440 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
fication, nor can the pollution be washed out until the homicidal soul which did 
the deed has given life for life, and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath 
of the whole family. These are the retributions of heaven, and by such punish- 
ments men should be deterred.”* 
A remarkable instance of this is given by Herodotus.t The Persian king 
sent heralds to Sparta. The Spartans killed them. The impious act was 
punished by the wrath (uns) of Talthybius, the herald of Agamemnon. 
Accordingly, two of the noblest Spartans undertook to pay the penalty (zowjy 
ttoa) to Xerxes for the heralds of Darius that had perished in Sparta. They 
went for this*purpose to Xerxes, and offered themselves as the penalty. But 
the Persian king spared their lives, and they returned to Sparta. For a short 
time the wrath of Talthybius ceased ; but soon it awoke again, and was not 
finally ended until by a strange, and, as Herodotus calls it, most divine (@adrarov) 
occurrence, the sons of the men who had volunteered were put to death by the 
Athenians. 
In the case of deliberate murder, then, the- Greeks denied, in the most 
decisive manner, the possibility of substitution; and it seems to me that this 
single fact completely overturns LASAULx’s theory, so far as Greek sacrifices are 
concerned, and hits it in its most vital part. 
Plato lays down minute directions as to what should be done in cases of 
involuntary homicide.{ We extract a portion of the passage devoted to these: 
“ Tf he kill a slave thinking that he is his own, he shall bear the master of the 
dead man harmless from loss, or shall pay a penalty of twice the value of the 
dead man, and the judges shall assess the value of the slave; but they must use 
purifications greater and more than in the case of those who committed homi- 
cide at the games,—what they are to be, the interpreters whom the god 
appoints shall be authorised to declare. And if a man kills his own slave, 
when he has been purified according to law, he shall be quit of the homicide; 
and if a man kills a freeman unintentionally, he shall undergo the same purifi- 
cation as he did who killed the slave. But let him not forget also a tale of 
olden time, which is to this effect: He who has suffered a violent end, if he 
has had the soul of a freeman in life, is when newly dead angry with the author 
of his death ; and being himself full of fear and panic by reason of his violent 
death, when he sees his murderer walking about in his own accustomed haunts, 
he is said to become disordered, which disorder of his, aided by the guilty 
recollection of the other, is communicated by him with overwhelming force to 
the murderer and his deeds. Wherefore he must get out of the way of the 
sufferer for the entire period of a year, and must not be found in any of the 
places that belong to him in the whole country.”§ 
* (arp hovov hove opoiw buo.ov % Spdcaca uy tTlon).—Prof. Jowsrr’s translation. 
T vii. 133. { Legg. ix. 865. § Prof. Jowxrt’s translation. 


