Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/496

 and blood-guilty man because such an one is inevitably a 'polluter' of others, is certainly not intrinsically bad; for it recognises the primary meaning of the word, 'polluter,' and bases the secondary meaning 'polluted' upon a right understanding of the old belief that pollution was contagious. But at the same time it gives some occasion to wonder why the word should have been diverted from its most natural meaning in order to denote that which the cognate word [Greek: miaros] already expressed more simply. Moreover, when examination is made of those passages which are claimed as examples of such an usage, the theory becomes wholly unnecessary. The two most specious examples are two passages from Aeschylus and Euripides, in both of which the persons called Miastores are Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Now the authors of Agamemnon's death were certainly polluted, and might with justice have been called [Greek: miaroi]—that is admitted. But because they might have been called [Greek: miaroi] and actually are called [Greek: miastores], it does not follow that, though the words have the same root, they also bear the same meaning. Obviously the word 'fiends,' if [Greek: miastores] ever has that sense, would be an equally apt description of the murderous pair. The choice therefore between these two renderings here must be guided by more certain examples of usage elsewhere.

Two may be selected as eminently clear. In one Orestes calls Helen [Greek: tên Hellados miastora], where the word cannot mean a 'polluted wretch,' for the construction postulates an active meaning in Miastor; nor yet can the phrase be intelligibly rendered 'the polluter of Greece,' for there was no pollution involved in the warfare which Helen had caused; clearly Orestes means 'the tormentor of Greece,' the fiend who had proved the bane of ships and men and cities. In the other passage Peleus applies the word to Menelaus: 'I look upon thee,' he says, 'as on the murderer—the fiend-like destroyer ([Greek: miastor hôs tina])—of Achilles .' Here again Miastor clearly bears an active sense, and at the same time cannot be rendered 'polluter.' Menelaus had brought upon Achilles not pollution but death, and the word Miastor explains the word 'murderer' ([Greek: authentên]) which precedes it—explains that the murder laid to Menelaus' charge was not