Current views explained and criticised: author’s view: proofs from the text of Homer: question of a distinction between murder and manslaughter, and between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide: collectivity in vengeance. The opinions which have hitherto prevailed among scholars in regard to early Greek blood-vengeance are more or less unanimous. They seem to be based on an assumption of homogeneity in the society depicted by Homer. Expressed in terms of the modes of vengeance which we have described in the preceding chapter, the customs of Homeric Greeks in regard to homicide have been conceived as a confusion of modes I, II, and III—as a mixture of restricted and unrestricted vendetta and wergeld. Thus, Eichhoff[1] holds that in Homer murder is a ‘private’ affair, and that the slayer must go into exile if the ‘money’ paid to the injured family is not accepted. Bury[2] says: ‘According to early custom which we find reflected in Homer, murder and manslaughter were not regarded as crimes against the State, but concerned exclusively the family of the slain man, which might either slay the slayer or accept compensation.’ Grote[3] says: ‘That which the murderer in Homeric times had to dread was not public prosecution and punishment, but the personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends of deceased. To escape from this danger he is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment as satisfaction for their slain comrade.’ Jevons[4] says: ‘If the family of the murderer were not content to pay the wergeld, the murderer generally found it expedient to flee into a far country, for, if he remained he would assuredly be killed in revenge.’ In a foot-note in Butcher and Lang’s translation of the _Odyssey_,[5] we are told that ‘as a rule blood called for blood, and the manslayer had to flee from the kindred who took up the feud.... It is superfluous to remark that the “price” as an alternative to vengeance is a widespread custom.’ Glotz[6] speaks of death, exile, wergeld, and slavery as possible penalties everywhere. He seems to believe that there existed in Homeric times that collective and hereditary vengeance which is so characteristic of barbarous peoples, but for this view he has adduced no evidence apart from post-Homeric legends. In an article in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines_,[7] we are informed that ‘originally’ homicide is an offence only against the family of the victim, and all the members of the ‘famille outragée’ have a right and a duty of vengeance. To escape this vengeance the murderer has no other resource but exile. His exile will exempt his kinsmen from the reprisals to which they would otherwise be exposed.[8] As the murderer will be most often supported and defended by his family, a war of families will lay desolate a whole country: in course of time, and with