In regard to the first question, we have argued[69] that a legend as old as Homer must have presented as ‘involuntary’ the slaying of Laius by Oedipus. By this we mean that Oedipus neither intended to kill the old man whom he met at the ‘crossing of the three roads,’ nor was aware that the man whom he slew was his father. If we now assume that the Achaeans recognised no distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying, and that Homer lived in such an atmosphere, though the language and the social system of the Pelasgian people who lived around him were familiar with this distinction, we can more easily understand the astonishment which the poet seems to feel at the sojourn of Oedipus at Thebes after the gods ‘made known these things to men.’ We can also, on this assumption, more easily explain[70] the protest which is implicit in the words of the dead Patroclus to Achilles when he describes his flight from death ‘on the day when’ he slew the son of Amphidamas, ‘being a mere stripling and not intending (to kill) and being angered over (a game of) dice.’ If we add to these probabilities the fact that the Achaeans were men of a proud and haughty spirit, men of quick passions, and accustomed to bloodshed, men who knew no restraint beyond that of a temporary military discipline, and no fear of any greater punishment than that of expulsion from a fortress or from the councils of a military clique, we shall conclude that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary slaying was not recognised by the Achaeans. Such a conclusion incidentally explains the general view of modern scholars[71] that in the Homeric epoch no such distinction was admissible.