Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/453

 the same unhappy lot after death. The murderer, in the class of men polluted and accursed by heinous sin, and his victim, in the class of those who have met with violent deaths, have alike been regarded as pre-disposed to become revenants. The two facts thus simply stated constitute a problem which deserves investigation. It can be no accident that two classes of men, so glaringly contrasted here, should be believed to share the same fate hereafter. Some relation between the two beliefs must surely subsist.

The solution to which the mind naturally leaps is the idea that in some way retributive justice causes the murderer to be punished with the selfsame suffering as he has brought upon his victim; that, as blood calls for blood, so the resuscitation of the murdered calls for the resuscitation of the murderer; that the old law, [Greek: drasanti pathein], 'as a man hath wrought, so must he suffer,' is not limited to this world nor fully vindicated by the mere shedding of the murderer's blood, but dooms him to become, like his victim, a revenant from the grave.

Such an explanation of the two facts before us is, it may almost be said, obviously and self-evidently right, so far as it goes; but the proof of its correctness is best to be obtained by going further, so as not merely to indicate the appropriateness of the murderer's punishment, but to discover also the agency whereby it is inflicted; for, if it can be established that according to the popular belief it is the murdered man himself who, in the form of a revenant, plagues his murderer, then the retributive character of all the murderer's sufferings both here and hereafter will be manifest.

The most striking testimony to the existence of such a belief is to be found in a gruesome practice to which, we are told, murderers in old time were addicted—the practice of mutilating ([Greek: maschalizein]) the murdered man by cutting off his hands and feet, and either placing them under his armpits or tying them with a band ([Greek: maschalistêr]) round his breast. What object was had in view in so disposing of the severed extremities, if indeed our information as to the act itself be correct, remains uncertain; perhaps indeed that information amounts to nothing more than a faulty conjectural interpretation of the word [Greek: maschalizein] itself, which might equally well mean to sever the arms from the body at the armpit and to treat the lower limbs in similar fashion. But at any rate the intention of the whole act