In the Ancient World of the North Eastern Mediterranean there was more to Atè than the inevitability of an endless Blood-Feud. But something like a conflict between Menelaus and Paris over who deserved Helen, that whole thing was complex, baked-in and as a result a Blood-Feud of some sort was bound to happen.
Menelaus and Paris both were much smitten by the most beautiful girl mortal in the world and being competitive boys with reputations for honor and valor to maintain, each felt entitled to Helen. They both felt there'd been far too much influence from the politicking of the gods, particularly the Goddess of Love herself, Aphrodite, who may have decided that Helen preferred a life with Paris in Troy than with Menelaus who lived in part of the world where the expression spartan existence comes from.
Aphrodite always had opinions. By some reckonings everyone knew that since losing most of her youth Aphrodite just didn't like men, they were far to fickle and needed to be regularly punished, she wasn't that fond of pretty young things and a war between Menelaus and Paris would be easily ten years of solid entertainment for her.
Along with Atè, the Greeks had "Poine" or "Poena," as in Subpoena. She was a personified spirit of retribution and vengeance, like her boss she had wings and was often pictured seated looking interested. Poine was an attendant to Nemesis, so it should come as no surprise that Poine had a lot of friends amongst the totally out of control inhabitants of the Underworld called The Furies.
When someone wise like Apollo wanted to make sure a miscreant who'd fallen for one of Atè's blindings, which we talked about yesterday, was properly punished, Poine was sent to observe and on occasion one or other of the parties to a Blood-Feud might raise the possibility of paying a ransom as recompense for damage done. This Ransom was called Poine. The common sense theory behind Poine was that a person could release themselves from their past misdeed, and do away with the possibility of an endless and destructive, error ridden Blood-Feud by instead paying Blood-Money to the wronged party.
This wasn't as simple as it sounds. Back in those days the Furies didn't give in that easy, they were a very excitable limbic emission enriched bunch with hardly any administrative oversight who spent a lot of time with Poine before she went all administrative on them by suggesting they were far too primordial in their reluctance to adopt this half baked strategy of Money instead of a Feud.
The other point that needs to be made here is that back in those distant days, a family or a clan if they'd been wronged, believed that the land itself had been infected with a pollutant that would spread like a plague, destroy everything unless that wrong was cleansed in a visceral and limbic manner. There wasn't an alternative to Blood-Feuding. You couldn't just wake up one day and say the Blood-Feud is a thing of the past.
Not for one moment would the ancestors swallow that sort of namby pamby excuse for cowardice. They didn't invent the wheel by confronting the Saber Tooth Tiger with cowardice! No! They responded with a hard-arsed united front that challenged the Saber Tooth Tiger's understanding of easy meat. It was just plain ludicrous to think that a couple of cows as recompense for someone's brother mysteriously disappearing cleansed anything. The only solution was to launch ships and make it right. If hundreds of people had to die then so be it, this was for the greater good of the cosmos.
There's a good case for arguing that if the very Ancient Greeks couldn't see the value of Blood-Money over a Blood-Feud they were savages, uncivilized and barbarous. But that argument would be wrong. The ancient world of people had a well developed and personal relationship with their universe and with themselves that required participation from their Gods. You couldn't just say we mortals could easily sort this out ourselves if we could please stop believing that stealing someone's cow or killing their brother pollutes the land with a catastrophic earth shattering infectious sicknesses.
But in those days, in exactly the same way we can today, what you could do was get the Gods on the side of a new concept of Law and Order. In that Ancient Eastern Mediterranean World the first thing to do was to find a way to sidestep the wrath of the Furies, you had to rein them in, persuade them to develop impulse control. In this whole area of discussing practicalities with the Gods, reputable Oracles, Shamans, Priestesses and Priests were very useful and authoritative. They were the social freeloaders, the cocktail party class, who sometimes called for the sacrifice of virgins, but they could get someone like Apollo to have a word with a Representatives of the God of Retribution and Vengeance and ask her to add to someone like Poine's workload by persuading Poine to do more than observe, take notes at Blood-Feuds and gossip with Furies. In short, Poine had to become a more active participant.
This did not happen overnight, it took generations, but in time and with the cooperation between Gods and a few well placed Mortals, the Gods were persuaded that yes indeed, a negotiation chaired by Poine was a very effective way to wash away the stain of sin on the earth. In every way it was cleansing just as good as an old fashioned deep down Limbic Emission of a generational Blood-Feud.
Sadly for all of us, as The Department of Administrative Satisfaction, Confessions and Healing began to dominate the interstitial space between the "I" and the "Me" Poine lost her connection to the Gods, her role was taken away from her, given to the Public Temple where she became a fine or prison sentence, hemlock or exile and while the immediate problem might have been fixed, the cosmos had not been restored, we people drifted further and further away from the Universe.
At first people might have been able to say: "I am not taking this money because I am greedy! I am taking it because the Goddess Poine has declared that if I take it the cycle of the Blood-Feud is closed. I have to take this money, otherwise........!"
Then as the court system developed and Athena persuaded The Furies to get with the times and think of themselves as the "Kindly Ones" instead of blood thirsty vigilantes of the Underworld whose job was making life hell for murders and oath breakers, Poine became a footnote to the wise utterances of chaps like Plato et al, and we in the west were all headed for the Code of Justinian, Church Cannon Law, English Common Law, the Code of Napoleon. We wanted a Rule of Law not of Men
