So far we have assumed that only two States were involved in the homicide. But let us suppose that an Athenian slew a Theban at Argos. It would seem that the Athenian slayer, if he elected to become an exile rather than to die, was debarred from three places or rather three States, namely, Athens, Thebes and Argos. Plato, speaking of involuntary homicide between strangers, metics, and citizens, says[198]: ‘If a stranger involuntarily kills a stranger in the city, let anyone who wishes prosecute him in accordance with the same laws: if the slayer is a metic, let him go into exile for a year: if he is a complete foreigner, let him, if he shall have killed a stranger or a metic or a citizen, be banished for his whole life from the country which has power over these laws,[199] and if he returns contrary to the law let the guardians of the laws punish him with death.’ The city which has ‘authority or power in regard to these laws’ must be, in this case, the city in which the deed took place. Thus, a person guilty of involuntary homicide could in certain circumstances be debarred for ever from the place in which the deed occurred, and for at least a year from the land of the victim and also from his native land. Who could have enacted such laws except an international authority? The operation of such an authority is also revealed in the laws regarding ἀνδροληψία, or the seizure of hostages, when a murderer was not tried or punished by a ‘foreign’ State. A law which is attributed to Dracon, but which clearly must have had its origin in some national or central Greek authority of pre-Draconian days, reads as follows[200]: ‘If anyone dies a violent death, his relations shall be entitled to take hostages on his behalf, until (the people concerned) either challenge a verdict of murder at a trial (δίκας τοῦ φόνου ὑπόσχωσιν) or extradite the slayers: and the taking of hostages shall extend to three persons but not more.’ The meaning of the law may be thus illustrated: if an Athenian slew a Theban at Argos, and if the Argives ignored the deed, and no one prosecuted the slayer, the relatives of the Theban could come to Argos and seize the first three men whom they met, and hold them as hostages till the Argives either tried the slayer or handed him up to the Thebans. We have taken an extreme case, but it is such a case which Demosthenes has in mind when he comments[201] on the law. In historical Greece, the duty of prosecution was normally limited to the relatives of the slain. The slaying of strangers was therefore likely to pass without prosecution. But this right of ἀνδροληψία was an important corrective of the laxity of this system. Relatives, living at a distance, ignorant of the actual slayer, might be regarded as impotent since they knew not whom to accuse. But the seizure of hostages would speed up the revelation of the criminal!