Homer,[90] she says, does not understand the mystery of Bellerophon and the Aleïan plain, but Apollodorus[91] reveals the fact that Bellerophon slew his brother unwittingly and that he was purified by Proetus. Apollodorus, she thinks, is unhistorical in speaking of the purification of Bellerophon: in those old days, she says,[92] he could not be purified. But as murder was a physical infection, Bellerophon had to go to the Aleïan plain, an alluvial deposit which had recently been recovered from the sea and which was not therefore included in the ‘earth’ which was polluted by his deed of blood. The fallacies of this interpretation will become evident in the course of our reasoning. At present we will merely point out (1) that there is no evidence for the assertion that murder was a ‘physical infection’ in the Homeric age. Everything that we have said about the Pelasgian wergeld system and the Achaean protection of murder-exiles proves the contrary; (2) the plain of wandering, if that is what Homer meant by Ἀλήϊον, (it may have been a local place-name which conveyed to him no special meaning,) does not imply an alluvial deposit of any kind, but possibly a special place which known murderers, condemned to perpetual exile, were wont to frequent; (3) Apollodorus may be unhistorical, in speaking of the purgation of Bellerophon, but so is every Greek writer of the historical period who attributed purgation to Achaean heroes, as Aeschylus, for instance, does, to Orestes; (4) to explain the absence of references to purgation in Homer by suggesting that the death of the murderer was the only purgation of his crime, and to imply that Bellerophon was fleeing from purgation when he fled from death to the Aleïan plain, is equivocal and misleading. For a murderer was either purged or he was not purged; and if a murderer was put to death in sacrifice, no one could logically speak of him as ‘purged.’ F. de Coulanges seems also to connect the purgation rites for homicide with the worship of the dead. In the primitive family group, he says,[93] ‘there were domestic morals. The shedder of blood was no longer allowed to sacrifice or to offer libations or prayer or to offer the sacred repast.... The hand stained with blood could no longer touch sacred objects. To enable a man to renew his worship and to regain possession of his god, he was required at least to purify himself by an expiatory ceremony.’ This opinion implies that such rites were as old as the domestic religion of the Family. The most serious objection to this implication is that Homer has no genuine reference to any such ceremony.