Having now set forth the most important features of the homicide-judicature of Athens in the fourth century B.C., it remains to inquire what inferences may be drawn from these features as to the origin and the evolution of these courts. Our views as to the general origin of the Attic courts have already been indicated.[98] The theory of Gilbert and of Köhler that these courts originated in the right of sanctuary we have rejected as improbable.[99] The court at Phreatto had no connexion with a temple. Neither had the Prytaneum. The temple of Athene Areia on the Areopagus may not have existed when the hill first became famed for its legal judgments. The Palladium and the Delphinium were both temple courts, and during the Dark Ages (900-750 B.C.) the right of sanctuary may have given to these places their first connexion with homicide-investigation. This is, however, an accidental matter. The real cause of the birth of the Attic murder courts was the concurrence of the doctrine of homicide-pollution with the political synoekism of States in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Some Attic courts may have functioned in an arbitrary manner for local offences in earlier times, but their historical rôle began, and some of them, like Phreatto, were born, in the seventh century B.C. DRACON AND THE EPHETAE Was it then Dracon who established the Ephetae courts as Solon established the Heliastic courts? Gilbert[100] finds it difficult to decide this question. ‘Whether Dracon himself,’ he says, ‘introduced or merely codified, in accordance with customs already existing, the system by which murder cases were tried at Athens and which, even measured by the standard of to-day, is tolerably complete, can as little be decided with certainty as can the question whether he was the founder of the five different courts at which in later times the trial was held according to the nature of the case.’ Yet, a few lines previously[101] Gilbert decides the latter question in the affirmative. ‘Dracon,’ he says, ‘transferred the judicial powers which the Areopagus had previously possessed to two new bodies which he created, the Ephetae and the Prytaneis.’ This question, for many scholars, has turned on the interpretation of a passage in Pollux,[102] who wrote eight hundred years after the event. Pollux says of the Ephetae that they were fifty-one in number and that ‘Dracon established them, chosen on grounds of birth. They were the judges of those accused of bloodshed in the five courts. It was Solon who established in addition the council of the Areopagus.’