We may ask whether, in the event of a verdict for the defendant (the accuser), this court could have condemned the vanquished plaintiff to death? We agree with Lipsius[66] that theoretically it could have done so. In practice, however, it rarely did so, because the Archon Basileus must have previously estimated the balance of guilt in favour of the plaintiff (accused), and if he were vanquished at the Delphinium it was probably open to him to advance a further plea of manslaughter in the Palladium. The real meaning of a verdict of this court against the plaintiff was an imputation of some degree of homicide guilt, not necessarily the full guilt of wilful murder. The attempt[67] to connect Orestes with the institution of this court is very interesting, but it is not successful. If it was the Areopagus which really acquitted Orestes, why did the Athenians set up a new court for such pleas? If it was the Delphinium, then why did legend connect him with the Areopagus? According to one account it was the gods who acquitted Orestes,[68] yet it was open to Aeschylus[69] to represent him as acquitted by Athenian citizens! It is important, however, in view of our subsequent analysis of the Oresteian legend in Attic tragedy, to note that according to at least one form of the legend, it was on a plea of justifiable matricide that Orestes was tried and acquitted. Though Plato[70] says that in no circumstances was it lawful to kill one’s parent, yet Plato would admit, we have no doubt, that the command of Apollo constituted an extenuation if not a justification for such a deed, in the days of private vengeance. But the connexion of Orestes with two different courts suggests a variation in the legends of Orestes, for it is unlikely that the same legend would have represented him as having been prosecuted before both courts on the same charge. (4) _The Prytaneum_[71]: ‘If a stone or a piece of wood or iron or anything of the kind falls and strikes a person, and we are ignorant who threw it but know and have in our possession the instrument of death, proceedings are taken against such instruments here.’ Demosthenes does not mention animals, but Aristotle supplies this deficiency.[72] It is strange to speak of an object ‘falling and striking’ and at the same time to assume that somebody threw it. We have already suggested[73] that even if the thrower was known, proceedings could still be taken against the object if the thrower could swear that he did not intend to kill any person. Is it not probable that the weapon by which a person was accidentally slain in war or at gymnastic exercises, or the weapon by which a person was deliberately but justifiably slain, according to the Draconian law, would, after the slayer’s acquittal at the Delphinium, be tried and found guilty here?