Müller[107] rightly points out that the ending της normally has an active signification. The word ἐφέτης (we will assume for the moment that the plural form ἐφέται had a corresponding singular form) should not, says Müller, denote ‘a person appealed to,’ but rather a person who permits an avenger to punish. Müller thus connects the word with the verb ἐφίημι, ‘I permit,’ rather than with the term ἔφεσις, meaning ‘appeal.’ Schömann[108] and Gilbert[109] also connect the word with ἐφίημι, but interpret the verb as an archaic form, which means ‘I direct’ persons as to the manner in which the accused should be punished or proceeded against. The Ephetae, according to this view, are ‘the directors’ or the determining arbiters of prosecution or vengeance. Philippi[110] points out that this opinion gives to the term too wide and general a meaning. We agree with this criticism. Any judge or group of judges could have been called ‘Ephetae,’ according to this view. Why, then, we may ask, did not Dracon call these judges by the ordinary title of homicide judges, namely, dicasts (δικασταί)? Such was the usual title of the democratic Heliastic judges. Lange, who at a later period came to favour the Schömann-Gilbert view, originally proposed[111] that the term Ephetae was an abbreviated clause, that the words οἱ ἐφέται are derived from the phrase οἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔταις ὄντες, _i.e._ ‘those who presided over the citizens of full right’—the foremen or heads of the old aristocracy of tribal Attica. Philippi[112] favours the original theory of Lange, which is, he says, ‘so excellent from a linguistic point of view that I am entirely satisfied.’ Philippi points out that, according to this view, the Ephetae are the Athenian counterpart of the Spartan Gerousia and that therefore we can understand their selection on grounds of birth. Glotz[113] also adopts this interpretation. He speaks of ‘les éphètes ou chefs d’ἔται.’ Now, the Homeric word ἔται may mean either cousins or comrades. It was a word which could denote, in Pelasgian life, members of the same clan or of the same phratry. The chiefs of the phratries were therefore nobles, closely connected with the kings of the tribes. It is therefore significant that the only homicide judges who are mentioned in the Draconian inscription of 409-8 are the kings and the Ephetae.