Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/109

 COMPOSITION FOR CRIMES. J)<J is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment (we must not peak of coined money, in the days of Homer) as satisfaction for (heir slain comrade. They may, if they please, decline the offer, and persist in their right of revenge ; but if they accept, they are bound to leave the offender unmolested, and he accordingly remains at home without farther consequences. The chiefs in agora do not S3em to interfere, except to insure payment of the stipulated sum. Here we reeognv.fi once more the characteristic attribute of (he Grecian heroic aye, the omnipotence of private force, tem- pered and guided by family sympathies, and the practical nullity of that collective sovereign afterwards called The City, who in historical Greece becomes the central and paramount source of obligation, but Avho appears yet only in the background, as a germ of premise for the future. And the manner in which, in the case of homicide, that germ was developed into a powerful reality, presents an interesting field of comparison with other nations. For the practice, here designated, of leaving the party guilty of homicide to compromise by valuable payment with the rela- tives of the deceased, and also of allowing to the latter a free choice whether they would accept such compromise or enforce their right of personal revenge, has been remarked in many rude communities, but is particularly memorable among the early German tribes. 1 Among the many separate Teutonic establish- tives of the murdered man, and provides cities of refuge for the purpose of sheltering the offender in certain cases (Deuteron. xxxv. 13-14; Bauer, Handbuch dcr Ilcbraischen Alterthiimer, sect. 51-52). The relative who inherited the property of a murdered man was specially obliged to avenge his death (H. Leo, Vorlesungen Uber die Geschichte des Jiidischen Staats. Vorl. iii. p. 35). 1 " Suseipere tarn inimicitias, seu patris, seu propinqui, quam amicitiaa, necesse est. Nee implacabiles durant: luitur enim etiam homicidium certo pecorum armentorumque numero, recipitque satisfactionem univcrsa domas." (Tacit. German. 21.) Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, p. 32. "An Indian feast (says Loskiel. Mission of the United Brethren in North America,) is seldom concluded without bloodshed. For the murder of a man one hundred yards of wampum, and for that of a woman two hundred yards, must be paid by the murderer. If he is too poor, which is commonly the case, and his friends cannot or will not assist him, he must fly from tin resentment of the relations."