From what has been already said[63] it must be sufficiently clear what was, in our opinion, the origin of murder-trial in early Greece. The local courts of clans and tribes constituted a nucleus for the development of central State courts when civic groups emerged into being through political synoekism. Homicide was a proper subject for litigation, in the tribal wergeld system, simply because the normal penalty involved a transfer of collective property or the expulsion of a tribesman. If then phratry-courts had to decide issues between different neighbouring clans, if tribal courts had to decide disputes between clans of widely separated localities, is it not natural to suppose that the State courts of synoekised areas would have adjudicated in disputes between members of different tribes? Hence the judicial assembly of tribe-kings (φυλοβασιλεῖς) constituted a more or less important State court from the most remote antiquity. In historical Athens, Aristotle[64] assures us that they still judged, at the Prytaneum, indictments concerning animals and inanimate objects (δικαὶ ἀψύχων). Glotz[65] says of the Prytaneum Court: ‘Il semble même qu’il ait été le premier et longtemps le seul tribunal d’Athènes.’ Let us now consider some other hypotheses as to the origin and evolution of homicide-courts. Glotz and Bury are in agreement in supposing that wergeld was abolished, not by the Apolline religion, but by the establishment of State power: though, in so far as it was the Apolline doctrine of ‘pollution’ which compelled the State to interfere, they would be compelled to admit that Apollinism contributed to the abolition of wergeld if it did not directly abolish it. Glotz, in particular, is anxious to establish a novel theory of his own,[66] to the effect that it was Solon, not Dracon, who abolished wergeld! The only reason he gives is that Solon’s general policy was opposed to clan-jurisdiction or clan-power exercised to the detriment of the State. This opinion we shall discuss in its proper place.[67] But there is an important element of truth in the Glotz-Bury position which must be clearly indicated. We have said that the original Pelasgian State courts very probably heard disputes in regard to homicide, at least between members of different tribes. Now, tribal society is based on a close exclusive aristocracy of birth. Strangers may be received with temporary hospitality, but their adoption into the permanent life and privileges of the tribe was a matter of great difficulty.[68] Every tribe contained a gradually increasing number of ‘hangers-on,’ lackland men, bondsmen, serfs, and casual vagrants, who may be regarded as the nucleus of the plebeian movement which in many cases culminated in democracy. The growth of commerce in the seventh century, the invention of coinage, migration and colonisation led to the rise of a new aristocracy of wealth[69] as distinct from birth. Many of the ‘new men,’ who now were very powerful, did not belong