homicide cases, and such cases as were more likely to require purgation. Thus, wilful murder between foreigners was comparatively a minor issue, and was no longer tried by the Areopagus. Such cases were relegated to the Palladium court, perhaps because it lay outside the city.[150] Again, charges of murder which were brought against a person already convicted of manslaughter were naturally tried at Phreatto, as such a slayer was not permitted to land in Attica. It was in some such way as this, we think, that a traditional custom had grown up in regard to the distribution of homicide pleas among different courts in the time of Dracon and of Solon. Solon made the Areopagus the basis for a reform which was directed against the old nobility, partly because it was feasible to introduce innovations into this court with the least possible interference with existing religious traditions, but even more so because the Ephetae-Areopagus was the keystone of the fabric of aristocratic power. Here, despite the advancing influence of the Senate of Four Hundred with its increasing executive and administrative powers, the old nobility retained the strongest outpost of authority in a court which, amidst other privileges, possessed the right of final decision in matters of life and death. This right of final decision was not a privilege of the new Solonian Areopagus—it was transferred to the popular Heliastic courts. The innovations of Pericles and Ephialtes in 460 B.C. reduced the Areopagus almost to the level of a simple homicide court[151]: yet its personnel, which was composed of ex-archons, enabled it as a judicial body to command general respect. But it was, nevertheless, the traditions and the religious procedure of the court which lifted it above the level of the Crush and the Triangle. This theory, which we have propounded, of the origin and evolution of the Areopagus is in perfect harmony with the statement of Demosthenes[152] that: ‘neither tyranny nor oligarchy nor democracy have ventured to deprive this tribunal of its jurisdiction in murder.’ But Gilbert’s theory[153] of Draconian interference with the judicial powers of the Areopagus is not consistent with this statement. The opinion of Pollux[154] and of Plutarch[155] that there was no Areopagus court before the time of Solon contains at least an important element of truth, since it may be taken to imply that the Areopagus of historical times, the personnel of which was composed of ex-archons, did not exist before the time of Solon. The pre-Solonian Areopagus was not in our opinion really distinguishable from the Ephetae. Hence, there is a sense in which the statement of Pollux is true, that in Solon’s time ‘the Ephetae sat in the five murder courts.’[156]