We will now support and illustrate our views by a few quotations. Demosthenes[265] tells us that ‘if the victim (ὁ παθών) himself releases the slayer from guilt of blood before he (the victim) dies, it is not lawful for the relatives to prosecute.’ This is a most important piece of evidence, although the context in which it occurs is vitiated by rhetorical exaggeration. It means, in effect, that in any kind of homicide[266] the relatives of the slain were powerless in regard to prosecution if the dying man ‘released’ his slayer and did not ‘charge’ them to avenge him. Thus even the homicide laws of a theocratic Apollo and of centralised Greek governments depend for their operation on the will of the victim. In such an event the slayer was not ‘polluted.’ No impiety, no illegality was involved in ‘private settlement’ in such a case; on the contrary, to prosecute the slayer would probably have been impious. Not even a charge of involuntary homicide (which was possible in the case of simple ‘forgiveness’ on the part of the dying) could be brought against the slayer, if the victim ‘released’ him from all guilt of blood. This decree of the dying was tantamount to a ‘release’ in law; it did not merely reduce the charge to one of justifiable or accidental slaying. Hence the ‘private settlement,’ which no doubt occasionally occurred in such cases, was not so much a bribe offered to prevent prosecution as an informal offer of material retribution—a relic of the old-time wergeld traditions of tribal Greece. In a speech of Lysias which is concerned with political or judicial murder, we are told[267] that one of the condemned, named Dionysodorus, summoned his brother and sister and brother-in-law to prison before he died and charged them ‘and all his kindred’ (φίλοις) to punish as a murderer Agoratus who had given the false information which led to his condemnation. Thus we see converted into a charge of wilful murder an act which ordinarily would have been regarded as political perjury. The relatives of Dionysodorus actually decided to take the law into their own hands[268]—political ferment demands such drastic action—and they would have slain Agoratus as a criminal (κακοῦργος) if Anytus, the general, had not persuaded them, on grounds of public policy and expediency, to desist. The Thirty Tyrants acquitted Agoratus later, presumably because of political prejudice. The plaintiff in this speech[269] appeals to the Heliasts to do the pious and just thing and to condemn him to death. Thus we see how the relatives of a slain man were directed and compelled by the ‘charge’ of the dying. There was nothing involuntary about this case of homicide, as some writers seem to assume.[270] It was deliberate political murder.