(5) _At Phreatto_[74]: ‘There is yet a fifth court ... that in Phreatto. Here, men of Athens, the law requires a person to be tried if one is in exile on account of involuntary homicide and if, before those who procured his banishment have accepted “appeasement” from him, he incurs another charge, this time, of wilful murder. The framer of these laws did not overlook the criminal’s case because it was impossible for him to come to Athens, nor did he take the charge against him for granted because he had done some such act before. He devised a means by which religion was not outraged and the criminal was not deprived of a hearing and a trial.... He brought the judges to a spot to which the criminal might come, appointing a certain place in Attica by the sea. The accused sails up in a ship and pleads without touching the land: the judges hear him and give their verdict on the shore: if found guilty, he suffers the penalty of wilful murder, quite justly: if acquitted, he escapes that penalty but continues to serve the exile decreed for his previous manslaughter.’ The influence of the pollution doctrine in the origin of this court is quite manifest. The contingency which is thus provided for was, no doubt, very rare, but it was not nevertheless ignored. The ‘framer of the laws’ here referred to is, of course, Dracon, but we think that the court may have existed for some years before his time. The seventh century is, however, the most probable date of its origin. In view of the facts narrated in this quotation it is difficult to understand how scholars can believe that ‘private settlement’ was legal even for manslaughter.[75] The theoretical power of the relatives of the slain to resist ‘appeasement’ as long as they wished is here most clearly indicated.[76] The procedure here described might, we think, apply to homicide which at first was adjudged involuntary but which came, in the light of later evidence, to be considered voluntary. The penalty of wilful murder here referred to is perpetual exile and confiscation of property. In the event of the slayer choosing to land, he could be arrested and delivered to the ‘Eleven’ for execution; hence it is clear that the verdict of this court involved, _en rupture de ban_, the penalty of death. Plato was probably thinking of this court when he decrees[77] that a murder exile who is cast by a storm upon the coast of forbidden territory may put up a tent in the water and must keep his feet in the water till he finds an opportunity for resuming his voyage!