that the Attic tribe-kings still functioned as judges in inter-tribal disputes, in historical Athens. It is quite possible that, in early times, there was no right of appeal outside the tribal court for members of the same tribe. There is a law[18] of an Anglo-Saxon king of tribal England which decrees: ‘Let no man apply to the king unless he may not be entitled to justice within his “hundred.”’ The judicial system of the Homeric epoch is complicated by the presence of the quasi-feudal Achaeans, who sometimes hear appeals in cases of ‘petty family disputes’ among the natives, but who, amongst themselves, obeyed the short and swift decrees of military courts or councils of war. We have said[19] that there is a suggestion of Achaean arbitration in the Euripidean legend in which Hecuba appeals to Agamemnon to justify, after the event, her punishment of Polymestor, the slayer of her son.[20] Assuming the view of Leaf[21] that the Achaeans did not interfere with the ‘group-system’ of the Pelasgians, we may for the moment ignore the presence of the Achaeans, though it is the predominance of that caste in Homer which has misled modern scholars in their opinions of the early Greek judicial system. We shall now examine some interesting survivals of clan-courts in the days of Plato and Demosthenes, so that we may realise more clearly the nature and the functions of the local courts of the ‘group system,’ courts which Homer almost ignores, which he would, perhaps, have entirely omitted to mention, if the Pelasgian craftsmen who fashioned the ‘Shield of Achilles’ had not engraved upon the Shield a picture of a Pelasgian Court of Elders, which was a familiar event in the everyday life of the cities and tribes of the subject-race. HISTORICAL SURVIVALS OF CLAN COURTS