The Rise and Fall of Ancient Greek Justice: Homer to the Sermon on the Mount

By Robert Mayhew

I begin with the murders of two daughters, from two different sets of parents, and ask: How did their mothers react to these crimes?

Our first story goes back to Homer—or more accurately, to a story that (if based in fact) took place during the Greek Bronze Age, in the 13th century BC. This is the story of Iphigenia­, at the outset of the Trojan War (par…