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Tribal and Civic Codes of Behaviour in Lysias I1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Gabriel Herman
Gabriel Herman
Affiliation:
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
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Extract

A reiteration of the main details of the case may be helpful. Euphiletus killed Eratosthenes and was prosecuted for premeditated homicide by Eratosthenes' relatives. The present speech, our sole source of information concerning the case, was written for the defendant, partially or totally, by a professional speechwriter, presumably Lysias. In this speech Euphiletus admits killing Eratosthenes. He pleads, however, that, since he killed Eratosthenes after catching him in the act of adultery with his own wife, this was a case of justified homicide. At the same time, he denies a charge of the prosecution that he had killed Eratosthenes for reasons unrelated to the adultery. The speech was delivered before a court of fifty-one judges especially set up to judge such cases, as is attested elsewhere:

T1

Arist. Ath. Pol. 57.3: ‘If…a person admits that he has killed someone but claims that he had a right to do so, as, for instance, when he has surprised an adulterer in the act,… then the trial takes place in the Delphinion’ (cf. Dem. 23.74).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , December 1993 , pp. 406 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

2 For the question of authenticity, see Carey, C. (ed.), Lysias. Selected Speeches (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 11–12Google Scholar, summarizing earlier literature on the subject, and p. 64. For the manner of the composition which seems to me most likely (i.e. close collaboration between Lysias and Euphiletus in writing the speech), see Dover, K. J., Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (Berkeley, 1968), p. 2 and 148ffGoogle Scholar.

3 The fragmented allusions Euphiletus makes to the prosecutors' allegations contain at least three irreconcilable contradictions: that Euphiletus killed Eratosthenes for adultery but not in a fashion justifiable by the law; that Euphiletus enticed Eratosthenes into his house and killed him for motives unrelated to the love affair; that Euphiletus dragged Eratosthenes in from the street (in this case no motive is given). See further Carey, (ed.), Lysias, pp. 81–2Google Scholar.

4 Of course, he had the option of going into exile after delivering the first speech to which he was entitled at the trial, cf. Loomis, W. T., ‘The nature of premeditation in Athenian homicide law’, JHS 92 (1972), 86–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the treatment given to adulterers in other Greek cities, see Cantarella, E., Pandora's Daughters (Baltimore and London, [1987] Ital. orig. [1981]), pp. 43ffGoogle Scholar.

5 The question of the exact relationship between Euphiletus' rhetoric and the actual letter of the law, however important it may be in other contexts (cf. Harris, E. M., ‘Did the Athenians regard seduction as a worse crime than rape?’, CQ 40 [1990], 370–77)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is immaterial for my purposes. What matters is the interplay between the speaker and the audience, i.e. the way in which Euphiletus hoped to bewitch the jury – even if he resorted to false arguments and misrepresentations of the law.

6 ‘Honour, revenge and the state’ (n. 1 above).

7 Generally, but not without exception, I follow Usher's translation of Lysias 1 in Edwards, M. and Usher, S. (edd.), Greek Orators – I. Antiphon and Lysias (Warminster, 1985)Google Scholar.

8 This may be inferred from Lys. 1.26 and 29.

9 As argued, e.g. by Usher, S., ‘Individual characterization in Lysias’, Eranos 63 (1965), 99–119Google Scholar, esp. at 102–4. Usher's error has been noted by Carey, (ed.), Lysias, p. 62Google Scholar n. 2, but a more systematic refutation seems to be necessary.

10 Cf. Geen, R. G., Human Aggression (Milton Keynes, 1990), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

11 On self-help see Lintott, A., Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City (London, 1982), pp. 15–17, 21–4, and 26–28Google Scholar, incorporating earlier literature on the subject, and more recently Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1987), 293ffGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. Finley, M. I., Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), p. 18ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Lintott, , Violence p. 26Google Scholar.

14 Cf. Hansen, M. H., Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi and Pheugontes (Odense, 1976)Google Scholar.

15 MacDowell, D. M., Athenian Homicide Law (Manchester, 1963), p. 12Google Scholar.

16 Provided he was taken in the very act(ep'autophoroi) and acknowledged his guilt (homologei), cf. Cohen, D., Law, Sexuality and Society. The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1991), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Cf. the fragment by the comic poet Callias: ‘Profit is better than shame; off with the adulterer to the inner room!’, Kock, , CAP p. 693Google Scholar. See also Dem. 59.64ff., where the extortion of compensation money for moicheia is cited as evidence for the extortionist's poneria.

18 This point has been elaborated in ‘Honour, revenge, and the state’ (above, n. 1).

19 Lebanese man: reported by the media world-wide in June, 1992; Salwa: see Kressel, G. M., ‘Sororicide/Filiacide: Homicide for family honour’, Current Anthropology 22 (1981), 141–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Albanian shepherd: Durham, M. E., High Albania (London, 1909Google Scholar, repr. 1985), pp. 111–12.

20 Kressel, , ‘Sororicide’ 143Google Scholar. Cf. Campbell, , Honour, Family and Patronage pp. 199–200Google Scholar for comparable conceptions among the Sarakatsani.

21 Sarakatsani shepherd: Campbell, , Honour, Family and Patronage, p. 273Google Scholar; 19th C. Montenegrin: Durham, M. E., Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans (London, 1928), p. 163Google Scholar; 20th C. Albanian: Durham, M. E., High Albania (London, 1909), p. 41Google Scholar.

22 Durham, , High Albania 41Google Scholar.

23 This may be inferred from the complicity of the slave-girl; from the intelligence the old crone and her mistress had of the affair (T 11 = Lys. 1.16); and from the fact that Euphiletus' wife went off to the temple with Eratosthenes' mother to attend the Thesmophoria (Lys. 1.20).

24 Carey, (ed.), Lysias p. 61Google Scholar.

25 I therefore have to disagree with Carey that the function of the comment was to admit to a flaw in Euphiletus’ character (op. cit., p. 62).

26 Dem. 21.78; Dem. 47.53; Lys. 3.6; Lys. 12.30–31.

27 The joke, recorded by Chamfort, tells of a Marquis at the court of Louis XIV who, on entering his wife's boudoir and finding her in the arms of a Bishop, walked calmly to the window and went through the motions of blessing the people in the street. ‘What are you doing?’ cried the anguished wife. ‘Monseigneur is performing my functions,’ replied the Marquis, ‘so I am performing his’ (Cited from Koestler, A., The Act of Creation, London, 1964, p. 33Google Scholar).

28 Willetts, R. F., The Law Code of Gortyn (Berlin, 1967), p. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Col. II, 11.20–24.

29 J. Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour’, The Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences.

30 For the motif of the cuckold in ancient Athens see Carey, C. (ed.), Lysias, pp. 61–2Google Scholar; for the same motif in Mediterranean cultures, see Blok, A., ‘Rams and billy-goats: a key to the Mediterranean code of honour’, Man (N. S.) 16 (1981), pp. 427–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two additional works by Pitt-Rivers, J., ‘Honour and social status’, in Peristiany, J. G. (ed.), Honour and Shame. The Values of Mediterranean Society (London, 1965), pp. 21–77Google Scholar, and The People of the Sierra (Chicago, 1971, 2nd ed.)Google Scholar and one by Campbell, J. K., Honour, Family and Patronage (Oxford, 1964), pp. 152 and 199–200Google Scholar, also bear on the subject.

31 For the documentation of this generalization, see my ‘Honour, revenge and the state’ (above, n. 1).

32 Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (Harmondsworth, 1978, 2nd ed.), pp. 118–19Google Scholar.

33 Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York, 1960), p. 71Google Scholar, his italics.

34 It is in conformity with this principle of delayed reaction that a client of Demosthenes relates how, upon being struck on the mouth by a man into whose house he went to seize goods as security, he first called upon those who were present to bear witness – and only then did he return the blow (!) (Dem. 47.38).

35 The phrase is borrowed from Halperin, D. M., One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York and London, 1990), p. 96Google Scholar.

36 Finley, , The World of Odysseus 118Google Scholar.