of these Erinnyes: and hence in Homer they almost assume the role of ministering spirits, sent to warn or to punish. They are not wicked and malicious, like the Harpies or the Sirens. Thus they are much more human and less, so to speak, diabolical than the real Pelasgian Erinnyes, and this is, perhaps, what Miss Harrison meant to convey when she said[113] that ‘in Homer they are _personified_ beyond recognition.’ The Achaeans could not appreciate the terrible potentialities of the angry ghost-god of the Pelasgians, for the simple reason that they did not worship the ghosts of departed ancestors or any kind of ghosts. It would, however, be a serious error to suppose that the Pelasgian Erinnyes were as formidable and as implacable as the Erinnyes of post-Homeric times. Moreover, it is gratuitous to assume that ghosts were primarily and necessarily angry because they had been murdered. There is no evidence that homicide in Pelasgian times generated implacable Erinnyes. We admit, with Miss Harrison,[114] that primitive man credits his dead kinsman with passions like his own. But we have already pointed out[115] that if the passions of primitive man are checked and controlled by a tribal society which tramples upon individual instincts, and acts in a collective capacity, if wergeld, according to tribal and early civic law, permits a slayer to remain at home and guarantees him immunity from vengeance while his hands are still wet with blood, we cannot reasonably ascribe to ‘dead kinsmen’ a fierce and implacable desire for vengeance.