Neither can we put forward as evidence for the Pelasgian exile penalty for homicide the passage in the _Iliad_[125] in which Priam’s inexplicable appearance before Achilles and his friends evokes in them an emotion which Homer compares to the amazement (θάμβος) felt when a man ‘slays one in his country and goes into exile to the house of a rich man[126] and wonder possesses them that look at him.’ The amazement here described would be equally natural whether the stranger was an exiled Pelasgian or, as Leaf suggests,[127] an Achaean fleeing for his life. Moreover, suspicion has been thrown upon the whole passage by the reference, in two scholia, to ‘purification,’ which has led Müller[128] to infer that the scholiasts read, in their texts, ἁγνιτέω instead of ἀφνειοῦ. We hope to show later[129] the error of Müller’s view that purification for homicide was a characteristic of the Homeric age, and hence we maintain that either the whole passage is a later interpolation or that the reading ἁγνιτέω found its way into some Homeric texts from a marginal gloss of post-Homeric origin, suggested by a false interpretation of the word ἄτη in a preceding verse. Hence, while the poems of Homer indicate beyond reasonable doubt the existence of a genuine Pelasgian exile penalty, it is significant that the poet of the Achaeans tends to ignore the exile[130] alternative as he tends also to ignore the wergeld alternative, in the system of penalties for homicide adopted by a tribal people outside the Achaean caste. VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY HOMICIDE