How comes it then, we may ask, that so many writers regard the evolution of early Greek blood-vengeance, and a corresponding evolution in the blood-thirst of the Erinnyes, as a transition from the wild to the tame, from the fierce to the gentle, from the barbarously savage to the rationally civilised? The reason is twofold. First of all, previous writers have not distinguished between the tribally controlled Pelasgians and the bellicose Achaeans, and have therefore misinterpreted the text of Homer. Secondly, many writers have regarded the dark age of chaos of post-Homeric Hesiodic days as a valid picture for early Greece as a whole. This confusion has not only affected modern writers, but it also affected the Greeks of historical times. The various legends of post-Homeric times came to be regarded as a proper medium for the interpretation of Homeric saga. The Athenians of the Periclean age were compelled to regard as barbarians their forebears of pre-Draconian times. It is most important to bear this point in mind, in view of our subsequent analysis of homicide in Attic tragedy. We do not assert that all the legends of Attic tragedy are ‘unhistorical.’ We shall see that in Euripides many legends suggest a reference to a period which we may describe as Homeric or, at least, pre-Hesiodic, and are so faithful a reproduction of that age that they must be either attributed to the most skilful conscious archaising on the part of the dramatist, or regarded as genuine legends which had been transmitted with the least possible adulteration. But most of the legends which we find in the Attic tragedians and in the later epic and prose writers are either adulterated saga, or inventions framed in imitation of such saga. To base a theory of social or religious evolution on such legends is obviously to build upon sand.