Apart from the irrelevance of this quotation, as an argument for the legality of ‘private settlement,’ we may point out that we have no reason for believing, as Glotz believes, that Aristophanes regarded Orestes as a wilful murderer. Aeschylus in the _Eumenides_ makes the Erinnyes say so,[301] but their viewpoint is shown to be mistaken by an Athenian Court. Euripides also was aware that not only Homer but several Attic legends conceived Orestes as very different from a murderer.[302] In spite of the variety and the confusion which characterised the Oresteian legends, Aristophanes, Euripides and Aeschylus were probably well aware that the Homeric and legendary accounts of the exile of Orestes at Athens or at Phocis had no connexion with the penalty for homicide. We can only say of Glotz’s reasoning here: Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. There is another passage in Demosthenes, to which Glotz seems to attach considerable importance, but which does not in our view warrant the conclusion which he has drawn from it. In a speech _against Nausimachus_, in which an action for breach of trust is brought by the plaintiff against his guardian Aristaechmus, who had, fourteen years before, compromised the dispute by a payment of three talents, Demosthenes is naturally led, in defence of Aristaechmus (or his son) the plaintiff, to emphasise the dishonesty of proceeding with an action where a ‘release’ has been previously granted. Incidentally, the orator happens to refer to ‘private settlements’ for homicide in the following passage[303]: ‘This I presume you will all acknowledge, that other people have suffered wrongs before now, of a more grievous nature than pecuniary wrongs, for example, unintentional homicides, profane outrages and many similar offences are perpetrated; yet in all these cases the injured parties are finally and conclusively barred when they have come to a settlement and given a “release.” This rule of justice is so universally binding that when a man has convicted another of intentional homicide and clearly proved him to be “polluted,” yet if he afterwards condones the crime and “releases” him he has no longer the right to force the same person into exile. Nor again where the murdered man has released his murderer before he died, is it lawful for any of the relatives to prosecute, but those whom the laws sentence, upon conviction, to banishment or exile or death, if they have been released, are by that word “release” at once absolved from all penal consequences.’ This passage is repeated verbatim in the speech _against Pantaenetus_.[304] Müller[305] points out that both passages are ‘disputed’ by many scholars. He thinks that there should only be a reference to involuntary homicide.