How then do we explain the Demosthenic passage[92] with which we began our present inquiry? The essential points in this passage are, we think, the reference to the murderer as actually ‘walking about in the temples or in the market-place,’ and the implication that he was ‘proclaimed’ but untried and unconvicted. Assuming that the relatives of the slain had proclaimed the slayer but had not proceeded with the prosecution, we can understand why the normal procedure of homicide-prosecution could not have been applied. For the relatives of the slain alone had the right of direct prosecution. But if the murderer had been proclaimed, but was, for some reason, untried and unconvicted, he could, if he frequented the temples or public places, have been proceeded against directly by a γραφὴ ἀσεβείας—an indictment for impiety. For the validity of such an indictment it was necessary that he should have been formally proclaimed as a slayer by the relatives of the slain: for, otherwise, he could not be regarded as publicly ‘polluted.’ But if we assume that he was proclaimed, and that afterwards—either because of lack of evidence, or because the proper time had passed by, or simply because the relatives of the slain were indifferent (we may suppose that they were bribed by a ‘private settlement’)—he proceeded to act as if he had not been proclaimed, then it was open to any citizen to indict the proclaimed homicide for impiety, but only if he was found in the temples or the market-place. The result of a successful indictment of this kind would have been more severe than that of a successful murder-charge: for though the slayer could have saved his property, he would not have been permitted to go into perpetual banishment, but he would have been put to death. It is therefore, we think, a γραφὴ ἀσεβείας to which Demosthenes in this passage refers. Such an indictment would have been in practice but not in theory an indictment for murder. In theory it was an indictment for impiety or sacrilege. To win the indictment it was not necessary that the plaintiff should prove that the defendant was a murderer. For a proclaimed murderer had to prove his innocence. Hence, normally, a proclaimed murderer would either have challenged a verdict immediately after accusation, or he would have fled into exile. Thus, once more, we observe that ‘private settlement’ was not only illegal but was dangerously so. If the slayer settled with the relatives of the slain, they could have been indicted; and if he frequented the temples or the market-place, he himself could have been indicted for impiety. But if he was not proclaimed by the relatives of the slain, they alone could have been indicted for impiety: yet an adverse verdict would have involved his condemnation. Such is our solution of this difficult problem.