The story of Odysseus to Eumæus in the Odyssey (xiv. 210-226) furnishes a valuable comparison for this predatory disposition among the Thracians. Odysseus there treats the love of living by war and plunder as his own peculiar taste: he did not happen to like regular labor, but the latter is not treated in any way mean or unbecoming a freeman:— ἔργον δέ μοι οὐ φίλον ἦεν Οὐδ᾽ οἰκωφελίη, ἥ τε τρέφει ἀγλαὰ τέκνα, etc. When, however, among the Homeric men we pass beyond the influence of the private ties above enumerated, we find scarcely any other moralizing forces in operation. The acts and adventures commemorated imply a community wherein neither the protection nor the restraints of law are practically felt, and wherein ferocity, rapine, and the aggressive propensities generally, seem restrained by no internal counterbalancing scruples. Homicide, especially, is of frequent occurrence, sometimes by open violence, sometimes by fraud: expatriation for homicide is among the most constantly recurring acts of the Homeric poems: and savage brutalities are often ascribed, even to admired heroes, with apparent indifference. Achilles sacrifices twelve Trojan prisoners on the tomb of Patroklus, while his son Neoptolemus not only slaughters the aged Priam, but also seizes by the leg the child Astyanax (son of the slain Hector) and hurls him from one of the lofty towers of Troy.[146] Moreover, the celebrity of Autolykus, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, in the career of wholesale robbery and perjury, and the wealth which it enabled him to acquire, are described with the same unaffected admiration as the wisdom of Nestôr or the strength of Ajax.[147] Achilles, Menelaus, Odysseus, pillage in person, wherever they can find an opportunity, employing both force and stratagem to surmount resistance.[148] The vocation of a pirate is recognized and honorable, so that a host, when he asks his guest what is the purpose of his voyage, enumerates enrichment by indiscriminate maritime plunder as among those projects which may naturally enter into his contemplation.[149] Abduction of cattle, and expeditions for unprovoked ravage as well as for retaliation, between neighboring tribes, appear ordinary phenomena;[150] and the established inviolability of heralds seems the only evidence of any settled feeling of obligation between one community and another. While the house and property of Odysseus, during his long absence, enjoys no public protection,[151] those unprincipled chiefs, who consume his substance, find sympathy rather than disapprobation among the people of Ithaka. As a general rule, he who cannot protect himself finds no protection from society: his own kinsmen and immediate companions are the only parties to whom he can look with confidence for support. And in this respect, the representation given by Hesiod makes the picture even worse. In his emphatic denunciation of the fifth age, that poet deplores not only