(4) We are not concerned here with the nature of the cult of the Erinnyes in historical Greece. We seek rather to describe the Erinnyes as they were moulded in the minds of poets and of legend-makers in accordance with conceptions of homicide which were modified by the Apolline doctrine of ‘pollution’ and ‘purgation,’ and by the evolution of state-control. We must postpone to later parts of our work the details of our theory, and the more complete demonstration of its validity. We will merely give here, as it were by anticipation, a summary of our conclusions. The doctrine of ‘pollution’ which, as we think, came to Greece about 700 B.C., and which was gradually adopted in most Greek states under the rule of the ‘aristocracy of birth,’ declared the homicide to be an enemy to the gods of the State. His presence, in his native State, or in the country of the slain, brought upon the whole community plagues and pestilences and all those evils which the primitive mind attributes to divine anger. In our opinion, such a doctrine was incompatible with any further continuation of the wergeld system which had survived the age of chaos. The abolition of wergeld, at the dictate of Apollo, the national prophet-god of ‘aristocratic’ Greece, was a change which struck at the root of the great tribal principle of retribution to the relatives of the slain. Before the new doctrine acquired the prestige of traditional custom, we should expect that a feeling of revolt would have manifested itself in the sentiments of the old kindred of the clans. Such a revolt would have been reflected, in legend, as an attribute of the Erinnyes of the slain. This conception of a revolting Erinnys will explain the Titanic rôle of the Furies in Aeschylus, and their refusal to recognise the purgation of Orestes by Apollo.