whose interest it was, at the dawn of civilised society, to create the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable bloodshed, which is so vital to domestic peace. COLLECTIVITY IN VENGEANCE Nothing that has been said in this chapter is incompatible with the view that punishment, in early societies, tends to be collective and hereditary. Feuds of blood must have occasionally occurred amongst the early Pelasgian folk, but we cannot ignore the control of tribal authority, and the Achaean domination which may have acted as a check. However, it is one thing to declare war on a group which refuses to fulfil the law of a district or of a tribe; it is quite another thing to refuse the ‘satisfaction’ prescribed by custom, and to make a single murder an invariable cause of incessant bloodshed. This is the state of Homeric society as conceived by Glotz, and by most writers on the subject of early Greek homicide. We prefer to emphasise the triumph of reason over passion which is symbolised by a wergeld system of local vengeance, by the worship of common ancestors, real or fictitious, by the early political synoekism of many Greek districts, and by international Amphictyonies of immemorial antiquity. We think that it was in post-Homeric times, when the Achaean control was removed, and the Migrations broke up the solidarity of Pelasgian clans, that Greek societies developed unrestricted vendetta. Glotz[181] has difficulties about the Homeric age. He has to admit that there is no infallible system of collective punishment in Homer. ‘Dans l’Iliade et dans l’Odyssée,’ he says, ‘les querelles strictement personnelles ne lient plus infailliblement au sort de l’offenseur tous les siens. On n’y voit point, après un meurtre ἐμφύλιος, les vengeurs du sang poursuivre la famille du meurtrier.’ The difficulty is obviated by our theory of Achaean restricted vendetta. The vengeance of Achilles[182] for the death of Patroclus is no objection to our theory, as it is not revenge for homicide proper: war is distinct from peace. Achaean kings confiscate property, transfer and destroy whole cities[183]: this is but the autocracy of a quasi-feudal militarism; it is not a punishment of moral guilt.