Note 118 — Chapter IV · HEROES

The story of Mitys (or Bitys) in Argos is known from Arist. Po. 9, p. 1452a, 7 ff. (Mirab. 156). A few more such stories are recorded in Wyttenbach, Plu. M. vii, p. 316 (Oxon.); cf. also Theoc. 23. Just as in the story of Theagenes, the statue was punished as responsible for the murder, so, too, the attribution of a fetichistic personality to inanimate objects lies at the bottom of the ancient customs observed in the Athenian murder laws, by which judgment was given in the Prytaneion περὶ τῶν ἀψύχων τῶν ἐμπεσόντων τινὶ καὶ ἀποκτεινάντων: Poll. viii, 120, after Dem. 23, 76, cf. Arist. Ἀθπ. 57, 4. Such judgments cannot originally have been merely symbolical in meaning.