Civic Punishment or Private Revenge: The against Euphiletus - Case Study Example

Civic Punishment or Private Revenge: The Case Against Euphiletus The rhetorical play in Euphiletus' defense speech during his trial reveals two conflicting value systems being juxtaposed, one the tribal code, which demands honor and the civil code that abnegates honor in the form of communal justice. Thus in order to understand this shifting ground of justice, it is important to determine from the facts of the case itself and the general legal and ethical atmosphere that surrounded Athens at the time whether or not Euphiletus' attack represents an act of civic punishment or private revenge. Furthermore, if indeed it was an act of civic punishment, was the execution of the act peripheral to the current value system of the Athenian polis or was it a de rigueur exercise of civil code. In order to make this determination an analysis of the various law codes both tribal and civil that were in play must be considered followed by recapitulation of the details of the case and the manner in which those details were presented by Euphiletus according to Lysias. A presentation of the fragmented accusations of Euphiletus' accusers will be offered in order to clarify some of the rhetorical strategies that Euphiletus' utilizes in his defense speech. Finally, some concluding remarks on how adultery, crimes of passion and homicide were understood then and now. There is some evidence to suggest that the ethical internals of Euphiletus' defense were intended to generate sympathy among the judges (Herman 407). By presenting himself as deceived husband and victim, Euphiletus is attempting minimally to provide an emotional basis for his desire to kill Eratosthenes. This is important for if Euphiletus wanted to portray himself as an Athenian gentleman whose moral composition represented the mainstream of Hellenistic society, then his act represents the logical consequence of a man whose wife has been caught in flagrante delicto with another man. If it was the case that such an act could not have been conscionable under such conditions then the Euphiletus' strategy would be counterproductive as his demeanor would be interpreted as the manifestation of a morally eccentric minority. However, it is not to suggest that Euphiletus wished to portray himself as a jealous husband fueled with righteous and murderous rage. Rather, at every step as will be shown later he presents himself a mediated actor of the law, merely the hand of the law rather than its head or heart. In fact, he wishes to show that Eratosthenes was not murdered but executed by him and was only done so by him on mere coincidence that it was his wife with whom Eratosthenes had slept (Harris 365). Thus, Euphiletus wishes to draw out the tensions inherent in two antithetical codes of conduct: 1) an older, de-centralized, tribal one in which honor and vengeance played integral roles and 2) a more evolved centralized code of conduct in which democratically endorsed values were mutually agreed upon and enforced communally (Herman 408). By engendering a feeling of vengeance while simultaneously negating its causative role in this act, Euphiletus paradoxical strategy gives a path in which the Athenian judges can acquit Euphiletus on the grounds that the act was one of civic punishment while concomitantly acknowledging the obvious vengeful passions that were aroused during the incident itself. He begins by laying out the task before him, which is to convince the jury that Eratosthenes' killing was prompted by the debauchery of his wife via seduction and the disgrace tendered therein and for no other reason, " that this was the one and only enmity between him and me; that I have not acted thus for the sake of money" (Lamb 1.4). It is important that money or other enmity do not prefigure in any manner for Euphiletus' case, as that would have invalidated the laws for which the type of justified homicide he wished to claim happened. If indeed money or other enmity figured in this case, as his accusers had apparently tried to impute, it would simply be premeditated murder in which Eratosthenes' engagement with Euphiletus' wife would count as entrapment on the part of Euphiletus. He then proceeds to establish himself as a candidate of victimization, offering that he was a good husband who allowed his wife a wide bearing and was lulled into a false sense of security regarding her fealty and chastity (Lamb 1.6-7). Euphiletus claims that Eratosthenes laid eyes on his wife and began to conspire to make her his at the funeral of his mother, where as he claims it was the first time he had encountered this individual. Though there were some unusual events that transpired after this initial meeting, namely he had heard a door opened at night, and "she had powdered her face," before the requisite time had elapsed after the death of her brother (Lamb 1.14), he bore no suspicions. Until one day an old woman who had been sent by another woman with whom Eratosthenes had been having an intrigue with, informed him that his wife was unfaithful and bade him to interrogate a servant-girl who had conspired with his wife. Suddenly, all of the odd incidents that had transpired since the funeral had caused him to be full of suspicion, though remaining quiescent, sought out the servant girl-interrogated, and gained her confidence in order to discover a "manifestation of the fact, if it really is so" (Lamb 1.21). It is interesting to note here whether the machinations with the servant-girl to catch Eratosthenes in the compromising act does not imply some deliberation on the part of Euphiletus. Obviously, he was aware of the law and knew that seduction and intrigue with another man's wife was punishable by death, and furthermore he must have already started work out his reaction should he chance upon them in flagrante. The notion of deliberation and its relation to premeditation is clear in current legal schemes, i.e. that every non-deliberate act is also by definition unpremeditated; however, the converse is not necessarily true and there does exist unpremeditated but nevertheless intentional acts. Yet, in fourth-century Athens it is unclear as to whether such a subtle distinction had been legally established as precedence (Loomis 89-90). It is at this point, where Euphiletus' rhetoric takes what will be called the "civic turn." Until this point, Euphiletus is behaving as an independent actor, seeking proof, finding witnesses, discovering the horrible truth. Yet here, after rejecting the payment Euphiletus testifies that he replied to Eratosthenes with this, "It is not I who am going to kill you, but our city's law, which you have transgressed and regarded as of less account than your pleasures, choosing rather to commit this foul offence against my wife and my children than to obey the laws like a decent person" (Lamb 1.26). This claim is designed to both justify the execution of Eratosthenes, while simultaneously exonerating the executor from the act of murder. By offering that the will that guides his hand is not his own persona, but that of the polis, Euphiletus wants to place the responsibility on the populace of Athens, thus if he is found guilty then all of Athens is equally guilty. He continues this civic turn by adding, "But I would not agree to his estimate, as I held that our city's law should have higher authority; and I obtained that satisfaction which you deemed most just when you imposed it on those who adopt such courses" (Lamb 1.29). It is an important tactical move by suggesting that his action was not only condoned by the law but to not follow the prescription set therein would itself be a violation of the law. Therefore, the killing of Eratosthenes was a supererogatory fulfillment of the law rather than a punishable breaking of it. He describes the act of murder itself in the most euphemistic and easily forgettable manner possible, "I obtained that satisfaction" as if as an afterthought to the case at hand. Throughout the presentation of the defense's case, a number of counter accusations by the family of Eratosthenes were mentioned and of course summarily dismissed. There presentation here will be useful in scrutinizing some of the important claims that Euphiletus deploys in order to exonerate himself of any wrongdoing. Initially, it seems that Eratosthenes' family had accused him of having some ulterior motive, i.e. money or enmity. Euphiletus is quick to dismiss those claims by emphasizing that the first instance he had heard of his name was the message he received from the old woman. The second counter accusation is that he asked the servant-girl to bid for Eratosthenes rather than simply warn him if he had arrived. This is important for Euphiletus as if it were to be shown that indeed, he had him enticed to his home, some of the responsibility for the act of adultery would have shifted to him, delegitimizing his claim that his home was intruded upon and his wife and children violated. Euphiletus repudiates these claims by offering that if he had planned to have Eratosthenes come to his house, why would he have had dinner there, as that would have more easily scared that man off. In addition, if he had machinations that night why would he have bid his friend a good night after the meal instead of having him wait with him for the adulterer to arrive, as he ostensibly knew he would Finally, if he had conspired to have Eratosthenes in his home that night, why did he wait to bid his friends to come to his home after he had found out definitively he was there. As it might have been possible for him to escape or more likely none of his witnesses would have been available at that time in the evening, and thus the claim that he was conspiring to entrap him at home is nonsensical. Other accusations include that he was killed in Euphiletus' hearth, a place of sanctity in the home where murder would not have been allowed or that he was drug out into the street, possibly suggesting that the murder was an act of violent passion. From the testimony provided by Lysias it does not seem that any of these other accusations were validated or corroborated by any other witnesses. Let us consider the law that he cites in his case. This law from the harsh code of Draco states: " If a man kill another unintentionally in an athletic contest, or overcoming him in a fight on the highway, or unwittingly in battle, or in intercourse with his wife, or mother, or sister, or daughter, or concubine kept for procreation of legitimate children, he shall not go into exile as a manslayer on that account" (Murray 23.53) If it was not cold-blooded murder, then Euphiletus' action must be considered a crime of passion, an unintentional or intentional act of revenge or an act of civic punishment. If indeed it is the latter then the act itself is intentional insofar that one cannot exercise the will of the state without deliberation, and by Euphiletus' own admission he informed Eratosthenes that it would not be he who was killing him but the law of decent people. If the act is an unintentional pure crime of passion then it was clearly an act of private revenge. It could be argued that he was not fully cognizant of what he would find when he got to his bedchamber, but given the series of events that had transpired up until that point, the jury could be fairly confident that Euphiletus had no confusion as to what was going to happen. If indeed, he had already planned to kill him before the law was read and before he could verify his adulterous state then it was an act of revenge. But, what is the nature of this revenge, the law seems to allow it, and thus justified revenge is a concept that is familiar or even acceptable to the Athenian polis. If justified revenge exists then why go through the trouble of engaging in the rhetorical civic turn, why go through the explanatory phase that he does if the Aeropagus clearly recognizes the right of an individual to commit revenge. This is because he needed to show that Eratosthenes death was in-line with the polis' interests. Though he never suggests that the act he commits was an act of civic punishment, he does imply that the state should have an interest in seeing Eratosthenes dead. If he could establish the state's interest in this regard then his behavior is immaterial to the overall trajectory of the case. If Euphiletus was interested in shifting the content of the case away from his behavior, then it is likely that there was something in his comportment or his person that would be detrimental in showing that the act of murder was prompted solely by the discovery of infidelity. Such a speculation might be corroborated by the fact that some of the family's accusations were well argued, perhaps they were able to show some prior enmity or perhaps they were able to show that Euphiletus did actually entice and entrap the young Eratosthenes to his house, and thus negating his right to claim abject violation and intrusion. If any of these situations were the case then it could be damaging to his right to revenge and thus his only effective strategy was to suggest that the act was in the best interest of the state regardless of his motivations. Thus, it seems we should conclude that given the evidence, that the act was indeed an act of private revenge exacted on Eratosthenes under the pretense of civic punishment in order to steer attention away from the comportment of Euphiletus. The irreconcilable codes of conduct, the civil and the tribal, require two radically different trajectories of behavior in order to reach the same conclusion, in this case the Death of Eratosthenes. In the former, honor is suppressed in the name of self-restraint and compromise and that the primary motivation for action must be punishment. The latter or tribal code of law requires a high regard for honor at the expense of compromise, and typically results in impulsive, straightforward and violent actions where the primary motivation is revenge. In such a situation, a clear crime is repaid instantly and at times disproportionately, yet the causal role between injustice and revenge is clear and distinct. In civil codes, the causal role between injustice and punishment is often mediated through considerations of the state, and the interests of the various parties involved. This often leads to a muddled yet more peaceful system of justice. In the case of Euphiletus and Eratosthenes, the murder attempted to attach a sense of mediated compromise in his role as executioner in order perhaps to hide the fact that the act of revenge he wanted to commit was not as clear-cut or as causally tight as he would have liked. Bibliography Harris, W. V. "Lysias III and Athenian Beliefs about Revenge." The Classical Quarterly (1997): 363-366. Herman, Gabriel. "Tribal and Civic Codes of Behaviour in Lysias I." The Classics Quarterly (1993): 400-419. Lamb, W.R.M. "On the Murder of Eratosthenes." Perseus Digital Library Project. 6 April 2008 . Loomis, W. T. "The Nature of Premeditation in Athenian Homicide Law." The Journal of Hellenistic Studies (1972): 86-95. Murray, A.T. "Against Aristocrates." Perseus Digital Library Project. 6 April 2008 . Read More