(3) The post-Homeric pre-Apolline Erinnys—a divine being whose nature can only be inferred by the logic of elimination—reflects in a more emphatic manner the blood-thirst of the slain. In the relaxation of Achaean military discipline which followed the Trojan war: in the great invasions and migrations, and in the demoralisation of clan-control, in a chaotic society such as Hesiod describes,[134] where force is the only law, and justice, virtue, honour, hospitality, loyalty and fraternal love have vanished from the earth, the Erinnys came to assume a diabolical aspect: murder was confused with vengeance; the anger of impotent avengers became implacable: and inexorable hatred was attributed to the Erinnyes of the slain. At this period the gods were credited with an approval of collective punishment[135] such as men themselves practised. Nemesis became a god.[136] Kronos is now said to have devoured his children, and Rhea, their mother, inflamed the Erinnyes against him.[137] The blood-offerings which from time immemorial had been laid at the tomb of the dead were now interpreted, not as a resuscitation of the dead for purposes of necromancy or for the production of fertility, but, in the case of murdered dead, as the satisfaction of an unquenched thirst for blood. Curses became more frequent and more terrible than in days when tribal law or military control rendered recourse to religious sanctions less necessary. To this period we attribute the prevalence of customs of which some survived to historical times, while others soon became obsolete: we refer to the custom of writing curses on tombstones, the custom of planting a spear in the grave,[138] and the custom of μασχαλισμός, or partial mutilation of a corpse.[139] To those days, rather than to historical Greece, apply the words of the Chorus in the _Electra_ of Sophocles[140]: The curse hath found, and they in earth who lie Are living powers to-day. Long dead, they drain away The streaming blood of those who made them die. In the _Ion_ of Euripides[141] we are told that around the Omphalos, or Sacred Stone, were figures of the Gorgons. One editor[142] of this play remarks that these figures suggested to Aeschylus the dramatic forms of his Erinnyes. We are much more inclined to believe this, than to suppose, with Miss Harrison[143] or with Verrall,[144] that Aeschylus invented the dramatic form of the ‘tragic’ Erinnys. We shall see later[145] that Aeschylus conceived the Erinnyes as Titans, as rebels against Zeus and the Olympians. Whence came this rebel-rôle of the Erinnyes? The answer will, perhaps, be more intelligible if we explain the nature of the Apolline or ‘historical’ Erinnys.