Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/465

 the murderer's punishment as the result of a curse. Such a curse was denoted usually by the word [Greek: mênima], which may perhaps be more exactly rendered by the phrase 'a manifestation of wrath ([Greek: mênis])' on the part of some supernatural being, whether a god or the departed spirit of a man; when once provoked by deadly sin such as the murder of a kinsman or refusal of burial, this curse was held to cleave to the tainted family from generation to generation.

In the case of blood-guilt, which we are at present considering, the curse, as was said above, was held either to work spontaneously or to be executed by some powers of the nether world. The former view is more rarely adopted, but is clearly enough indicated in one or two passages of ancient literature. Plato in the Phaedrus speaks of most grievous sicknesses and sufferings being produced in certain families as the consequence of ancient curses ([Greek: palaiôn ek mênimatôn]) ; and from the reminiscences and verbal echoes of Euripides' Orestes which appear in the passage it is abundantly clear that the particular family which Plato had in mind was the blood-guilty house of Atreus. Here then there is no mention of any gods, no suggestion that the curse was executed by them or in the first instance proceeded from them. And the negative evidence of Plato's silence concerning the gods is turned to certainty by the positive statement of Aeschylus that, if a son neglect the task of vengeance, 'betwixt him and the gods' altars standeth the unseen barrier of his father's wrath '; for if, in the case of the kinsman who by neglecting the duty of vengeance has made himself a partaker in the guilt and pollution of the murderer, the Wrath ([Greek: mênis]) by which he is punished both proceeds from the dead man and, far from needing the gods' furtherance in order to take effect, stands as it were on guard to hold the polluted man aloof from their altars, then surely the Wrath which pursues the murderer himself must emanate from the same source and possess the same spontaneous efficacy. The dead man himself then both launches the curse and controls its, was less restricted than in later times; but the word, [Greek: mênima] even in Homer occurs only, I think, in the phrase [Greek: mênima theôn]. See below, p. 449.]