But the legend or legends which are found in Aeschylus present very obvious and important points of difference. Are we to suppose that Aeschylus was not aware of any other tradition save that which Homer gives, that all the non-Homeric elements in the Aeschylean account are Aeschylus’ own invention, and that in this invention he was guided by the laws and the atmosphere of his own time? This is not our view of the matter. The Homeric legend, in our opinion, had a long and varied career before Aeschylus was born. It came down through many centuries, reflecting, as it came, many different atmospheres, and assimilating many different points of view, as it took shape in various localities. Thus there was, we maintain, an Arcadian legend which told how Orestes came as an exile—a murder-exile—to Azania and to the town called Oresteum,[3] and how he died there as the result of snake-bite.[4] It is impossible to reconcile this version of the story with another which represented him as having married Hermione[5] and as having reigned as King of Sparta; and with another story of his reign as King of Argos.[6] Again, we shall see that there probably was an Argive legend, which mentioned a trial of Orestes at Argos at which he was condemned to death. From a legal point of view, this is the most important variant of the Homeric saga. Euripides gives it due prominence in the _Orestes_, but Aeschylus and Sophocles ignore it altogether. Again, in what we conceive to have been the Attic forms of the legend, there must have been at least two variations. In our analysis of the Attic law concerning justifiable homicide,[7] we pointed out that at one point the conception of homicide as justifiable may be very closely related to the conception of homicide as extenuated. The short duration of the exile penalty in cases of manslaughter or of slaying in a ‘passion’ when the act is ‘forgiven’ indicates a very slight legal difference between these two standpoints. Yet they cannot of course be regarded as identical, and they cannot even be fused or blended without a considerable indifference to consistency. In the transition from the Homeric age to historical times it was inevitable that Apollo, the champion and founder of the ‘pollution’ doctrine and of homicide-purgation rites in Greek lands, should have been drawn into the story. He is ignored, as we shall see later, in the Argive legend of Orestes. But he is found in all the other variants. Yet his rôle is not simple and definite. He purges Orestes certainly: but what was the nature of the guilt which he has purged? Was the act of Orestes justifiable or extenuated? In Homer the act was justifiable from the Achaean standpoint; but the legend-makers of the ‘pollution’ era could not accept that solution. For them, the immunity of Orestes could only be explained by the direct intervention of Apollo in advance. But this intervention was at one stage conceived as a complete justification, at another as a mere