the softening of human character, the offended family will renounce its vengeance, and enter into a bargain with the murderer and his family. He will be permitted to return from exile, but, as a rule, only by payment of ‘compensation.’ His relatives will furnish him with this payment (ποινή), at once the price of the blood shed and the ransom of the murderer’s life. The payment is vaguely defined at first, varying with the importance and the wealth of families. For murder within the family (γένος), there is no question of wergeld. A compromise is effected by which the family waive their right to kill the murderer on condition that he leaves the γένος—‘ils se bornent au bannissement du coupable, rompant ainsi, par son expulsion, les liens qui le rattachaient au γένος.’[9] All these critics appear to suggest that the early age of Greece presents us with a more or less homogeneous but undeveloped and quasi-barbarous race[10] which slowly and gradually evolves into something like civilisation in the time of Dracon and Solon. Thus conceived, the homicide-customs of Homer are very similar to those of the Montenegrins of modern times, who have long lived in a condition of social chaos and who accept, in atonement for homicide, a payment of money when there is hardly anyone left to pay it! Leaf, who in _Homer and History_[11] (1915) differentiates very clearly between the Pelasgian and the Achaean elements in the societies of Homeric Greece, points out that to the Achaeans ‘homicide is a local and family affair, and brings no disability other than exile from home.’ A wealthy and generous king can give opportunities of advancement beyond all the hopes of a narrow family circle. To an ambitious Achaean (as witness Patroclus,[12] Phoenix[13] and others[14]), exile in such circumstances is not a real punishment. When Leaf observes, in regard to the Achaeans, that ‘thus the most sacred of all taboos, the shedding of kindred blood, loses its final sanction,’ he seems to hint at the existence, in the Homeric society, of a non-Achaean attitude to homicide. He does not however explain the precise nature or origin of this attitude.