Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/98

 82 HISTORY OF GREECE. from the primitive idea of a personal goddess Themis, attached to Zeus, first to his sentences or orders called Themistes, and next by a still farther remove to various established customs, which those sentences were believed to sanctify, the authority of religion and that of custom coalescing into one indivisible obligation. The family relations, as we might expect, are set forth in our pictures of the legendary world as the grand sources of lasting union and devoted attachment. The paternal authority is highly reverenced : the son who lives to years of maturity, repays by affection to his parents the charge of his maintenance in infancy, which the language notes by a special word ; whilst on the other hand, the Erinnys, whose avenging hand is put in motion by the curse of a father or mother, is an object of deep dread. 1 who, besides that, acts and speaks (Iliad, xiv. 87-93} ; always the associate and companion of Zeus, the highest god. In Hesiod, (Theog. 901,) she is the wife of Zeus : in .^Eschylus, (Prometh. 209,) she is the same as Tata: even in Plato, (Legg. xi. p. 936,) witnesses swear (to want of knowledge of matters under inquest) by Zeus, Apollo, and Themis. Themis as a person is probably the oldest sense of the Avord : then we have the plural tf^iuarfc (connected with the verb Tidrjfti, like tfEcr/zdc and retf/zof ), which are (not persons, but) special appurtenances or emanations of the supreme god, or of a king acting under him, analogous to and joined with the sceptre. The sceptre, and the tfe/uorfc or the 6iKai constantly go together (Iliad, ii. 209; ix. 99): Zeus or the king is a judge, not a law-maker; he issues decrees or special orders to settle particular disputes, or to restrain particular men ; and, agreeable to the concrete forms of ancient language, the decrees are treatci as if they were a collection of ready-made substantive things, actually in his possession, like the sceptre, and prepared for being delivered out when the proper occasion arose : diKuaxohot., oirs frefiictTac ITpdc Atdc elpvarai (II. i. 138), compared with the two passages last cited: "$pova TOVTOV uvcvras, of ovriva olSe -&efj.iaTa (II. v. 761), "Ayptov, ovre &'/cac ev eldora OVTE tfe/ztcrrac (Odyss. ix. 215). The plural number diKai is more commonly used in Homer than the singular : d'ucri is rarely used to denote Justice, an an abstract conception ; it more often denotes a special claim of right on the part of some given man (II. xviii. 508). It sometimes also denotes, simply, established custom, or the known lot, e* iuuv SLKTI, yepovruv, deiuv $acikr]uv, -dsuv ("see Damm's Lexicon, ad voc.) defj.if is used in the sains manner. See, upon this matter, Platner, De Notion' Juris ap. Homerum, p. 81, and O. Muller, Prolegg. Mythol. p. 121. 1 Ovde Tonevvi Qprnrpa (jtihoic ansduKE (II. iv. 477) : dpEirrpa or frpeTrrrtpic (compare II. ix. 454 ; Odyss. ii. 134 ; Hesiod, Opp. D:. 186>