It is, however, rather inconsistent for Glotz to maintain that confiscation (though prevented by death) was an invariable concomitant of exile and at the same time to suppose that ‘private settlement’ for wilful murder was legal.[138] On purely material grounds, and apart from any religious considerations,[139] it seems obvious that no State would have legalised a bribe which, by paralysing the action of the leading prosecutor, removed from the murderer all civic degradation and deprived the public treasury of that property which it regarded as a partial retribution for the insult which its religion had received. It is not necessary for Glotz[140] to propose, as a novel hypothesis, that the phrase μηδ’ ἀποινᾶν, which forbade the amercement of a murderer _en rupture de ban_, was a Solonian innovation. Why should Solon have troubled to forbid such amercement if ‘private settlement’ was legal? Glotz would answer that the phrase μηδ’ ἀποινᾶν refers to the abolition of wergeld: that wergeld was one of the pillars of clan-power: that Solon, being opposed to clan-power, therefore abolished wergeld: but that ‘private settlement’ was not wergeld and stood therefore on a different plane: that Solon could not have abolished ‘private settlement’ as long as the relatives had the initiative in prosecution! This position we have already[141] discussed at length. It seems clear, _prima facie_, that ‘an amercement _en rupture de ban_’ was not wergeld but was very much akin to, if not actually identical with, ‘private settlement.’ The splendid hypothesis of Glotz must therefore be turned against himself. We may go a step farther. As there is no reason for supposing that Solon rather than Dracon should have prohibited ‘private settlement’ for wilful murder, the phrase μηδ’ ἀποινᾶν, which does not refer to wergeld but does forbid a kind of ‘private settlement’ or ‘amercement,’ is therefore quite properly Draconian. As for wergeld, we have shown that it was abolished, or at least that it lost all but the shadow of its substance, in the religious revolution which declared murder a ‘pollution.’ Any possibility of its resuscitation was removed when in the atmosphere of theocratic religion the State gods claimed, as a retribution, the property of the slayer. For cases of wilful murder at least, which was now placed on an execrable pedestal beside treason and sacrilege, the days of retribution to the relatives of the slain were no more. REFUSAL OF BURIAL TO EXECUTED MURDERERS