Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/463

 and if the dead man be a foreigner the slayer must hold aloof from the foreigner's country for the same period. Such then is the law; and, if a man voluntarily observe it, the dead man's nearest kinsman, whose duty it is to look to all this, must respect the slayer, and will do right to be at peace with him; but, if the slayer disregard this law and either presume to enter holy places and to sacrifice before he be purified, or, again, refuse to fulfil the allotted period in retirement, the nearest of kin must proceed against him on a charge of homicide, and, if a conviction be obtained, the penalties are to be doubled. But if the nearest of kin do not seek vengeance for the deed, it is held that the pollution devolves upon him, and that the sufferer (i.e. the dead man) turns upon him the suffering (i.e. that which the homicide himself should have incurred), and anyone who will may bring a suit against him and obtain a sentence of banishment for five years .'

Now for a right appreciation of this passage it must be borne in mind that Plato introduces his old tradition à propos of unintentional homicide. The actual penalties therefore are of a milder nature than those with which we have hitherto been concerned. Indeed it is not the difference in the penalties which should cause any surprise, but rather that an unintentional act should be punished at all; and it would seem perhaps that in citing this doctrine Plato sought to justify himself in retaining a provision of Attic law which at first sight appeared unjust. In Athens, we know, the involuntary homicide was required not only to undergo purification but to withdraw for a whole year from the country of the man whom he had slain. The hardship of this was manifest, and yet Plato acquiesced in the righteousness of it for the reason apparently that the year's retirement was not a penalty imposed by the state, but a satisfaction which, according to religious tradition, the dead man demanded and might even himself enforce.

Plato in fact recognises no less frankly than others the personal activity of the slain man. He differs indeed in limiting the, or simply [Greek: exienai] (cf. [Greek: hypexelthein tô pathonti] in the above passage of Plato), or, as again in the same passage, [Greek: apoxenousthai]; whereas legal banishment was denoted by [Greek: pheugein].]