Note 114.3 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Among the Greeks a manslayer was dreaded and shunned because he was thought to be haunted by the angry and dangerous ghost of his victim. But it is important to observe that not only does the hag-ridden homicide go in terror of his victim’s ghost; he is himself an object of fear and aversion to the whole community on account of the angry and dangerous spirit which dogs his steps. It was probably more in self-defence than out of consideration for the manslayer that Attic law compelled him to quit the country. This comes out clearly from the provisions of the law. For in the first place, on going into banishment the homicide had to follow a prescribed road:114.3 obviously it would have been hazardous to let him stray about the country with a wrathful ghost at his heels. In the second place, if another charge was brought against a banished homicide, he was allowed to return to Attica to plead in his defence, but he might not set foot on land; he had to speak from a ship, and even the ship might not cast anchor or put out a gangway. The judges avoided all contact with the culprit, for they judged the case sitting or standing on the shore.114.4 Plainly the intention of this rule was literally to insulate the slayer, lest by touching Attic earth even indirectly through the anchor or the gangway he should blast it by a sort of electric shock, as we might say; though doubtless the Greeks would have said that the blight was wrought by contact with the ghost, by a sort of effluence of death. For the same reason if such a man, sailing the sea, happened to be wrecked on the coast of the country where his crime had been committed, he was allowed to camp on the shore till a ship came to take him off, but he was expected to keep his feet in sea-water all the time,115.1 evidently to neutralise the ghostly infection and prevent it from spreading to the soil. For the same reason, when the turbulent people of Cynaetha in Arcadia had perpetrated a peculiarly atrocious massacre and had sent envoys to Sparta, all the Arcadian states through which the envoys took their way ordered them out of the country; and after their departure the Mantineans purified themselves and their belongings by sacrificing victims and carrying them round the city and the whole of their land.115.2 So when the Athenians had heard of a massacre at Argos, they caused purificatory offerings to be carried round the public assembly.115.3