In societies that have not developed a sense of state, it is difficult to find another way of administering justice than by simply avenging the injustices one believes one has been subject to. The vendetta system is naturally primitive compared to modern legal proceedings. But it was the only system available before the rise of the state, and it was also held to be the people’s sense of justice.

The system has been found in many – perhaps all – cultures. In Japan, there was a law in effect until 1873 that gave the relatives of a murdered person the right to seek out and personally kill the perpetrator. On this general pattern, a clan has the right to avenge injustices. But it is also a right that borders on social duty, because the consequence of not taking revenge is that social esteem (honour) falls for anyone who does not assert his right in this violent way. Social esteem is a flexible correlate of the actual ability to take revenge in society. The anthropologist Anton Blok sums up the problem:

”We have already referred to the liminal position of those who have been dishonoured and who are therefore expected, even socially obliged, to take revenge. Plunged into mourning, these victims have all the features of people ‘out of place’. They are avoided, excluded, ostracized – until they have taken revenge. Only after they have ‘taken blood’ (and thus removed their defilement) is their mourning over and can they be reincorporated into everyday social life. This often happens in a festive way and they feel, as they say, reborn and sanctified, having moved from shame to honour…”

In southern Calabria – down the entire Ionic coast and round the tip of the boot crowned by the magnificent Aspromonte mountain massif – the logic of the vendetta still reigns supreme in the Calabrian mafia, ’ndrangheta. This is the richest of Italy’s various mafias and the hardest to combat. It is the hardest because its structure is more tightly organized with the help of blood ties than its counterparts in Sicily and the Naples region. Dynastic marriages are organized on a regular basis with the aim of building alliances and keeping the organization together. The blood ties are insurance policies. The number of so-called ”penitents”, that is, former members of the organization who have changed sides and started cooperating with the police, is relatively limited in Calabria.

On the eve of Easter, we travelled over to the Ionic coast to the arch of Italy’s boot. And on that very day, the peace broke down in Crotone. In the city where the genius Pythagoras formed a school 2,500 years ago, over the course of a week, three people would sacrifice their lives.

Through friends of friends, we were able to borrow a house by the sea in Locri. There has been an ongoing vendetta here since 1967 between the Cataldi and Cordi clans. Yet it was precisely here – in the Greek city-state of Locri – that in 650 BC the first law in writing appears in the Greek world.

Calabria continually leads one’s thoughts to Greece. Many of the prominent cities of antiquity were here – but also because there are villages on Aspromonte where Greek is still spoken (according to some, a Greek with roots in antiquity, according to others, a Byzantine Greek from medieval times, and according to still others a mix of the two). Up until the 15th century, Greek was spoken throughout Calabria. The word ´ndrangheta, which designates the Calabrian mafia, is Old Greek. It means ”courage” and is thought to be a completely fitting name for the culture of honour that marks the mafia world in Calabria today as well as the culture of honour that characterized Greek antiquity.

The first major challenge for the Greek city-states was in fact to rid themselves of the institution of the vendetta. As long as justice was administered as private blood revenge between clans, no state could be said to exist. And one can say with good reason that the state’s first major cultural-political problem was to get people to stop administering private justice and instead transfer judgement and punishment to the city-state, the polis – transforming the sense of honour in society so that going to the police (a word originating, of course, from the Greek polis) would no longer to be associated with a loss of face whenever one felt oneself to be the victim of a crime.

The theme of revenge is thus central in Old Greek literature. What is The Iliad if not one giant exposition on the concept of revenge?

One figure in Greek literature who invited discussion on revenge is Orestes, the son of King Agamemnon, who after his victory over Troy returned home and was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Orestes then avenged his father by murdering his mother and her lover.

In The Odyssey Orestes is spotlighted as a paragon of virtue by both Nestor and the goddess Athena. Nestor speaks to Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, and encourages him to kill the suitors who sought to marry Telemachus’ mother, Penelope, during Odysseus’ absence. He says:

And how fine it is, when a man is brought down,

to leave a son behind! Orestes took revenge,

he killed that cunning, murderous Aegisthus,

who’d killed his famous father.

And you, my friend –

how tall and handsome I see you now – be brave, you too,

so men to come will sing your praises down the years.

 

Athena, too, tries to inflame Telemachus’ ambition by using Orestes as an example:

 Haven’t you heard

what glory Prince Orestes won throughout the world

when he killed that cunning murderous Aegisthus,

who’d killed his famous father?

 

In the Homeric world (which leading scholars believe reflected Greek social values that were dominant about 900-700 BC), the vendetta is unproblematic and self-evident. The aristocratic warriors that populate the epic have varying degrees of honour or respect (time) depending on how strong they are. The ability to avenge injustices has a direct impact on their social esteem, their time. But it is also the case that the esteem of the person murdered, according to the logic of the vendetta, must be equal to the value of the person who is the object of revenge. A warrior with great value, like Achilles, can only be vindicated by someone of equal value or by the sum of many warriors of lesser value.

In the Homeric world, almost everything involves determining the right balance between different clans and families. There was a shaky general sense of justice about this balance. According to more recent research, the Greeks’ famous hybris is thought less to do with the attitude toward gods and religion and more with what attitude a person takes to these sensitive balances. Perhaps it can be summarized as follows: a person suffers from hybris who does not respect time-honoured glory and honour, that is time, but as time is flexible and a function of strength and success, hybris is just a name for a failure in the exercise of power.

If blood revenge was self-evident for Homer, it instead became highly problematic for the writers of tragedy in the 5th century BC. That is because by that time the polis or city-state had been established. The power of the aristocratic clans had been curtailed, and rule by the collective participation (democracy) of free Greek males had been introduced in many places. Athens was the leader, and it would not be unreasonable to see the opening move as the law instituted in the 7th century BC aimed at eliminating the private administration of justice in the form of a vendetta. The law of Draco (according to Aristotle from 621-620 BC) prohibited people from being put to death. However, there was no penalty if someone was killed by accident in a number of different contexts (in connection with athletic games or with war). Nor was there a penalty if someone killed a bandit on the attack. The law also provided that a man was entitled to kill another man caught on top of his wife, daughter, sister mother or concubine. But that provision was the last remnant of the old system of justice in which wrongs could be avenged by death through private initiative. In every other case, only the state was entitled to sentence people to death. However, when this happened, the task of putting the murderer to death fell to the relatives of the dead person, which was likely a concession to the energies of the vendetta and kept it alive. The spirit of revenge still loomed heavy over society; the fact that it did not appear to weaken anyone’s case if he expressed a desire for revenge when he brought someone to court was an indication of this – it was taken for granted.

The problem of revenge and justice is central to the tragic literature of the 5th century BC. All of the plays concerning the fate of Orestes – there are variants from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – address moral, psychological, legal and religious aspects of the problem of revenge. The plays are built on the Homeric body of myth but treat anachronistic elements within the framework of the growing sense of state. Compared to the Homeric world view, the vendetta is now seen as a threat to society. The plays often stake a clear political position in favour of the state’s monopoly on violence and against private revenge. Going to the theatre in Athens frequently meant having active parts of one’s emotional life criticized. I will take Aeschylus as an example.

Aeschylus’ Oresteian trilogy closes with the play The Eumenides, which centres on the question of whether Orestes will be punished for matricide or not. Orestes is pursued by the spirits of revenge, the Furies, who are taunted by the ghost of Clytemnestra. Orestes is defended by the god Apollo, who decides that the matter should be determined by the goddess Athena. She in turn decides that a jury consisting of the twelve wisest citizens of the city of Athens will determine whether Orestes is to be punished or not. It is clear that Athena sees the whole situation in a modern way (that is, not in the old way of blood revenges), as a legal case. The jury will only make its decision once the accused has been questioned and both the charge and defence have been presented. Athena also resolves that the jury will continue to exist for all eternity as a permanent court of law.

When the jury vote, the result is a hung jury, with six votes to convict Orestes and six to free him. The verdict is acquittal because Athena has given herself the tie-breaking vote.

The Eumenides is a discussion about how justice should be administered. Should it be done using forces in the family and with revenge as its method or should it take place in a court of law with the best interest of the state and of all society as the guiding principle? It is obvious that Aeschylus favours the second alternative. Throughout the play, the Furies represent the old law while Apollo symbolizes the new one. The new law is presented as less set on revenge and less driven by base forces like hate and revenge. At the same time, the new law is probably not to be characterized as less inclined to punish, but there is a shift from blood ties to society as the important basis of solidarity. Athena urges the Furies:

So, in these my realms you must not throw

your bloody whetstone down

to sharpen up and spoil the spleen of youth

with passions worse than wine;

or snatch the hearts from fighting cocks

and bury them with Ares deep amongst my citizens

made savage on each other.

Keep war outside and far from home

it for the greedy of hard-won fame,

Battle with the home-bred bird …I do not name.

 

The Furies have the task of pursuing and punishing anyone who has committed a crime against his own family. In this play, they are transformed upon making peace with Orestes into eumenides, which means ”kindly ones”. They are provided a new role in society. They are to watch over weddings and births, but are also clearly filled with a desire for more general social harmony. When in the end, after fierce opposition, they accept the new order, they express themselves accordingly:

Rebellion, that ravenous horror,

never must rear on the city

its hideous roar, I beseech;

and never the dust drink up

the dark of people’s blood

(gulping vendettas down)

slaughter for slaughter and ruin

raging over the town.

Reciprocate graces instead

with mutual notions of love

and a single one of hate;

such is the cure for much among men.

 

An interesting aspect of the ”cultural politics” that were aimed at reducing the extent of the violence of private vendettas involves laws concerning the lamentation of the dead.

The lamentation of the dead is thought to have existed in every civilization in antiquity: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome etc. It was a ritual lamentation for the death of kin. It included songs of grief and self-destructive behaviour. Mourners could cover themselves in dirt and ashes, tear their clothes and scratch themselves bloody. It was mostly women who lamented. Lamentations could be carried out by the mourner or by a professional. In Homer, the lamentation of death was called thrênos or góos. Both words are of Indo-European origin and originally meant ”wailing cry”.

Starting with Solon’s laws from the 6th century BC, laws were laid down in different places from time to time over the next few centuries prohibiting excessive expressions of sorrow. The law limited how long a person could mourn and the value of food and clothing that could be buried in the grave. Night-time processions were banned; mourners could not scratch themselves bloody. People were not allowed to lament the deaths of others or those who died long ago. The sacrificing of a bull was prohibited in conjunction with the burial. Only women who were close relatives of the deceased could lament, and they were forced to stand behind the men. (Judging from pottery paintings, they did not always comply.) There were also rules that privatized mourning, so to speak. For instance, vigil over the dead had to be carried out indoors and be over by sunrise. In a law from Delphi (late fifth century), it was decreed that everyone except those closest to the deceased had to go straight home after the burial. Any violation of these laws was punished by gynaikonómoi – a kind of civil servant who dealt with matters concerning women.

Why did the Greek city-state care so much about how people mourned their dead? It was, in fact, part of a more general policy aimed at strengthening the state’s position, above all at the expense of the aristocratic clans. The aim was to prevent these clans from strengthening their internal cohesion with the help of burial rituals – thus the ban on excessive financial and symbolic investment; thus also the limit on public exposure and the desire to make the funeral an event for the closest family members and not for the whole clan. The special focus on women is explained by the dominant role of women in the ritual mourning at the funeral, which hence played an important role in the clan structure. Women’s lamentations at the grave were particularly dangerous because they stimulated blood revenge between rival clans. Men were the ones who carried out the vendettas, but women demanded that of them in their lamenting the dead. In both Aeschylus and Sophocles, there are examples of women lamenting the dead who demand blood. When Solon issued his law, Athens was still plagued by a thirty-year-old blood feud between the Megacles and Cylon clans.

Along with the founders of the state, there was another power in antiquity that attacked the lamentation of the dead – Christianity. However, Christian reasoning had nothing to do with the benefit to the state but with teleological consistency. In pre-Christian antiquity, most people probably believed that the soul died with the body. Others thought that people survived as bloodless shadows. Despair over death was understandable given this belief. But now, if the word of Jesus was true – that we do not die when we die – there was no reason to despair when someone died. Early Church fathers saw it as an embarrassing hypocrisy that harmed matters when alleged Christians took part in lamenting the dead. Augustine is particularly poignant in his Confessions when he is so clearly ashamed about starting to cry over the death of his mother, Monica, after struggling so long to hold back his tears.

Yet despite the opposition of the state and the Church, both the lamentation of the dead and the vendetta have survived into our era, including in southern Italy.

On Easter, we headed off to the little mountain town of San Luca, famed for its religious energy but also for its historically key position in the ´ndrangheta. We witnessed what are called affruntata, wooden sculptures carried by young men. One depicted Jesus resurrected, another San Giovanni, who carried the message of the resurrection to the third one, which portrayed Jesus’ mother, the Madonna. It all ended with the young men carrying the wooden sculptures rushing into a church filled with people dressed in their Sunday finest. ”Viva la Madonna!” the women screamed – and we northern Europeans were reminded of how intense, vital and physical Christianity can be in different strains of Catholicism.

I have rarely experienced anything so sexually segregated as that Easter in San Luca. All the women walked behind the Madonna. The men stood with other men in different groups in the town. Young men gave menacing, challenging looks – and it was often wise to lower your eyes. An acquaintance said that a lot of the ”problems” in the town are instigated by hormone-charged adolescents between 14 and 20. But the ´ndrangheta clans are run by older men.

Two of San Lucas’ powerful clans have been fighting a bloody vendetta since 1991. In 1992, when someone from the Vottari family was murdered, there was an attempt to negotiate a peace that required five people killed to equal the value of the dead person. The offer was rejected.

A few older men addressed us with a sneer in German. I explained in Italian that we were Swedish but knew deep down that the men knew what the German made us think of: what happened in Duisburg last summer.

In Duisburg, on the 15th of August, six people belonging to one of the battling clans in San Luca were murdered. Apart from it being a vendetta of honour and balance, there was also financial antagonism behind it. This involved all manner of criminal activity, including large-scale narcotics deals.

I was in Sicily when the murders took place and followed the developments in the newspapers. Neither the mayor nor the parish priest wanted to say who might have been the perpetrator (even though everyone knows which clans are fighting each other). The priest said that one should never take sides with one of the parties fighting. And the mayor explained why he did not proclaim a ”town mourning”: it was because it had never been done so before and could have been wrongly interpreted as taking a position.

It was reported how the mothers of the murdered men had either forgiven the perpetrator or not. One did; the others did not. The background to this is what in research is called ”the pedagogy of the vendetta”, and which is considered to be specifically the task of the women in the traditional culture of honour. The women incite the men, especially the sons, to avenge and thus re-establish the honour of the family. Pressure from the women can consist of taunts and invectives: a person who does not avenge his father is not a real man etc. The psychological pressure from the women increases in connection with the anniversary of the loss of honour. In Calabria, the tradition has been observed of women saving the clothes of the murdered person so that the son will wear them when he takes his revenge.

The bishop of Locri issued an appeal to the women of San Luca:

”Make these vendettas stop. Only you can do so: this is not simply ´ndrangheta – it’s not just interests but also emotions, sentiments, bitterness. The feud is in the hearts of women; they are the ones who carry forgiveness in them. Or the vendetta.”

The bishop let a nun named Iavazzo work with women in the area. She had worked previously with the anti-mafia priest Pino Puglisi in Palermo. Puglisi was murdered by the mafia in 1993. For a number of years now, there has been an ongoing conversation between the nun and the women who have been pulled in by the vendetta. Iavazzo said that she reasoned this way:

”I explain how I understand their anger. It’s the same anger I felt when Don Puglisi was murdered. I also thought that I would never be able to forgive. But then I forgave.”

And the funeral was politicized in the same way as during antiquity. The police wanted the ceremony to be private, perhaps have it held at dawn and then perhaps somewhere other than the church in San Luca. But the family wanted a public burial, ”not an extravagant ceremony, but a normal one, where anyone regardless of their last name can show their pain”.

One of the mothers said that if the ceremony could not be public, than it would be the same thing as having her son murdered two times. Another threatened to chain herself to the church. And the authorities took note. The governor of Reggio Calabria said that after threats of this kind, they decided to make the ceremony public. However, the authorities did get their way in banning a procession. The coffins were taken immediately to the church. And in the same way, they were transported immediately after the ceremony to the cemetery, without a procession.

Translated by Susan Long