eus, the unfaithful goatherd, was savage in the extreme, but
when Eurykleia exulted over the dead suitors, Ulysses told her that it
was a cruel sin to rejoice over slain enemies.[143] In the _Iliad_
boastful shouts over the dead are frequent. In the _Odyssey_ such shouts
are forbidden.[144] Homer thinks that it was unseemly for Achilles to
drag the corpse of Hector behind his chariot.[145] He says that the gods
disapproved, which is the mystic way of describing a change in the
mores.[146] He also disapproves of the sacrifice of Trojan youths on the
pyre of Patroclus.[147] It was proposed to Pausanias that he should
repay on the corpse of Mardonius the insults which Xerxes had practiced
on the corpse of Leonidas at Thermopylae, but he indignantly
refused.[148] In the _Eumenides_ of AEschylus the story of Orestes is
represented as a struggle between the mores of the father family and
those of the mother family. In the _Herakleidae_ there is a struggle
between old and new mores as to the killing of captives. Many such
contrasts are drawn between Greek and barbarian mores, the latter being
old and abandoned customs which have become abominable to the Greeks
(incest, murder of strangers). In the fourth century the Greeks were so
humbled by their own base treatment of each other that this contrast
ceased to be drawn.[149] Similar contrasts between earlier and later
mores appear in the Bible. Our own mores set us in antagonism to much
which we find in the Bible (slavery, polygamy, extirpation of
aborigines). The mores always bring down in tradition a code which is
old. Infanticide, slavery, murder of the old, human sacrifices, etc.,
are in it. Later conditions force a new judgment, which is in revolt and
antagonism to what always has been done and what everybody does. Slavery
is an example of this in recent history.
+114. Antagonism between groups in respect to mores.+ When different
groups come in contact with each other their mores are brought into
contrast and antagonism. Some Australian girls consider that their honor
requires that they shall be knocked senseless and carried off by the men
who thereby become their husbands. If they are the victims of violence,
they need not be ashamed. Eskimo girls would be ashamed to go away with
husbands without crying and lamenting, glad as they are to go. They are
shocked to hear that European women publicly consent in church to be
wives, and then go with their husbands without pretend
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