theprorrhe ̄sis: the public announcement of the murderer’s identity is accompanied by
a solemn proclamation made by private citizens related to the victim, and hence
entitled to vengeance (IGi^3 20–33; Demosthenes 42.57), and by the Archon Basileus.
It is from this moment and throughout the period before the murder trial proper that
the culprit is excluded from the lustral water distributed to wash one’s hands before a
sacrifice, from the libations and the mixing bowls, from the city’s sacred shrines and its
agora – in other words: from the community’s religious, social, and political life
(Demosthenes 20.158; Arnaoutoglou 1993:114–31). That this legal ritual of social
isolation carries the connotation of being polluting – with regard to both the person
accused of homicide and those coming into contact with him – finds its reflection in
theOedipus Tyrannus. The king’s exhortation of his fellow-citizens to reveal to him
the identity of Laius’ murderer is followed by a quasi-formalprorrhe ̄sis: no one in
Thebes must give shelter to the homicide or address him, admit him to prayers to the
gods and sacrifices or share the lustral water with him, for he is ‘‘our pollution’’ (236–
42). Again, there is no immediate and necessary link between murder and pollution:
theprorrhe ̄sismakes the homicide an outcast and a potential source of pollution for
the community. Social and religious marginalization and pollution are only quasi-
juridical procedures, the social function of which must have been to make the accused
seek resolution of his status and deter potential homicides by dramatizing the social as
well as religious consequences of their wrong behavior.
In order to achieve resolution, the accused can stand trial, the result of which may
be conviction or acquittal. He can attempt to negotiate a financial compensation with
the victim’s relatives. Or he can flee the country – though at the price of taking his
pollution with him. In another city that homicide has to find a host willing to receive
the polluted into his house and act as agent in the process of ritual purification. The
Greek custom of receiving the murderer as a suppliant (hikesios) is attested as early as
theIliad(24.480–3). Herodotus narrates the story of Adrestus, who requests and
receives purification from the Lydian king Croesus ‘‘according to the local customs,’’
which is just as well since Greek and Lydian cathartic procedures are said to differ
little in that respect (1.35). At Athens there seems to have existed anomos– whether
the word here denotes an actual statutory law or simply entails the existence of a
‘‘custom’’ is not entirely clear – that permitted the involuntary or accidental murderer
to return home after a settlement had been reached with the victim’s relatives; but his
return was contingent upon prescribed rules of conduct, which included ritual
purification and a sacrifice (Demosthenes 23.72). The available epigraphic evidence,
though notoriously difficult to interpret, offers a window onto the various local
cathartic procedures. The cathartic law from Cyrene demands that the local host
present the foreign homicide to the community and announce his status as a suppli-
ant. It is only then that the latter is entitled to undergo ritual purification. The host
has the homicide sit on the threshold on a white fleece, and washes and anoints him.
They go outside into the public road, observing silence while they proceed in the
company of a herald to a place, probably a local public shrine, where the concluding
sacrifice – itself no longer, it seems, part of the purificatory ritual proper – must be
performed (LSS115 B 50–9). In a law from Selinus, dating to the fifth century, a
formal proclamation quite like the ruling in the Cyrene law is required before the
cathartic procedures can begin. The host has the homicide wash himself with water
and offers food and salt. Here, as in the Cyrene law, the purificatory ritual
186 Andreas Bendlin