Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/458

 ghost. In many cases the consequences of this literary modification were comparatively small; the ghost of Polydorus for example can sustain the part of pleading plaintively for burial no less effectively, perhaps indeed even more so, than a lusty revenant. But the case of revenants bent upon vengeance was different; the consequences of substituting a mere spirit were far-reaching; the part to be played consisted not in piteous words but in stern work; and for this part so frail and flimsy a creature as the Greeks pictured the ghost to be was absolutely unfitted. The only means of escaping from this difficulty was to represent the dead man as employing some instrument or agent of retribution; and accordingly, where the gross popular superstition would have had the murdered man emerge from his grave in bodily form to chase and to slay his murderer, literature in general confined the dead man to the unseen world and allowed him only to work by less directly personal means—sometimes by the hands of his next of kin, in other cases by a curse either automatically operative or executed by demonic agents. But it is important to observe that, whatever the means employed, literature cleaves to the old traditions, so far as artistic taste permits, by conceding to the murdered man the power of instigating the agents and controlling the instruments of his vengeance. His power is made spiritual instead of physical; but his personal activity is still recognised; he remains the prime avenger of his own wrongs.

These indirect methods of retribution must now be examined severally.

As regards the part taken by the next of kin to the murdered man in furthering the work of vengeance, I find no reason to suppose that literature deviated in any way from popular tradition. The idea of the vendetta is essentially primitive and at the same time perfectly harmonious with the belief that the murdered man is capable of executing his own revenge. The acknowledged power of the dead man has never in the minds of the Greek people served as an excuse for his kinsmen to sit idle; rather it has been an incentive to them to assist more strenuously in the task of vengeance, lest they themselves also should fall under the dead man's displeasure. On this point ancient lore and modern lore are completely agreed.

The best exponents of this view at the present day are a people