For the Pelasgian penalty of exile as an alternative to wergeld for homicide _outside the kindred_, the most relevant, though indirect, Homeric reference is a passage in the _Iliad_[115] which we have already discussed, in which we hear of a man-slayer who abides among his people when he has paid a goodly wergeld. We have already argued that this passage refers to the tribal customs of the Pelasgians, and that the Achaean Ajax, who uses the words, is borrowing, for rhetorical purposes, a sentiment which did not characterise the Achaean attitude to homicide.[116] We may now point out furthermore that the vagueness of the description of the wergeld payment, both in this passage and in that which relates to the Shield of Achilles, suggests, if it does not prove, that the description proceeds from Achaeans who were not familiar with the details of the system, but had merely become acquainted with its outstanding principles. When Homer says ‘a man has been known to accept a blood-price for the death of a brother or a son,’ the statement is only a vague description, as anyone who is familiar with real wergeld will admit. We have seen that a large number of people participated both in the payment and in the satisfaction. Whether Homer can be taken to mean that exile would have absolved the murderer’s kindred from all payment, as it did in the laws of King Edmund of England,[117] or whether it merely acquitted the murderer of his share of the debt,[118] are questions which, owing to the vagueness of our Homeric references, cannot here be decided.