than the Trojan war.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, however, if they are to be correctly interpreted, must be studied in the light of sociological analogy and archaeological research. Everyone is now familiar with the differentiation which the learning and genius of Ridgeway first defined in the population of early Greece, and with the distinction which he has indicated between the Achaeans and the Pelasgians.[51] In Homer, the peoples of Greece are called Achaeans: but Ridgeway holds that the Achaeans were not Greeks: that they were not even members of any Mediterranean race; that they were Celts[52] from Central Europe who descended slowly into Greece, who conquered the inhabitants by virtue of superiority in the arts and weapons of war, who settled and intermarried with native royal families, and who, in the course of two hundred years, had become assimilated to the natives in language and culture, until they lost all consciousness of difference.[53] Homer, the poet of the Achaeans, called the Greek-Achaean host, the mixed army of Pelasgians and Achaeans, by a name which belonged only to the Celtic kings in whose courts he sang his songs of praise. The Celtic Achaeans have lost their language but retained their name. The Pelasgians, according to Ridgeway,[54] spoke in the time of Homer an Aryan tongue so well that even their conquerors came to speak it and forgot their own. Yet they were not, in origin, an Aryan race! On this point we find it difficult to agree with Ridgeway, though we admire the scientific reasoning and the profound learning which support his theory. The precise nature of the social organisations of early Greece, Ridgeway does not attempt to decide—at least in his ‘Early Age of Greece’: but we infer from an article which he has written on Homeric land-tenure[55] that he believed, as does Mr. H. Seebohm,[56] that both Achaeans and Pelasgians were tribal peoples.

Some of the difficulties presented by Ridgeway’s reasoning are removed, in our opinion, by the more recent theories of Dr. Leaf. Before the advent of the Achaeans to Greece about 1400 B.C.,[57] there already existed in Greece, according to Leaf, two social and racial strata: (1) a dominant non-Aryan[58] caste who came originally from Crete, and who may be called Minoans: (2) a primitive neolithic agricultural Aryan people who spoke Greek,[59] who were, in fact, the nucleus of the Greek race, and who had imposed their speech upon their non-Aryan masters. The Achaeans, in Leaf’s view, came as a wave or series of waves in the perpetual tide of invasion from the north.[60] Settling first in Epirus,[61] they pressed gradually southwards, subdued the Minyans (or Minoans) of Iolcos,[62] and the Pelasgians of central Greece,[63] crossed later to the Peloponnese, and having conquered Elis, Laconia and Argolis, established themselves in all the strategic positions of the peninsula.[64] They were not necessarily, in Leaf’s opinion, of different racial origin from the Pelasgians[65]: they may, in fact, have been remotely related to them. But the Achaean outlook and temperament were very different from those of the Pelasgian folk. The former were military freebooters; piratical adventurers,[66] bound together by that rigid obedience to a single commander which was an essential condition of their survival and success. The latter were tillers of the soil, accustomed to political serfdom,[67] paying such dues as their masters exacted, following them, on occasion, to battle and to death. One point of difference which Leaf mentions must be here especially emphasised, as it is of vital importance for our theory of Homeric blood-vengeance. The Achaeans, Leaf holds,[68] had no tribal or ‘kindred’ organisations, and were merely soldiers of a common army. The Pelasgians,[69] however, were for the most part organised on the model of tribal communities. Speaking of the Achaeans, he says[70]: ‘All the rites and taboos of the primitive Family-system have disappeared and obligation only attaches to the natural kinship of close blood-relationship.... This is what we should expect in a race of military adventurers. Family rites do not tend to military efficiency: the efficient soldier must break away from local ties. In so doing he takes a long step away from the foundations of primitive society and religion.’ Thus Leaf conceives the society of Homeric Greece as composed of two elements: (1) a military autocracy, ruling like the Spartans in Laconia, a small exclusive caste held together by the consciousness of a common origin and a common purpose and also by the danger of hostility from without: (2) a tribal agricultural subject-folk who lived their primitive lives in rural areas, in villages, in unimportant towns, and even in cities within view of the Achaean garrison. Now this conception differs fundamentally from the traditional ideas of Homeric society, and in particular from the conception of the Achaeans as a tribal people, which we have associated with Ridgeway and H. Seebohm. We believe that an attempt to decide this question is necessary for the elucidation of many Homeric problems, such as that of blood-vengeance or of land-tenure. We shall adduce evidence, in our study of Homeric blood-vengeance, which will serve as a confirmation of Leaf’s hypothesis. At present we will confine ourselves to some more general arguments which can be regarded as supplementary to the evidence which Leaf himself puts forward.

Ridgeway, in discussing[71] the mode of land-tenure in Homeric Greece, seeks to prove that the Homeric poems reveal an evolution in the private ownership of land, beginning with a stage in which, as in the Iliad, land is held in common by all tribesmen except the king or chief whose temenos is private and personal and probably hereditary, and progressing to a stage in which, as in the Odyssey, ‘allotments’ among tribesmen tend to accumulate and to become more and more a family inheritance within the tribe, without attaining to the stage of absolutely private ownership which we find in the time of Hesiod. Such an evolution is, of course, a characteristic feature of settled tribal existence. Sir Henry Maine, in his interesting analysis[72] of the origin of private property in land, distinguishes three stages of its growth. In the first stage, there is communal ownership, both of land and harvest, such as is still found among some Highland clans of Scotland: the food-supplies of individuals are doled out, sometimes daily, by the chiefs of the clans.[73] The periodical distribution of the ‘harvest,’ such as was made by the elders of tribal Slavonic subjects in the once mighty Austrian and Turkish Empires, marks a slight modification of this system, which does not, however, affect the tenure of land.[74] ‘In the Russian villages, however,’ says Maine,[75] ‘the substance of the property ceases to be looked upon as indivisible, and separate proprietary claims are allowed freely to grow up.... After the expiration of a given, but not in all cases of the same, period, separate ownerships are extinguished, the land of the village is thrown into a mass: and then it is redistributed among the families composing the community, according to their number.’ The third stage finds an illustration in India, where, as Maine says,[76] ‘not only is there no indivisibility of the common fund, but separate proprietorship in parts of it may be indefinitely prolonged and may branch out into any number of derivative ownerships, the de facto partition of the stock being, however, checked by inveterate usage and by the rule against the admission of strangers without the consent of the brotherhood.’ Though neither Maine nor Ridgeway mentions the analogy, we think we can trace some such evolution in the old German tribes as described by Caesar and by Tacitus. Caesar tells us[77] that here ‘no one has a fixed portion of land, his own peculiar property, but the magistrates and chiefs allot every year to tribes and clans as much land as, and in whatever place, they think proper, and they oblige them to remove the succeeding year.’ Tacitus, however, says[78] that ‘the lands are occupied by villages, in groups, in allotments proportioned to the number of cultivators, and are presently parcelled out among individuals according to rank and condition: the arable lands are annually changed.’

Such a theory of evolution in landed property within the tribe may, however, be complicated by the coexistence, in the same district, of tribal groups and of a dominant ‘feudal’ caste. Maine points out,[79] in reference to Russian village-communities, that ‘these villages are always in theory the patrimony of some noble proprietor, and the peasants have within historical times been converted into the predial and, to a great extent, into the personal serfs, of the seignior. But the pressure of this superior ownership has never crushed the ancient organisation of the village.’ Now if we adopt the hypothesis of two distinct strata in the Homeric society, namely, of a dominant quasi-feudal Achaean caste, and of a tribal Pelasgian subject-folk, we shall be justified in assuming that some such ‘superior ownership’ coexisted with tribal ownership in the world of the Homeric poems. We shall expect to find a predominance of private ownership on the one hand, and a trace or ‘reminiscence’ of communal ownership on the other, in the verses of a poet who reflected in the main the atmosphere of the Achaean lords, but also, incidentally and fortuitously, that of the subject people. We must, then, consult the text of Homer if we hope to decide whether the Achaeans were quasi-feudal adventurers who ruled over the Pelasgians, without disturbing or destroying their normal tribal life: or whether the Achaeans, themselves a tribal nomadic people, adopted, by a social fusion, the tribal ownership which existed amongst their subjects, the chiefs alone possessing ‘private land,’ the others, common land. As the Homeric references to land-tenure are rare and obscure, it is obvious that the solution of the problem of Homeric land-ownership depends entirely on the answer to this wider and more important question.

In Iliad xii. 422-426 Homer makes use of a simile derived from a current mode of tenure of arable land, in order to describe the fierceness of the conflict between the Argives and the Lycians. ‘As, in a common field, two men make quarrel over boundaries, with measures in their hands, and strive for equal rights, even inch by inch, so, too, were they (the Argives and the Lycians) by (the brief space of) the battlements divided.’ This passage proves beyond question that the poet and his hearers were familiar with a certain degree of communism in the use of arable land. Whether the reference is to a social condition in which, as in the German tribes at the time of Tacitus, the arable land was redistributed annually to individuals, or whether the land was redistributed after long intervals of undisturbed enjoyment, as was the custom in certain Russian villages, it is impossible, as it is unnecessary, to decide. The really important point which we wish to emphasise is that there is no evidence that the quarrelsome tillers of the soil were Achaeans. This passage does not prove that the Achaeans lived in clans and tribes and possessed their lands in communal fashion. It merely proves that they were familiar with the existence of such a mode of possession. Incidentally, also, it proves how strong and how passionate, even in tribal rustic folk, the instinct begotten of even temporary private ownership may be. Yet this is the principal text of Homer upon which has been based the theory of the tribal nature of Homeric society!

In Odyssey vi. 6-10 we are told how Nausithous, the Phaeacian, brought his people to Scheria, ‘and drew a wall around the town and builded houses, and made temples for the gods, and meted out the fields.’ Here we may observe that elaborate ceremonial which, as Fustel de Coulanges points out,[80] was characteristic of the foundation of cities or of settlements in Ancient Greece and Rome. The distribution of land was an essential condition of agricultural existence for tribes which had already developed a certain degree of private ownership. But this passage merely proves that groups of people were known to change their habitations.

In Iliad vi. 190-195 we learn that a king of Lycia gave to Bellerophon, as a dowry for his wife, half his valuables (τιμή), and the Lycians gave him a domain (τέμενος) superior to that of others. Ridgeway and H. Seebohm maintain that the only land which is held in private ownership, in the Iliad, is the domain of kings and princes. In this passage we admit the probable operation of tribal ownership, but we must point out that the Lycians were not Achaeans. A more relevant citation is Iliad ix. 574-84, a passage in which we are told that the Elders and Priests of the Aetolians offered a choice of their richest lands as a ‘domain’ to Meleager. H. Seebohm holds[81] that it is improbable that the richest lands were at the time unoccupied and that such an offer therefore proves the existence of a communal land-tenure which would admit of such a rapid partition and consequent readjustment. Again, we admit that tribal ownership may be inferred from this passage, but we deny that the donors of the domain were necessarily members of the Achaean caste. It is true that the Achaeans ruled over Aetolia, but there still survived many rich Pelasgian tribes. Even if we knew that the donors were Achaeans, it would not be necessary to conclude that the Achaeans lived in tribal groups, for the partition and readjustment might have been equally simple for rich quasi-feudal owners acting in unison.

In Iliad ix. 147-155 Agamemnon, the Achaean war-chief, says that he will give to Achilles, as a dowry with his daughter, ‘seven cities, around Pylos, having men abounding in flocks who will worship him with gifts as a god and obey him.’ Those who conceive the Achaean heroes as tribal chieftains will find it very difficult to explain how a chief can thus wantonly confiscate the territory of his allies. Pylos was in the ‘kingdom’ of Nestor, a Minoan ally of the Achaeans. No confederation of tribal chiefs engaged in a common war could survive such a confiscation. But the offer of Agamemnon becomes intelligible enough if we regard him as the leader of a dominant military power, or as the feudal over-lord who possessed by right of office a ‘superior ownership’ of all the lands of Greece.

In Odyssey iv. 171-177 Menelaus says that he would have given to Odysseus, had he been there on his return from Troy, a whole ‘city to dwell in,’ and that he would have built for him a house, and brought him from Ithaca, together with all his wealth, his son and all his people, ‘making one city desolate, of those that lay around, in his domain.’ H. Seebohm finds it difficult to understand this passage in the light of his tribal theory of the Achaeans. It is, he says,[82] unusual, and merely shows the despotism to which a tribal chief frequently attained. But we prefer to see in Menelaus the typical Achaean over-lord, who by virtue of his kinship with Agamemnon, and of his own feudal and military power, tramples with impunity upon a whole city and moves a whole people from place to place, not as a chief would lead his tribe, but as a medieval baron might move his villeins from one part of his territory to another.