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τῶν ἀλιτηρίων ‘avenging spirits’. The gods under whose protection the murdered person stood, and to whom his spirit turns for vengeance — οἱ τῶν ἀποθανόντων προστρόπαιοι (§ 4) — become ἀλιτήριοι, punishers of sin, in relation to the murderer. The commoner sense of ἀλιτήριος is ‘sinful’, with a genit. of the god offended or the place polluted (e.g. θεῶν, Ἑλλάδος): for the double meaning, cp. ἀλάστωρ, μιάστωρ, προστρόπαιος, ἀφίκτωρ, προσίκτωρ. οὐ προσῆκον ‘gratuitous’: strictly ‘alien’, — not arising from their own sin. From another point of view, ‘selfinflicted’ woes are οἰκεῖα πάθη, Soph. Ai. 260.
Selections from the Attic Orators. Sir Richard C. Jebb. London. Macmillan. 1888.
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