Note 65 — Chapter XII · THE LAY AUTHORS

This idea is alluded to as early as Δ 160 ff. Then Hes., Op. 282 ff. It is established for Hdt.; cf. i, 91, vi, 86. Further examples collected by Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Theol. 34 f. Thgn. 205 ff., 731 ff., is particularly definite. Among Attic authors; cf. Sol., fr. 13, 29 (ἀναίτιοι ἔργα τίνουσιν); E., Hipp. 831 ff., 1378 ff. (where note τὸν οὐδὲν ὄντ’ ἐπαίτιον), fr. 980; [Lys.] 6, 20; Lycurg. 79. It is briefly alluded to as a commonly held opinion by Isoc. 11, 25; cf. Lys., fr. 53 Th. The case of Diagoras of Melos the ἄθεος may also be remembered; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 16.—This idea of the punishment of the son for the deeds of the father receives its justification acc. to Plu., Ser. Nu. Vi. 16, 559 D (quite in accordance with primitive ideas) in the unity that belongs to all the members of the same γένος—so that in the person of the son it is the father himself, though he may be dead, who is also punished. The idea arises from the deeply ingrained feeling of the unity, solidarity, and continuity of the ancient family cult-circle pre-supposed by the cult of souls. (This is primitive and meets us, e.g. in India as well: “release us from the wrongs that our fathers have done; take away the sins of that we ourselves have committed” is the prayer to Varuna in the Rigveda, 7, 86, 5. τὰ ἐκ προτέρων ἀπλακήματα are transferred also to the next generation “like a pestilence-breeding substance”, Oldenberg, Rel. d. V. 289. Elsewhere the conception emerges that the guilty ancestor lives again in the descendant and is punished in his person: Robinsohn, Psychol. d. Naturv. 47.)