We shall see later[11] how impossible it was that wergeld could have continued to exist in days when the murderer was polluted. We admit that the Apolline murder-code did absorb much of the clan-customs in regard to homicide (_la θέμις familiale_). But from the account which we have given of the wergeld system,[12] it must be obvious how very non-arbitrary was the jurisdiction of the clans. In our view, the evolution of early Greek judicial authority is not a transition from a crude arbitrary local jurisdiction to an efficient central compulsory jurisdiction, but rather a gradual extension to wider areas, in accordance with increasing political synoekism, of the judicial functions which had been previously discharged with equal authority within smaller areas.[13] The court of Elders, to which Homer refers in his description of the Shield of Achilles, was, in our opinion, a city-state court. We may call it merely a city court if we wish to retain the word ‘State’ to denote a political unit exercising authority over a substantial territorial area, and it is in this sense that the word ‘State’ is generally used: but F. de Coulanges has shown that the difference between the ancient ‘city’ and a ‘State’ was one of degree, not of kind. The ancient ‘phratry’ was, he says,[14] ‘a small society modelled on the family.’ Maine,[15] speaking of the primitive Indian Village Community, says: ‘The Community is more than a brotherhood of relatives and more than an association of partners. It is an organised society, and besides providing for the management of the common fund, it seldom fails to provide, by a complete staff of functionaries, for internal government, for police, for the administration of justice, and for the apportionment of taxes and public duties.’ So, we think, the court which Homer describes had the highest jurisdiction in all matters of serious dispute, whether within the city proper or in rural areas which were politically united with the city. The elders of the trial-scene were, we think, tribal chieftains, like the Attic tribe-kings (φυλοβασιλεῖς), and their main function was to arbitrate, but with full authority, in cases of dispute between people of different clans or phratries. Inside the clan, and probably inside the phratry (a group of neighbouring clans), similar assemblies of interested and responsible persons would have decided disputes between members of their associations. The only judicial change which synoekism and the growth of State-power involved was, therefore, an extension of the area of jurisdiction, and an increase in the number of people who had the right, if not the duty, of referring their disputes to a common authority. But this new central court of justice was neither incompatible with, nor destructive of, the more primitive local courts. Coulanges[16] maintains that Plutarch and Thucydides are wrong in the assertion that Theseus abolished the local magistracies of Attica. Gilbert[17] admits