Feudalism has thus exacted a new penalty which the clan-regime did not exact. On the other hand we find a diminution in the collective punishment which tribal wergeld carried with it, in the law of King Edmund (A.D. 940-946) which may thus be rendered in modern English[40]: ‘If anyone henceforth slay any man, (I will) that he himself bear the feud unless with the aid of his friends he compensate it with full wergeld within twelve months. But if they will not pay, I will that all the kindred be free from the feud except the murderer, provided they do not afterwards give him food and protection.’ In such laws as these we catch a glimpse of a system of blood-vengeance which once prevailed amongst tribal peoples, but which soon became a mere echo, a phantom shadow of its former self, in the march of mightier movements, in the onward course of civilisation. We have wandered far afield in the search for definite details of the wergeld system, as we shall look in vain for such details in the ancient literature of Greece, though we can have no doubt that the system prevailed in Greece for many centuries. It is true that in the laws of Gortyn we find[41] a classification of money-payments which were exacted for adultery and seduction at a period which no authority regards as earlier than the seventh century B.C., and which is generally believed[42] to be the sixth or fourth century B.C. These payments varied according to the rank of the offender and of the injured party: and also according to the particular circumstances of the offence.[43] But at the time of the Gortyn laws, Crete had passed out of the stage in which murder was materially compensated. Hence these laws contain no reference to the wergeld system. We must therefore be content to apply to the earliest societies of Greek lands the general principles of the payment of wergeld which we find operative in other tribal countries. We have in the text of Homer unmistakable evidence[44] for the payment of some form of wergeld. The only question that arises is: was this payment a mere sordid termination of a sanguinary feud, such as characterised the Montenegrins up to recent years, or was it a genuine tribal wergeld? Before attempting to answer this question, it will be necessary to examine briefly the nature of the societies which existed in Homeric Greece. SECTION II