Note 144 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

It is very natural to suppose that the ποινή (as K. O. Müller suggests in Aesch. Eum. 145 [122 E T.]) may have arisen out of the substitution of a vicarious sacrifice instead of that of the murderer himself, who should strictly have been offered to the dead man. In this way primitive human sacrifice has in many cases been replaced by sacrifice of animals. In that case the ποινή too must have originally been offered to the murdered man: in Homeric times only the satisfaction of the living avenger was thought of.—In any case it is a mistake to look upon the permission to buy off the blood-feud as a mitigation of primitive severity in the taking of vengeance due to the intervention of the State. The State in this case mitigated nothing since it took no interest at all (in Homer) in the treatment of murder cases. Of course, legal proceedings can be taken to decide whether a stipulated ποινή has been paid or not (Σ 497 ff.), as in the case of any other συμβόλαιον. But the prosecution of the murderer in all its departments is left entirely in the hands of the family of the murdered man.