We may naturally ask: ‘Why is Apollo appealed to for judgment, when he has been cited as a witness?’ We have argued that, in Attic law, if we may trust Plato,[63] matricide could never have been legally justified. On the other hand the Apolline doctrine of pollution declared that the defaulting avenger was polluted. The pollution doctrine permitted and did not condemn ‘private execution.’ It was synoekised State power which made such execution criminal.[64] The conflict which is presented by these different points of view was too grave a matter for the decision of a human court. The command of Apollo was regarded by the legend-makers as the only solution of that conflict. The only question which a human court could be reasonably expected to decide was the question whether Apollo did actually command the act of Orestes. If the actuality of such a command was established, the acquittal of Orestes was inevitable. The only alternative possibility was a verdict of ‘responsibility for murder’[65] against Apollo! But such a verdict, in the religious atmosphere of the ancient City, would have been unthinkable. So far therefore the legal issue in the _Eumenides_ is comparatively intelligible. But we must call attention to the peculiar fact that in the play Orestes is represented as having been tried not at Argos but at Athens. If Orestes had slain his mother at Athens, his act would have been, in Athenian law, a case of homicide between foreigners, and such an act, though normally in Aeschylean Athens tried by the Palladium court, could quite conceivably, in pre-Solonian times, have been tried by the Areopagus. But Orestes did not slay his mother at Athens, and therefore the case would not have come before any Athenian court, unless Orestes intended to reside at Athens, and his right to reside at Athens was challenged by the relatives of the slain. Now, in Greek extradition law these relatives[66] had no right to object to the residence of the slayer ‘abroad’ unless he was guilty of wilful kin-slaying, as, for instance, of wilful matricide: for the penalty for kin-slaying in historical times was death, without the option of exile. It is precisely on such a charge of wilful matricide that the Erinnyes, in this play, prosecute Orestes. To that extent their prosecution was lawful. But the fact that the prosecution took place at Athens implies that Orestes intended to live in Athens as an exile, at least for a time. We have pointed out that, according to Greek extradition law, the relatives of the slain could have compelled the fellow-citizens of the slayer to try him or to extradite him if he fled to them for refuge. But in cases of kin-slaying it is probable that any State to which the slayer fled could have been compelled to put him on trial before they received him as an exile, or otherwise to expel or extradite him. Yet the avenging relatives were not compelled to accept a verdict of acquittal in any court as a complete