Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/111

 COMPOSITION FOR CRIMES. 95 man codes begin by trying to bring about the acceptance of a fixed pecuniary composition as a constant voluntary custom, and proceed ultimately to enforce it as a peremptory necessity : the idea of society is at first altogether subordinate, and its influence passes only by slow degrees from amicable arbitration into im- perative control. The Homeric society, in regard to this capital point in human progression, is on a level with that of the German tribes as described by Tacitus. But the subsequent course of Grecian legislation takes a direction completely different from that of the German codes : the primitive and acknowledged right of private revenge (unless where bought off by pecuniary payment), instead of being developed into practical working, is superseded by more comprehensive views of a public wrong requiring public inter- vention, or by religious fears respecting the posthumous wrath of the murdered person. In historical Athens, this right of private revenge was discountenanced and put out of sight, even so early as the Drakonian legislation, 1 and at last restricted to a few ex- The imivT) is, in its primitive sense, a genuine payment in valuable com- modities serving as compensation (Iliad, iii. 290; v. 266 ; xiii. 659): but it comes by a natural metaphor to signify the death of one or more Trojans, as a satisfaction for that of a Greek warrior who had just fallen (or vice versd, Jliad, xiv. 483; xvi. 398); sometimes even the notion of compensation generally (xvii. 207). In the representation on the shield of Achilles, the genuine proceeding about Trom) clearly appears : the question there tried is, whether the payment stipulated as satisfaction for a person slain, has really been made or not, 6vo d' uvdpec eveiKeov EIVSKO. noivfjc 'Avdpbf airo^LfiE- vov, etc. (xviii. 498.) The danger of an act of homicide is proportioned to the number and power of the surviving relatives of the slain ; but even a small number is sufficient to necessitate flight (Odyss. xxiii. 120): on the other hand, a largo body of relatives was the grand source of encouragement to an insolent criminal (Odyss. xviii. 141). An old law of Tralles in Lydia, enjoining a nominal rroivr/ of a medimnns of beans to the relatives of a murdered person belonging to a contemptible class of citizens, is noticed by Plutarch, Qurcst. Grac. c. 46, p. 302. Even in the century preceding Herodotus, too, the Delphians gave a irotvTj aa satisfaction for the murder of the fabulist JEsop ; which KOIVT) Avas claimed and received by the grandson of .ZEsop's master (Herodot. ii. 134. Plutarch. Ser. Num. Vind. p. 556). 1 See Lysias, De Cosde Eratosthen. Orat. i. p. 94 ; Plutarch. Soloo. a S3; Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. pp. 632-637.