There are other words, the use of which in Homer approximates occasionally to the sense of αἰδώς. The nearest of them is σέβας (as in Il. xviii. 178), with its verb σέβομαι; which, as we have seen, is sometimes applied simply to an internal standard recognised by the conscience. But in Il. iv. 242, οὔ νυ σέβεσθε; seems to be equivalent to οὐκ αἰδεῖσθε; or ‘for shame.’
The word νέμεσις, too, is sometimes used in a sense akin to that of αἰδώς: as when Neptune exhorts the Greeks, ἐν φρεσὶ θέσθε ἕκαστος αἰδῶ καὶ νέμεσιν (Il. xiii. 121): compare vi. 351. Again, in Od. i. 263, ii. 136, xxii. 40. But this sentiment is usually half way between αἰδὼς and fear, because what it apprehends, though it is not force, yet neither is it simple disapproval; rather it is disapproval with heat, disapproval into which passion enters. It contributes, however, to complete a very remarkable picture of the human mind.
The comparison between Greeks and Trojans, or Europeans and Asiatics, will prove, we shall find, greatly in favour of the former as to most parts of their morality. We have now to touch upon a feature in Greek manners which is unfavourable.
Homicide in the heroic age.
With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose; while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshedding among the Trojans: and enough is told us of Trojan life and manners to have probably brought out this characteristic, had it existed.
Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a prudential error, an ἄτη πυκινὴ[822], when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever[823].
The ordinary practice, we learn from the blunt speech of Ajax to Achilles[824], was to accept the established fine upon the loss even of a brother or a son, if offered, and then to let the slayer remain unharmed. If he would not pay, or if the relations would not accept the payment, the alternative was flight: but it does not appear that this entailed any loss of character, perhaps rather otherwise. It was, however, the most common issue of such an affair, and, as such, it furnishes Homer with a simile. Priam, appearing before Achilles by surprise, is compared to a man who, having had the misfortune to kill somebody, appears unexpectedly in a strange place[825].
Eight instances in the poems.
We will proceed to examine the cases of homicide recorded in the poems, which are alike numerous and remarkable.
I. Medon[826], the illegitimate brother of Oilean Ajax, migrates from Locris to Phylace, having, in the usual phrase, killed a man, ἄνδρα κατακτάς. This man was a kinsman, not improbably a brother, (for γνωτὸς may mean brother, as in Il. iii. 174, and xxii. 234), of his ‘stepmother,’ as she is called; that is, of Eriopis, the lawful wife of his father. And yet he retains or improves his position in Phylace, and appears, in the Thirteenth Iliad, as the commander of all the Phthians except the Myrmidons.