And in dealing with the second group of meanings, by which the three words are said to denote three only slightly different aspects of one and the same person—a murderer who is μιάστωρ as polluted and spreading pollution, ἀλάστωρ as pursued by vengeance, and προστρόπαιος as still needing purification—I shall maintain that these alleged uses of the first two words do not exist, and, as regards the third, I will offer a suggestion, but a suggestion only, as to the means by which it acquired this signification which it unquestionably bore.
It will be convenient to deal first with μιάστωρ and ἀλάστωρ as being parallel in usage throughout, and to reserve προστρόπαιος for later consideration.
The clearest example of that which I take to be the original usage of μιάστωρ is furnished by Euripides. In that scene of mutual recrimination between Medea and Jason, after that in revenge for her husband’s faithlessness she has slain their children, there comes at last from her lips the brutal taunt, as she points to the dead, ‘They live no more: that truth at least will sting thee’; and Jason answers, ‘Nay, but they live, to wreak vengeance on thy head (σῷ κάρᾳ μιάστορες)[1174].’ No language could be more simple, more explicit. The very children who lay there murdered at Medea’s feet, they and none other should be the Miastores, the Avengers of their own foul deaths.
But of course the word has other applications also. When Aeschylus[1175] made the Erinyes threaten that even when Orestes should have fled beneath the earth, he should find another Avenger (μιάστορα) to plague him in their stead, the whole tenor of the passage compels us to understand that that other Avenger is some deity or demon of the nether world—a divine, not a human, Miastor, though at the same time one who will act, like the Erinyes themselves, on behalf of the murdered Clytemnestra.
And, yet again, the same term is applied to a living man, when, as next of kin to him who has been murdered, he is in duty bound to exact vengeance. This time Sophocles is our authority, and the person of whom the word is used is Orestes. ‘Oft,’ says Electra to Clytemnestra, ‘oft hast thou reproached me with saving him to take vengeance upon thee (σοὶ τρέφειν μιάστορα)[1176].’
These three passages then illustrate the threefold application of the name Miastor, and the question to be answered is which represents the primary usage of the word. To multiply instances of each or any would be of no avail; the question is not of the frequency of each usage; the commonest is not necessarily the earliest. How then is the question to be answered? It is, I think, already answered. We have seen that in popular belief the murdered man was the prime avenger of his own wrongs, and that even in literature, when the execution of vengeance is wholly transferred either to the nearest kinsman or to some demonic power, the murdered man is still recognised as the principal and the others are only his agents. It is this relation between them which settles the question. A principal does not act in the name of his agents, but the agents in the name of their principal. The name Miastor therefore belonged first to the dead man himself, and was only extended afterwards to those who wrought vengeance on his behalf.
So much for the usage of the word. Next, how did it acquire the meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which it undoubtedly possessed? This can be only a matter of opinion. But since it appears to me unscholarly and illogical to suppose that a word, which on the grounds of formation must have first meant ‘one who causes pollution,’ could have come to mean ‘one who punishes pollution,’ I may at least offer an alternative suggestion. The murdered man, I admit, can hardly be said to have ‘caused’ the pollution of his murderer, or at any rate he could only have caused it involuntarily. But he might well be regarded as active in debarring the murderer from the means of purification and in keeping the pollution, as it were, fresh and virulent, with intent to isolate his enemy and to ban him from the abodes of his fellow-men. And some indication of such an activity is afforded by the Erinyes—acting, as always, on Clytemnestra’s behalf; they refuse to acknowledge the purification granted by Apollo to Orestes, and they say moreover that their task is to ‘keep dark and fresh the stain of blood[1177].’ The murdered man may therefore have been believed, if not actually to cause and to create, yet at least to promote and to re-create, the pollution of his foe, and, by keeping the stains of blood as it were from fading or being cleansed away, to wreak some part of his vengeance. In this way the transition from the sense of ‘polluter’ to that of ‘avenger’ is at least, I submit, intelligible. This however is only a side-issue. The important point is that the word Miastor, however it may have come to mean ‘Avenger,’ was primarily applied to the revenant himself, and only secondarily to any god.
The next name to be considered, ἀλάστωρ, is commonly accounted a synonym of μιάστωρ, denoting in actual usage a ‘god of vengeance,’ and meaning literally ‘one who does not forget’ blood-guiltiness. I too hold it to be a synonym of Miastor, but to denote therefore primarily not a god but a human revenant seeking vengeance, and only afterwards, by a transference of usage, a god or living man acting in the name of the dead; while, as for the supposed derivation, I count it absolutely untenable.
And first as regards the application of the word; after what has been, I hope, a fairly exhaustive study of the passages of classical literature in which it occurs, I am bound to confess that, though the instances of its use are far more numerous than those of Miastor, I am still unable to select three passages and to say ‘Here are my proofs of the triple application of the word.’ Indeed all that I can prove by the evidence of any single passage taken alone is curiously enough the existence of what I take to have been the rarest of the three usages—the application of the name Alastor to the kinsman of the dead man, as being the agent of his vengeance. Just as Sophocles speaks of Orestes being preserved as a Miastor to take vengeance on Clytemnestra for his father’s death, so does Aeschylus make the same Orestes name himself an Alastor on the score of the vengeance which he has taken. ‘Queen Athene,’ he prays, ‘at Loxias’ bidding am I come; receive thou me graciously, avenger as I am, no murderer, nor of defiled hand ... ἀλάστορα, οὐ προστρόπαιον, οὐδ’ ἀφοίβαντον χέρα[1178].’ Such, I am convinced, is the right rendering of the passage. The lexicons indeed cite the line as an example of the alleged passive meaning of ἀλάστωρ—one who suffers from divine vengeance, an accursed wretch[1179]; and I acknowledge that such a meaning would make passable sense of the passage; for Orestes was indeed suffering from the vengeance of the Erinyes. But I hold, and I shall endeavour to prove later, that ἀλάστωρ never possessed a passive meaning, and I claim moreover that the active meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which I attribute to the word here as elsewhere, is immensely preferable in itself. For Orestes throughout pleads justification[1180]; he has avenged murder, not committed it; he has discharged a duty to his dead sire, not perpetrated a wanton crime against his mother; he slew her indeed, but his motive was pious, and the ordaining of his act divine. On the grounds therefore, first, of the word’s own active meaning, secondly, of the whole trend of Orestes’ defence of his conduct, and last, but by no means least, of the exact parallel furnished by Sophocles’ use of the word Miastor, I am confident that Alastor as applied by Orestes to himself means an ‘Avenger.’
That the word however was not primarily applied to the kinsman acting on behalf of the murdered man will be universally conceded; in the vast majority of passages some supernatural being is clearly intended. But it has been too hastily assumed that the supernatural avengers were always gods or demons; that they were often so conceived I do not doubt; but, as a matter of fact, I have discovered no single passage of classical literature which can be said finally and absolutely in itself to demand that interpretation. In many instances the probabilities are in favour of the Alastores being regarded as a class of avenging demons; in many others it is equally good or even better to suppose that they are the dead men themselves in person.