ἀλλά τις αὐτὸς ἴτω, νεμεσιζέσθω δ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
Πάτροκλον Τρωῇσι κυσὶν μέλπηθρα γενέσθαι.
In one passage particularly, Telemachus distinguishes with great clearness the three kinds of motive by the terms proper to them respectively (Od. ii. 64–7);
(1) νεμεσσήθητε καὶ αὐτοὶ,
(2) ἄλλους τ’ αἰδεσθῆτε περικτίονας ἀνθρώπους,
οἳ περιναιετάουσι· (3) θεῶν δ’ ὑποδείσατε μῆνιν.
That is νέμεσις, for the self-judging conscience: αἰδὼς, for human opinion: and lastly, fear, in regard to the divine wrath.
The existence of the moral standard within a man is also, I think, very strongly implied in the word ἀτασθαλίη, which is applied to deep, deliberate, habitual, or audacious wickedness. For when it is intended to let in any allowance for mere weakness, or for solicitation from without, or for a foolish blindness, then the word ἄτη is used. And I doubt whether, in any one instance throughout the poems, these two designations are ever applied to one and the same misconduct. It is certainly contrary to the general and almost universal rule. The ἀτασθαλίη is something done with clear sight and knowledge, with the full and conscious action of the will: it is something regarded as wholly without excuse, as tending to an entire moral deadness, and as entailing final punishment alike without notice and without mercy. Nothing can account for the introduction into a moral code of a form of offence conceived with such intensity, and ranked so high, except the belief that the man committing it had deliberately set aside that inward witness to truth and righteousness, supplied by the law of our nature, in the repudiation of which the universal and consentient voice of mankind has always placed the most awful responsibility, the extremest degree of guilt that the human being can incur.
Regard for general opinion.
The high place assigned throughout the poems to public opinion as a moral check is visible at every turn. And this check applies variously to various classes. With the most abandoned, like the Suitors, it is feeble; and is only invoked on special occasions, as when Telemachus combines it, in the passage lately cited, with the other moral sanctions. Even Paris is represented as quite beyond the reach of it: and Helen meekly wishes, that if the gods had determined she should live, she could have been the husband of a man more open to the influence of the public sentiment[812]: