Note 158 — Chapter XX · STATE OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS AS EXHIBITED IN GRECIAN LEGEND.
Reading edition
The word ποινὴ indicates this satisfaction by valuable payment for wrong done, especially for homicide: that the Latin word pœna originally meant the same thing, may be inferred from the old phrases dare pœnas, pendere pœnas. The most illustrative passage in the Iliad is that in which Ajax, in the embassy undertaken to conciliate Achilles, censures by comparison the inexorable obstinacy of the latter in setting at naught the proffered presents of Agamemnôn (Il. ix. 627):—
Νηλής· καὶ μὲν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φόνοι Ποινὴν, ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνειῶτος· Καί ῥ᾽ ὁ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ, πολλ᾽ ἀποτίσας· Τοῦ δέ τ᾽ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θύμος ἀγήνωρ, Ποινὴν δεξαμένου....
The ποινὴ is, in its primitive sense, a genuine payment in valuable commodities serving as compensation (Iliad, iii. 290; v. 266; xiii. 659): but it comes by a natural metaphor to signify the death of one or more Trojans, as a satisfaction for that of a Greek warrior who had just fallen (or vice versâ, Iliad, xiv. 483; xvi. 398); sometimes even the notion of compensation generally (xvii. 207). In the representation on the shield of Achilles, the genuine proceeding about ποινὴ clearly appears: the question there tried is, whether the payment stipulated as satisfaction for a person slain, has really been made or not,—δύο δ᾽ ἄνδρες ἐνείκεον εἵνεκα ποινῆς Ἀνδρὸς ἀποφθιμένου, etc. (xviii. 498.)
The danger of an act of homicide is proportioned to the number and power of the surviving relatives of the slain; but even a small number is sufficient to necessitate flight (Odyss. xxiii. 120): on the other hand, a large body of relatives was the grand source of encouragement to an insolent criminal (Odyss. xviii. 141).
An old law of Tralles in Lydia, enjoining a nominal ποινὴ of a medimnus of beans to the relatives of a murdered person belonging to a contemptible class of citizens, is noticed by Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 46, p. 302. Even in the century preceding Herodotus, too, the Delphians gave a ποινὴ as satisfaction for the murder of the fabulist Æsop; which ποινὴ was claimed and received by the grandson of Æsop’s master (Herodot. ii. 134. Plutarch. Ser. Num. Vind. p. 556).