Yet we cannot suppose that the pollution-doctrine of itself degraded murderers to the same level with sacrilegious criminals, at least in the judgment of Apolline theocratic nobles, the pre-historical Greek sacerdotal aristocracy. From the _Ion_ of Euripides[176] we infer that sacrilege was the main element which the Delphian nobles and magistrates condemned in the attempted murder of Ion, the priest of Apollo, by Creusa. We cannot infer that ordinary homicide would have called for such public action unless we assume that the Delphians, in addition to being priests, were also the leaders of a civic government. Their action in the _Andromache_[177] in slaying, in conjunction with Orestes, Neoptolemus, who was consecrated by his presence in the sanctuary, cannot be reconciled with their procedure in the _Ion_ unless we assume that the death of Neoptolemus was an act of vengeance. Such indeed it was, but, as Euripides presents it,[178] it was entirely out of proportion to the offence. The attitude of the Delphians in the _Ion_, and also the survival of the avenger of blood in Hebrew society under the operation of ‘pollution’ doctrines, prevents us from asserting that private execution was abolished by ‘pollution.’ (5) But we have suggested[179] that the murder code of historical Greece was a compromise between three forces: (_a_) the tribal traditions of material retribution to the relatives of the slain; (_b_) the Apolline doctrine of homicide as an offence against the gods; and (_c_) the conception of murder as an insult to the majesty of the State and to its gods, which arose after the synoekism of local peoples and the establishment of strong civic governments. As we believe that the pollution-doctrine abolished wergeld, so we believe that the concurrence of the pollution-doctrine with State power led to the abolition of private execution for homicide in the rare cases in which the murderer refused to flee and was put to death, because he had the audacity to perjure himself in the attempt to prove his innocence. It follows that official execution was in existence in Dracon’s time. There is no more reason for delaying its arrival twenty years in order to link its advent with the name of Solon than there is for supposing that wergeld was not abolished before the time of Solon. Between 600 B.C. and the time of Demosthenes we know of no civic or legal innovation to which such a change could be attributed. The ‘Eleven’ who obeyed the verdicts of the Heliasts also obeyed the decision of the Areopagus and of the pre-Solonian Ephetae courts.[180] Such evidence for State execution as we possess in Plato and the Attic orators, far from suggesting that it was a recent innovation, implies on the contrary that in their time it was a well-established practice.