(2) _The Palladium_[61]—the court for involuntary homicide: ‘here it is the law that both parties should first take oath (διωμοσία), then deliver their speeches, and finally that the court should decide.’ Demosthenes gives no further details, but the missing information is supplied by Aristotle and by Pausanias. We shall see presently[62] that at one period this court probably tried all kinds of homicide pleas between citizens. The legend[63] concerning Demophon’s plea at this court must have originated at such a period. But the court had developed, we think, before the time of Solon a specialised function in regard to pleas of involuntary homicide. The reason for this was, perhaps, because it was situated outside the city boundary and would naturally therefore have been selected as a court of appeal by exiles who had been convicted of manslaughter and who were anxious to return. Hence in Solon’s time this court was habitually appealed to by the citizens in charges of manslaughter. If it still continued to hear pleas of wilful murder between foreigners, this was perhaps because such pleas were regarded as of minor importance. In such cases no Athenian court could decree or execute the penalty of confiscation, since the slayers were foreigners, and their property was not subject to Athenian control. It is also possible that the laws of extradition (ἀνδροληψία) made it desirable to judge cases of homicide between foreigners at a court which was outside the original boundary of the city. (3) _The Delphinium_[64]: ‘There is a third tribunal, of all courts the most sacred and filled with awe, in which a person acknowledges that he has slain another but contends that he has done it lawfully. This is the court at the Delphinium. It appears to me, men of Athens, that they who originally distinguished the lawful from the unlawful inquired whether it was right to consider no homicide lawful, or whether a certain kind of homicide must be considered lawful.... Considering then that Orestes who admitted that he slew his mother was acquitted by a tribunal of gods, they decided that some kinds of homicide were justifiable.... Having come to that decision they defined in precise terms the circumstances in which it was lawful to kill.’ What a halo of sanctity still seems to surround this Delphinium court! In ancient societies it was much less difficult to ascertain the identity of a slayer than it was to define the boundaries of righteous and unrighteous slaying. But once the boundary lines were fixed, and we have seen[65] how they were fixed by a law of Dracon, the judgment resolved itself into a question of facts. Apart from religion, however, facts may be obscured by perjury. Hence it was probably the religious atmosphere of the court, and also its procedure, which was consecrated by long tradition, that caused the verdicts of the court to be revered and respected.