(3) It was in post-Achaean times, and especially in the Hesiodic period and in the Dark Ages of Greek history, that murder and vengeance passed outside the control of law or discipline. In such conditions it was more than probable that murder would be unjustly punished, but it was equally probable that it would not be avenged at all. Into this abyss of chaos came in the seventh century the Apolline religion of ‘pollution.’ The birth of great States, the dawn of synoekised nationhood, was overshadowed by the wrath of gods and ghosts, which reflected the vindictive hatred of human vengeance. Amongst the first essential duties of the new-born States was the prevention of murder and the regulation of vengeance. In Attica, especially, where the blight of chaos fell most lightly,[174] could the new religion be most promptly honoured and obeyed. (4) We will not maintain that the pollution-doctrine, alone and unaided, would have led to the official State execution of the penalty of death. Amongst the Hebrews,[175] one may point out, the ‘pollution’ of the murderer coexisted with the avenger of blood. The obligation of the State, one may hold, was satisfied by the trial and the condemnation of the murderer, and by the sentence of outlawry which was pronounced against him. But we would suggest, on the other hand, that Greek States did not confine themselves to a sentence of outlawry. The murderer, in Greek law, at the moment of his condemnation, nay at the moment that he challenged a verdict and uttered his second speech at the trial, no longer ranked as an outlaw; he was a State criminal whose insult to the State and its gods must be atoned by public execution. Like the sacrilegious criminal, he must be executed solemnly and with public execration. His body cannot be buried in the tomb of his fathers. Naked, it is cast beyond the civic boundaries, amidst the curses and the groans of the mob, to be eaten by dogs and wild birds when it has been bruised and mutilated by the stones and missiles which are hurled not by the relatives only, but by an angered populace.