[153] Iliad, xxii. 487-500. Hesiod dwells upon injury to orphan children, however, as a heinous offence (Opp. Di. 330). [154] Iliad, xxii. 371. οὐδ᾽ ἄρα οἵ τις ἀνούτητί γε παρέστη. Argument of Iliad. Minor. ap. Düntzer, Epp. Fragm. p. 17; Virgil, Æneid, vi. 520. Both Agamemnôn and the Oiliad Ajax cut off the heads of slain warriors, and send them rolling like a ball or like a mortar among the crowd of warriors (Iliad, xi. 147; xiii. 102). The ethical maxim preached by Odysseus in the Odyssey, not to utter boastful shouts over a slain enemy (Οὐκ ὁσίη, κταμένοισιν ἐπ᾽ ἀνδράσιν εὐχετάασθαι, xxii. 412), is abundantly violated in the Iliad. [155] Herodot. ix. 78-79. Contrast this strong expression from Pausanias, with the conduct of the Carthaginians towards the end of the Peloponnesian war, after their capture of Selinus in Sicily, where, after having put to death 16,000 persons, they mutilated the dead bodies,—κατὰ τὸ πάτριον ἔθος (Diodôr. xiii. 57-86). The different manner of dealing with homicide presents a third test, perhaps more striking yet, of the change in Grecian feelings and manners during the three centuries preceding the Persian invasion. That which the murderer in the Homeric times had to dread, was, not public prosecution and punishment, but the personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends of the deceased, who were stimulated by the keenest impulses of honor and obligation to avenge the deed, and were considered by the public as specially privileged to do so.[156] To escape from this danger, he is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment (we must not speak of coined money, in the days of Homer) as satisfaction for their slain comrade. They may, if they please, decline the offer, and persist in their right of revenge; but if they accept, they are bound to leave the offender unmolested, and he accordingly remains at home without farther consequences. The chiefs in agora do not seem to interfere, except to insure payment of the stipulated sum. [156] The Mosaic law recognizes this habit and duty on the part of the relatives of the murdered man, and provides cities of refuge for the purpose of sheltering the offender in certain cases (Deuteron. xxxv. 13-14; Bauer, Handbuch der Hebraïschen Alterthümer, sect. 51-52). The relative who inherited the property of a murdered man was specially obliged to avenge his death (H. Leo, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte des Jüdischen Staats.—Vorl. iii. p. 35).