restoration of the slayer to social and religious communion, just as in certain cases of kin-slaying the relatives were not compelled to admit the slayer to domestic communion, even when his own State court had permitted his return from exile. Hence, in the Oresteia, a verdict of acquittal brought in by the Athenian Areopagus in regard to a foreign Argive kin-slayer was primarily intended to legalise the residence at Athens of Orestes, but it could not have legalised his return to Argos unless the relatives of the slain accepted the verdict of the Athenian court as a final verdict of innocence, and ceased, of their own accord, from further prosecution. Now, the legends of Orestes seem to differ in their account of the ‘appeasement’ of the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra. In some legends, as in that upon which is based the _Iphigenia Taurica_ of Euripides, the Furies do not accept the verdict of the Areopagus, and continue to pursue him over land and sea. The fact that they can drive him out of Athens is due to their divine power. In law, ordinary human relatives could not have done so. But it is clear that, in the absence of unanimity in regard to the attitude of the Erinnyes to the Areopagus, the Attic legend-makers who emphasised the connexion of Orestes with the Areopagus must have assumed that Orestes intended to reside, at least for a time, as a homicide-exile at Athens. Now there is no evidence in Homer of such an intention on the part of Orestes. In Homer, Orestes went to Athens _before_, not _after_, he slew his mother. Hence the whole basis of the Attic legends of Orestes is a pure assumption, without any historical foundation.