§ 5. Limitations Of Liability For Bloodshed.
All within the ἀγχιστεία were liable.
The ἀγχιστεία, limited to relations within the same degrees as for other purposes, seems to be the unit in the case of pollution of the kindred by the death—violent or natural—of one of their number.
“Whosoever[173] being related to the deceased on the male or female side of those within the cousinship (ἐντὸς ἀνεψιότητος), shall not prosecute the murderer when he ought and proclaim him outlaw, he shall take upon himself the pollution and the hatred of the gods ... and he shall be in the power of any who is willing to avenge the dead....”[174]
“The pollution cannot be washed out until the homicidal soul which did the deed has given life for life and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath of the whole family” (ξυγγένεια).[175]
“If a brother wound a brother (ὁμόγονος) the parents (γεννῆται) and the kinsmen (συγγενεῖς) to cousins' children on male and female side shall meet and judge the case.”[176]
Ransom was forbidden; citizen was bound to citizen with ties that had inherited too much of the tribal sanctity to admit of any extenuation of the extreme penalty.
It was no doubt a wise policy on the part of the legislators, with the view to the preservation of respect for life and property, to make the responsibility for murder rest as widely as possible, and include as many relations and connections on both sides as might be. In order also that the wife, in case her husband was killed, and the daughter, in case her father was killed, might be fully protected and represented [pg 076] among the prosecuting kindred, the law of Draco seems to lay the necessity for action also on the father-in-law and the son-in-law. The phratria, being such a compact organisation and exacting such formal admission of its members, would naturally be concerned to see that justice was dealt to any of its number. Though we cannot include the phratores amongst those directly responsible equally with the near kinsmen for crimes committed by one of their number, they would always have to take a certain part in whatever was necessary to bring him to justice, besides being generally concerned in all matters relating to kinship, which affected any member of their phratria.
The Law of Draco.
“Proclamation shall be made against the murderer in the agora within [? his] cousinship and (the degree) of a first cousin, and prosecution shall be made jointly by cousins and cousins' children and descendants of cousins, and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law and phratores.”