(4) We are not concerned here with the nature of the cult of the Erinnyes in historical Greece. We seek rather to describe the Erinnyes as they were moulded in the minds of poets and of legend-makers in accordance with conceptions of homicide which were modified by the Apolline doctrine of ‘pollution’ and ‘purgation,’ and by the evolution of state-control. We must postpone to later parts of our work the details of our theory, and the more complete demonstration of its validity. We will merely give here, as it were by anticipation, a summary of our conclusions. The doctrine of ‘pollution’ which, as we think, came to Greece about 700 B.C., and which was gradually adopted in most Greek states under the rule of the ‘aristocracy of birth,’ declared the homicide to be an enemy to the gods of the State. His presence, in his native State, or in the country of the slain, brought upon the whole community plagues and pestilences and all those evils which the primitive mind attributes to divine anger. In our opinion, such a doctrine was incompatible with any further continuation of the wergeld system which had survived the age of chaos. The abolition of wergeld, at the dictate of Apollo, the national prophet-god of ‘aristocratic’ Greece, was a change which struck at the root of the great tribal principle of retribution to the relatives of the slain. Before the new doctrine acquired the prestige of traditional custom, we should expect that a feeling of revolt would have manifested itself in the sentiments of the old kindred of the clans. Such a revolt would have been reflected, in legend, as an attribute of the Erinnyes of the slain. This conception of a revolting Erinnys will explain the Titanic rôle of the Furies in Aeschylus, and their refusal to recognise the purgation of Orestes by Apollo.
There was another factor, too, which may have helped to give vitality and realism to the rebellious rôle of the ‘tragic’ Erinnyes, especially in Euripides. We shall see[146] that the Apolline doctrine did not abolish every form of compensation. The relatives of a person involuntarily slain were entitled to ‘appeasement,’ were, perhaps, permitted under certain conditions to enter into what is known as ‘private settlement’—though usually before ‘appeasement’ a certain period of exile was necessary. Now if, as some maintain,[147] the ‘appeasement’ depended entirely on the will of the relatives, and if the relatives had to be unanimous in accepting the gifts or presents which constituted ‘appeasement,’ it is clear that one single relative could have extorted enormous sums of money, or otherwise have compelled the manslayer to abide in perpetual exile. We shall argue, later, that the regular duration of exile for manslaughter was one year, and that this custom implies the influence of local control, on the part of judges or magistrates, directed against the right to refuse ‘appeasement’ on the part of a slain man’s relatives. Such a control would naturally have produced irritation and dissatisfaction which, again, might have been reflected in men’s conception of the Erinnyes. We shall see that at least one legend of Orestes conceived his deed as involuntary kin-slaying. It was probably this legend which represented some of the Furies as still implacable when the Areopagus trial had declared Orestes ‘not guilty,’ or rather, immune from further punishment.[148]
The main difficulty connected with the ‘appeasement’ of the Oresteian Erinnyes arises from the fact that they are not unanimous in their opinions about Orestes, and that some of them—the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra—are in violent conflict with the official opinion of Apollo. At a later stage we shall be in a position to explain this difficulty more clearly. At present we will merely cite a law of Plato which is probably based on the old traditions of patriarchal tribes (as they were modified in course of time by Apollinism), and which forbids the slayer of a kinsman who slays under the influence of passion, ever to return to domestic communion with his kindred, even though he may return to his native state and undergo ‘purgation.’ We refer to this law because it is possible to interpret the act of Orestes, from Apollo’s standpoint, not as fully justified but rather as in a sense involuntary, being extenuated by a religious command, as ‘passion’ would have extenuated it. Plato says[149]: ‘If a father or a mother in a passion kills a son or daughter ... let them be exiled for three years and be “purged,” but, on return, let the husband be divorced from the wife and the wife from the husband ... and not dwell in communion with (the family) ... or share with them in sacred rites.’ Now, in the Apolline system it is probable that the murder of a husband by his wife was of equal gravity with kin-murder which was punishable with death. Coulanges points out[150] that the wife belonged to the domestic religion of her husband, even though she did not belong to his kindred. In the Pelasgian wergeld system husband and wife are ‘strangers’ in matters of homicide; but in the Apolline religious system they are members of the same hearth and home. Moreover, in historical times failure to obey the Apolline laws laid the delinquent open to a charge of impiety, for which the penalty of death might be inflicted. There is a suggestion of these legal viewpoints in Apollo’s attitude when he tells[151] the Erinnyes that Clytaemnestra, the murderess of her husband, was justly slain, and that Orestes would have merited death if he had not slain her; and in the answer of the Erinnyes concerning the act of Clytaemnestra, that ‘her slaying was not kindred bloodshed’[152]; and that Orestes, the slayer of his mother, must be pursued until he dies![153] Now, Plato suggests that in the Apolline code exclusion from domestic religion attended the ‘extenuated’ slaying of a parent by a son, even when the dying parent formally ‘forgave.’[154] Apart from the impossibility of the supposition of a formal ‘forgiveness’ of Orestes on the part of Clytaemnestra, it is clear that the Erinnyes of the Apolline era would have naturally objected to the presence of Orestes in the home of his fathers. Thus they say, in the Eumenides[155]:
His mother’s blood upon the earth he spilled.
Shall he in Argos dwell, his father’s home?
What phratry-altar can him e’er receive?
What common lustral water can he share?
But Orestes, fearing the Erinnyes of his father who naturally and legally, in the Apolline system, pursue the relative who fails to avenge, and who is ‘polluted’ almost equally with the murderer, cries out, in the Choephoroe[156]:
The darkling arrow of the dead that flies
From kindred souls abominably slain