The main difficulty connected with the ‘appeasement’ of the Oresteian Erinnyes arises from the fact that they are not unanimous in their opinions about Orestes, and that some of them—the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra—are in violent conflict with the official opinion of Apollo. At a later stage we shall be in a position to explain this difficulty more clearly. At present we will merely cite a law of Plato which is probably based on the old traditions of patriarchal tribes (as they were modified in course of time by Apollinism), and which forbids the slayer of a kinsman who slays under the influence of passion, ever to return to domestic communion with his kindred, even though he may return to his native state and undergo ‘purgation.’ We refer to this law because it is possible to interpret the act of Orestes, from Apollo’s standpoint, not as fully justified but rather as in a sense involuntary, being extenuated by a religious command, as ‘passion’ would have extenuated it. Plato says[149]: ‘If a father or a mother in a passion kills a son or daughter ... let them be exiled for three years and be “purged,” but, on return, let the husband be divorced from the wife and the wife from the husband ... and not dwell in communion with (the family) ... or share with them in sacred rites.’ Now, in the Apolline system it is probable that the murder of a husband by his wife was of equal gravity with kin-murder which was punishable with death. Coulanges points out[150] that the wife belonged to the domestic religion of her husband, even though she did not belong to his kindred. In the Pelasgian wergeld system husband and wife are ‘strangers’ in matters of homicide; but in the Apolline religious system they are members of the same hearth and home. Moreover, in historical times failure to obey the Apolline laws laid the delinquent open to a charge of impiety, for which the penalty of death might be inflicted. There is a suggestion of these legal viewpoints in Apollo’s attitude when he tells[151] the Erinnyes that Clytaemnestra, the murderess of her husband, was justly slain, and that Orestes would have merited death if he had not slain her; and in the answer of the Erinnyes concerning the act of Clytaemnestra, that ‘her slaying was not kindred bloodshed’[152]; and that Orestes, the slayer of his mother, must be pursued until he dies![153] Now, Plato suggests that in the Apolline code exclusion from domestic religion attended the ‘extenuated’ slaying of a parent by a son, even when the dying parent formally ‘forgave.’[154] Apart from the impossibility of the supposition of a formal ‘forgiveness’ of Orestes on the part of Clytaemnestra, it is clear that the Erinnyes of the Apolline era would have naturally objected to the presence of Orestes in the home of his fathers. Thus they say, in the _Eumenides_[155]: