Greek [Greek: tou pathontos prostrepomenou tên pathên], where the middle presumably was preferred to the active because the sufferings which the dead man inflicts are, as we already know and as the language of the particular phrase itself suggests, exactly those which he himself suffers. This usage of the verb, though it is distinctly rare and probably a technicality of religion or law, is so perfectly clear in this one example[1], that there should be no hesitation about understanding the cognate word [Greek: prostropaios] in the same sense. And indeed one lexicographer, Photius, shows that he did so understand it; for he tells us that Zeus was sometimes invoked under this title, as turning against murderers the pollution (including perhaps the punishments) of their crime: [Greek: Zeus . . . prostropaios, ho prostrepôn to agos autois] (sc. [Greek: tois palamnaiois])[2]—such are his actual words, and this time of course the verb is rightly in the active, for Zeus is in no way personally concerned but acts only in the interests of the dead man. Clearly then it was in virtue of this active meaning that [Greek: prostropaios] came to be practically a synonym of Miastor and Alastor in the sense of an Avenger of blood.
Once more then we return to the same question which has been propounded and answered with regard to those two other names—to whom was the term [Greek: prostropaios] primarily applied?
I find the application of it more restricted than that of the other two words. It was used of the dead man himself, and it was used of demons avenging his cause; but it was never used[3] of the next of kin in the character of avenger—and that for the very good reason that when the word was applied to a living man itshould be read instead of [Greek: prostripsomai]. A man accused of murder is saying, [Greek: adikôs men gar apolytheis, dia to mê orthôs didachthênai hymas apophygôn, tou mê didaxantos kai ouch hymeteron ton prostropaion tou apothanontos katastêsô; mê orthôs de katalêphtheis hyph' hymôn, hymin kai ou toutô to mênima tôn alitêriôn prostripsomai]. The sense is, 'If I were really guilty of this murder and yet owing to the feeble case presented by the prosecutor I were acquitted by you, my escape would bring the Avenger of the dead man upon the prosecutor and not on you; whereas, if you condemn me wrongly when I am innocent, it will be on you and not on him that I, after death, shall turn the wrath of the Avengers.' Clearly [Greek: prostrepsomai] is required to answer [Greek: prostropaion], and it could have no more natural object than [Greek: to mênima], the special word denoting the wrath which follows on bloodguilt.].], would be hopelessly ambiguous if such an usage had been possible.]
- ↑ So far as I can discover, it is a solitary example of the use in Classical Greek; but I very strongly suspect that in Antiphon, p. 127 (init.), [Greek: prostrepsomai
- ↑ Photius, s.v. [Greek: palamnaios
- ↑ I venture upon this emphatic negation, not so much because I have found no such usage in my reading of Greek literature, as because the line of the Eumenides in which Orestes calls himself [Greek: alastora, ou prostropaion
