bloody dart. That was a wrong past compensation.... Any way and every way it was inevitable that the Etheling must quit life unavenged.’ In this case, of course, there could be no question of wergeld. In the ‘Canones Wallici’[143] (Celtic laws of the period A.D. 700-800), which are based on the tribal wergeld system as adopted by the Church, we find this clause: ‘Si quis homicidium ex intentione commiserit, ancillas III et servos III reddat.’ This implies a different penalty when murder was not _ex intentione_. The Brehon laws[144] contain minute distinctions of payment in different cases of wounding. If a bishop’s blood was shed in certain quantities, the guilty person had to be hanged or to pay seven _cumhals_ (slaves)—or their equivalent in silver and gold: if a less quantity of blood was shed, the aggressor was condemned to lose his hand. If the blood of a priest was shed in certain quantities, the criminal’s hand was cut off or seven _ancillae_ paid, if the act was intentional; if it was not intentional, one _ancilla_ sufficed for compensation. It is clear then that this distinction is not always absent even in a wergeld system where the crime of bloodshed is particularly objective. We have seen[145] that wergeld often carried with it an ‘honour-price,’ an atonement for the insult, which was caused by homicide. This price, it seems to us, could easily admit of a modification of the penalty. Moreover, it is possible that wergeld is not always to be regarded as a measure of the loss sustained by a clan, but as also to some extent a ransom of the prisoner’s life. ‘Partout,’ says Glotz,[146] ‘la composition varie selon le rang de la victime: et selon le rang du coupable: elle est à la fois la rançon du meurtrier et le prix du sang versé.’ For the Germans, according to Coulanges,[147] ‘la composition est un rachat, non pas rachat de la victime mais rachat de la vie du coupable.’[148] Is it not natural to suppose that a system of compensation for homicide which contains such minute differentiations would leave the road open for a discrimination as to degrees of guilt? It is time to ask whether Homer has anything to say of this distinction. We will admit that he says nothing which is directly relevant to the question. But we will examine two passages with a view to showing that the distinction was known outside the Achaean caste.