434 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
prays in the midst of the court, and offers up a libation, looking to heaven 
His prayer was that Patroclus might be brave, and return safe. Zeus granted 
the first request, and refused the second.* It is worthy of note, also, that these 
pollutions arise more from external circumstances than from a consciousness 
of sin. It has often been remarked, for instance, that in the Homeric age a 
man received no religious contamination from being in company with a 
murderer. J may quote here the remarks of Mr GLapsronz on this point, as 
they happen to state very clearly what I regard as the true nature of the 
satisfaction given in a propitiatory sacrifice offered on account of an offence :— 
«« Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a 
misfortune, or at most a prudential error, an ary tvxw}, when the perpetrator 
of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. 
On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the 
nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not 
(which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt 
in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the wounded 
feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost 
- services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act 
whatever. ’t 
4, There is no instance in Homer of a human sacrifice being offered up to a 
god. There are words, indeed, which might have explained the usage had it 
been found. “If,” says Zeus to Here, “you were to enter within the gates and long 
walls, and eat Priam and Priam’s sons and the rest of the Trojans raw, then 
would you cure your wrath.”{ But these words are not to be taken literally. 
Similar words, evidently of a proverbial nature, occur in Xenophon, and even 
stronger language is found in Theognis. Nearer to the idea is the expression 
“to satiate Ares with blood,” where the brutal god is no doubt conceived as. 
enjoying the blood ; but it may be doubted if it was supposed that he tasted 
the blood. The words are applied to men struck down in battle.§ There is 
also an instance of young men being slain in honour of the dead. Into the 
funeral pyre of Patroclus four noble steeds and two dogs were thrown; no 
doubt to keep their master company in the realms of Hades, and to gratify him. — 
Achilles, “ enraged at his death,”|| slew twelve beautiful Trojan youths. “And 
these all along with thee the fire eats up.” These twelve youths are described 
as azrown, or Compensation for the dead Patroclus. 
5. There are instances of symbolical acts which have some resemblance to: 
sacrifices, but are only in some points like them. When the Greeks are about 
to make a treaty with the Trojans, Menelaus urges the Trojans to bring a 
white lamb for the sun and a black lamb for the earth, and they themselves are 
* Tl. xvi. 225-250. + “Homeric Studies,” vol. ii. p. 436. ng Oke Gee 
§ IL v. 289. || IL xxiii, 23. @ Il. xxiii. 171-182. 

