Again, in this Homeric passage as it is usually interpreted, both pleaders cannot have been right. Payment of wergeld was very different from a modern transfer of cash. It involved a complete readjustment of the whole property of two clans, so that hundreds of people were aware of the transaction. If however we suppose that a portion of the wergeld was unpaid, it will be possible to maintain that both parties were _bona fide_ in their assertions. We will assume that Homer, whether he is indulging his imagination or describing something which he had actually seen on a shield, is giving us an account of a typical wergeld dispute such as must commonly have taken place in Pelasgian life: we must especially remember that the accused (whom we assume to be the murderer) and the plaintiff are isolated members of large groups concerned in the payment, though the accused would normally have to pay the greatest individual share, and the plaintiff, if he was the nearest relative of the slain, would receive a large share of the wergeld. Let us suppose, then, that some of the wergeld had been paid, and that the part which had not been paid was due, not from the murderer himself or his immediate relatives,[67] but from some distant family of cousins who, unknown to the defendant, had defaulted or were unable to pay. We can, on this assumption, credit the defendant (that is, the murderer) with _bona fides_. Or again, assuming still that the defendant is the murderer, if we suppose that the disputed ‘instalment’ had been received, unknown to the plaintiff, by a distant family of his wider kindred for whom he is acting as the leading ‘avenger’ in negotiation—in a word, if we suppose that both litigants are acting as representatives of large groups, we can understand the contradiction in their statements which would be less intelligible if they were speaking for themselves personally. And have we not here a clue as to the constitution of the crowd which attended at the trial? Homer distinctly says that the crowd ‘cheered on both parties’[68]: and he adds: ‘taking part on either side’[69]: so interested were they in the issue, that the heralds had to maintain order.[70] This implies that there was a certain danger of rioting amongst the crowd—of something like the ‘manifold fightings’[71] of the Anglo-Saxons.