tain places, to fhelter the murderers from all pursuits, was very ancient and much refpected by the Greeks. They believed that the afylum of Samothrace was established by Cybeles. One of the most ancient is that which Cadmus The place where the Areopagus affembled, was an inviolabie afylum. Under Aphidas, who afcended the throne of Athens 1162 years before Chrift, the oracle of Do dona forewarned the Athenians, that one day the Lacedæmonians being beaten would fly for refuge to the Areopagus, and that they fhould take care not to treat them ill. The Athenians remembered this advice, when, in the reign of Codrus, Peloponnefus leagued against Attica. We Know what was the event of that war, and how the armies being in fight of each other, that of the enemy thought of making a retreat. Some Lacedæmonians who were advanced to the gates of Athens, on this news found themfelves in a cruel dilemma. All that they could do was to endeavour, under favour of the night, to hide themselves from the fight of the Athenians. When day appeared, they faved themselves in the Areopagus. They durft not attack them in that afylum, they were refpected, and got leave to return fafe and found to their country *. The favour of afylums was originally eftablished only for involuntary murderers. In Thucydides the Athenians tell us very clearly, that the altars of the gods are not an asylum but to thofe who have had the misfortune to commit an involuntary murder 1. We likewise fee in Livy the murderer of King Eumenes obliged to abandon the afylum of the temple of Samothrace, as unworthy to enjoy it. Mofes, on establishing cities of refuge for involuntary murderers, formally-excludes affaffins from that privilege ". For the reft, it was the fame among the Greeks with involuntary murders as with premeditated homicides, that is to fay, that the involuntary murderers could, by fatisfying Diod 1.3. p. 224. m L. 45. n. 5. k Pauf. 1..7. C-25. init n Deut. c. 19. V• II • &c. the the interested parties, remain quiet in their own country. It was likewise cuftomary to give to the relations of the deceased a certain fum. This policy fprung from a very wife principle. Among people little difciplined, enmities are dangerous, and moft fubject to occafion difagreeable confequences; it is therefore for the good of the public that they be eafy to determine . Thus we fee among the ancient people, they had no crime from which they could not redeem themselves with money. Every thing was reduced` to damages and reparations. For this reafon they had not then, as at this time with us, any public officers charged with the care of the pursuit of criminals. The favages of America fhow us again the image of thefe times. With these people, the reparation of murder confifts in a certain number of presents which the murderer is obliged to make to the relations of the deceased, to appease their refent ment 1. Ancient legislators have omitted nothing to inspire their people with all the horror poffible of murder, and fhedding of blood. They looked upon those who had committed homicide as polluted, in whatever way it happened; and they ought, before they came again into society, to purify themfelves by certain religious ceremonies. Thefeus had done an important service to his country, by putting to death the robbers who infefted it. Although these murders were very lawful, yet his firft care was to have himfelf purified. Homer makes Hector fay, coming from battle, that he durft not make libations to Jupiter, before he was purified, because it was not permitted to pray with hands imbrued in blood. Eneas, in Virgil, after having put many of his enemies to death, durft not touch his household gods We might quote many more exam till he was purified. Iliad. 1. 18. v. 498. &c. P See l'efprit des loix, t. 3. p. 102. & 328. a Lefcarbot, hift de la Nouv. France, p. 395. & 798; Meurs des fauvag. t. I, P. 490 491. Plut in Thef. p. 5. C.; Pauf. 1. 1. c. 37. init. t Æneid. 1. 2. v. 717. &c. K 2 ple ples". A murderer who was banished his country for an involuntary homicide, was not permitted to return, though he had fatisfied the relations of the deceased, before he was purified and had expiated the murder he had committed. They afcribe to the reign of Pandion, the eighth King of Athens, the establishment of religious ceremonies, proper to purify homicides ›. We shall remark on this fubject, that Mofes ordained a folemn expiation for the murders of which they did not know the authors *. He ordains likewife that those who, in a juft and legitimate war, had stained themselves by the effufion of the blood of the enemy, fhould not enter the camp, before they were purified. With the Romans, the foldiers who followed the chariot of the conqueror, were crowned with laurel; to the end, fays Feftus, that they should not appear to enter the city, but when purified from the human blood which they had fpilt. The end of all these customs, was to infpire the greatest averfion for homicide. We muft, I believe, afcribe to the fame principle of humanity, as well as policy, the prohibition of killing certain animals, fo precifely fettled by the first legislators of Greece. We have seen that Cecrops had forbidden to offer any thing that had life to the gods. Triptolemus renewed that law, by ordering them to offer nothing but fruits. But this fecond legiflator went much farther; for he exprefsly forbids ufing ill the animals employed in tillage. History has not difdained to preferve the circumftances which occafioned the death of the first ox, killed at Athens, and the confequence of that event. This is one of those fingular facts which merit a particular attention it happened under Erechtheus, fixth King of A : See Marfh. p. 253.; Feithius, p. 187. * Demofth. in Ariftocrat. p. 736. E. y Marm. Oxon. ep. 15.; Marsh. p. z Deut. c. 21. v. 5. &c. Verbo laureati, p. 2ɔ6. See alfo Plat. de leg. 1. 9. p. 930. &c. 253. Numb. c. 3. v. 19. & 24. c Art. I. f Porphyr. de abstin. 1. 2. p. 136. & 174.; Alian. var. hift. 1. 8. Pauf. 1. 1. c. 28. p. 70. e Ibid. c. 3.; thens thens. This event was fo much the more remarkable, as it gave rise to the erection of the Prytaneum, a most renowned tribunal among the Athenians". The bufinefs' of the Prytanes was to commence processes against things inanimate, which had occafioned the death of any one. I finish what concerns the penal laws of Greece, by obferving a perfect conformity between these laws and those of the Egyptians, in the punishment of pregnant women guilty of crimes deferving death: the Greeks, after the example of the Egyptians, waited to bring them to punishment, till they were delivered *. What I find the most extraordinary in the ancient laws of Greece, is, that the legislators had not determined precifely the nature and duration of the punishment with which each crime ought to be punished. They left it to the judges to apply the laws as they thought proper. Zaleucus, legiflator of the Locrians, was, fay they, the first who prefcribed and explained in his laws the kinds and duration of punishments which they ought to inflict on criminals. We fee, from what has been faid, that the first laws of Greece were very fhapeless; they favoured of the rudeness which reigned fo long in that part of Europe". The Greeks, like all the ancient people, were fome time before they knew the art of writing. Singing was then the only way to hand down to pofterity what was neceffary to be remembered. This moft fimple and moft natural method had been used to preserve the remembrance of the laws. For want of monuments, where they could depofite their laws, the first legiflators fet them to mufic, to make them be retained the more eafily. The Greeks fung their laws. This is what made the fame name be given to laws as to fongs P. Ariftotle, in his problems, inquiring into g Pauf. 1. 1. c. 28. p. 70. b Ibid. loco cit.; Pollux, 1. 8. c. 10. i Pauf. 1. 1. c. 28. p. 70. See the examples which he cites, 1. 5. c. 27. p. 449. 1.6. c. 11. p. 478. * Diod. 1. 1. p. 88.; Elian. var. hift. 1. 5. c. 18.; Plut. t. 2. p. 552. D. 1 Strabo, 1. 6. p. 398. » Arift. polit. 1. 2. c. 8. p. 327. B. Η Νόμοι. Ibid. See part 1. book 1. the the reafon of this conformity of names between two fuch different objects, it is, fays he, that before the knowledge of writing, they fung the laws, left they fhould forget them. The custom of putting the laws, and all that had relation to them, into fong, prevailed fo much in Greece, that it even continued after writing was introduced. The crier, who published the laws in most of the Greek cities, was fubjected to regulated tones, and a measured declamation. He was accompanied by the found of a lyre, like an actor upon the stage. This manner of publishing the laws, the edicts, &c. had fubfifted a long time among the Greeks. History has preferved one example too remark. able to be omitted. On the night which followed the battle of Cheronea, Philip, intoxicated with good cheer and wine, and still more with the victory he had gained, went to the field of battle, yet covered with the dead bodies of the Athenians; where, to infult the dead, he parodied the decree which Demofthenes had proposed to excite the Greeks to take up arms. Philip fung then, beating time: "Demofthenes, "fon of Demofthenes the Pæonian, has faid, &c." The Locrians of Italy were looked upon, in the writings of fome authors of antiquity, for the first Grecians who had reduced their laws to writing. But this fact does without speaking of not appear to me to be exact; for, 9 Problem. fect. 19. problem. 28. Jofephus and Plutarch fufpect that the term vóμos, used to design laws, was modern, in comparison of the early times we are now speaking of; and that it was even later than the age of Homer, who, in his poems, never ufes the word voos to fignify laws, but misal, jura. But Jofephus and Plutarch, especially speaking dubiously, ought not to balance the authority of Aristotle about the antiquity of a Greek word; to fay nothing of an hymn in honour of Apollo, attributed to Homer, where vous is used to fignify law, or the method of finging, v. 20. We likewife find the word voos used in Hefiod to fignify laws, Op. & dies, v. 276. • Graecarum quippe urbium multae ad lyram leges, decretaque publica recitabant. Martian. Capella de nupt. Philolog. 1. 9. p. 313. See also Ælian. var. hift. 1. 2. c. 39.; Stob. ferm, 42. p. 291. Plut. in Demofth. p. 855. A. L. 6. p. 397. |