In _Iliad_ xiv. 483 Akamas having slain Promachus tells how ‘Promachus sleeps, done to death by my sword, lest a brother’s vengeance (ποινή) be too long unpaid.’ Here we have a formula of blood-vengeance applied to the collective vengeance of war. Akamas does not seek the life of Ajax, the slayer of his brother, but is satisfied by slaying any individual of the enemy as a ‘satisfaction’ for his brother. But there is no question of wergeld: death is the penalty desired and exacted. Though the phrase δηρὸν ἄτιτος could be regarded as a reminiscence of the wergeld system, in which a period of time was normally allowed for payment, it is quite naturally applicable to blood-for-blood revenge, as δηρὸν can simply mean ‘a long time,’ and the tendency of such vengeance was to quick retribution. In _Iliad_ xiii. 659 we are told of the slaying in battle of Harpalion, son of Pylaimenes, king of the Paphlagonians. ‘And the Paphlagonians tended him busily, and set him in a chariot and drove him to Ilios sorrowing, and with them went his father, shedding tears, and there was no atonement (ποινή) for his dead son.’ It is obvious that even if we suppose the Paphlagonians (who were not Achaeans) to have had clans and tribes and wergeld payments in their normal home life, we cannot attribute to them any expectation of wergeld for a man killed on the field of battle. Nor could the absence of such a compensation, to a king who had much more wealth than he could ever enjoy, be regarded as a cause of tears. Hence the word ποινή here must mean blood-vengeance, the satisfaction arising from blood-for-blood retribution: and this satisfaction was frustrated because the Paphlagonians did not happen to see the man who slew Harpalion.[26] There are only two passages in Homer in which ποινή unmistakably refers to the genuine wergeld penalty. If those passages were missing no one could speak of wergeld as a penalty for homicide in the society described by Homer. We shall now examine those passages with a view to showing that they do not represent the normal system of the dominant Achaean caste, but are merely what Leaf would call ‘reminiscences,’ traces of a system with which Homer and the Achaeans were familiar, but which they did not adopt or practise amongst themselves.