Bugs and Beasts before the Law. which had become the peer of man in blood guiltiness and in judicial punishment would savor of anthropophagy. The Kur'an holds every beast and fowl accountable for the in juries done to each other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips abroad. The blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the four winds. The laws of Drak6n and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects by which a person had lost his life to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the Athenian boundaries. This was the sentence pronounced upon a sword which had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon the bust of the poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused his deafh. Even in cases which might be regarded as homicide in self-defense no such ground of exculpa tion was admitted. Thus the statue which the Athenians erected in honor of the famous athlete, Nikdn of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes and pushed from its pedes tal. In falling it crushed one of its assail ants; it was brought before the proper court, and sentenced to be cast into the sea. In the Avesta, a mad dog is not permitted to plead insanity, but is " punished with the punishment of a conscious offense" by pro gressive mutilation, beginning with the ears and ending with the tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all animals recognized as creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the legal protection vouchsafed to dogs. Indeed, a paragraph in the same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians, as regards such a dog to " wait upon him and try to heal him, just as they would attend a righteous man."
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A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in the custom of the Romans of celebrating the anniver sary of the preservation of the Capitol from the Gauls, not only by paying honor to geese, whose cackling gave warning of the enemy's approach, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for not having been more watchful on that occasion. This, how ever was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, as prescribed by many ancient law-givers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of treason, as in modern legislation. They are all applications of the barbarous principle which, in primitive society, made the tribe responsible for the acts of each of its members. According to an Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Knut, in case stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family, even to the child in the cradle, though it had never taken food, were punished as partakers of his guilt. Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as " severe but wise enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children." When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their native land was stricken from the list of Roman provinces, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared incapable of holding any office under the imperial govern ment. So, too, when Joshua discovered some of the spoils hidden in the tent of Achan, not only the thief himself, but also, "his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his tent, and all that he had," were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and burned with fire. At a later period these holocausts of justice were suppressed among the Jews, and no man was put to death save for his own sin. Yet, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it was desirable to concil iate, David did not scruple to deliver up to them seven of Saul's sons, to be hanged for
