The view of Gilbert and Köhler,[71] and, we may add, of Müller,[72] which places the origin of trials for homicide in the conception of bloodshed as a sin and in the respect for sanctuary, remains for discussion. Müller is, we think, mistaken in supposing that bloodshed was sinful from the earliest dawn of Greek society, and that wergeld originated in the purgation-ritual.[73] This opinion we shall criticise at length in the next chapter. Gilbert’s conception that the right of sanctuary existed from immemorial antiquity and was a necessary preliminary to wergeld negotiations cannot be harmonised with the evidence of the Homeric poems or with the customs of other analogous tribal peoples. We shall find, indeed, in Euripidean legends evidence of the efficacy of sanctuary to protect[74] the suppliant, but we also find evidence that it was potent merely to delay[75] the inevitable doom. In Homer there is no suggestion that an Achaean would have ever heeded, or that a Pelasgian would have ever needed, such a refuge. Quick vengeance, permitting, as Demosthenes says,[76] no κρίσις between φόνος and τιμωρία, is not a characteristic of the tribal wergeld system. In regard to later times, Gilbert says that ‘when the State took into its own hands the regulation of vengeance for bloodshed it respected the right of sanctuary in so far that the three places of trial were connected with three sanctuaries.’ He refers, we presume, to the Attic courts known as the Areopagus, the Palladium, and the Delphinium. But the connexion of these courts with local temples may be otherwise explained. Coulanges[77] points out that the assembly-place of the Roman Senate, which was a judicial as well as an administrative council, was always a temple. We shall see later that the murderer in the ‘pollution’ period was debarred from any contact with a temple under most serious penalties. We must then defer to a subsequent stage of our work[78] the final refutation of Gilbert and of Müller and the complete exposition of our own hypothesis as to the origin and evolution of the Attic murder courts. FOOTNOTES [1] _Il._ xviii. 497-508; _supra_, p. 34 ff. [2] _History of Greece_ (2nd ed.), p. 172. [3] _Manual of Greek Antiquities_, p. 406. [4] _Op. cit._ p. 145. [5] _Op. cit._ p. 172. [6] _Gk. Const. Ant._, Eng. trans., p. 379. So, Köhler, _Herm._ 6. 102, there quoted. [7] _i.e._ in Attica. [8] P. 115; _supra_, p. 33. [9] Pp. 51, 52. [10] Pp. 237-8. [11] _Infra_, Bk. II. chap. ii. [12] _Supra_, p. 6 ff. [13] See _infra_, pp. 243 ff., 262 ff. [14] _Op. cit._ p. 157. [15] _Ancient Law_, p. 217. [16] P. 173. [17] _Op. cit._ p. 150. [18] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 73. [19] _Supra_, p. 38. [20] _Hecuba_, 1135-1255. [21] _H. and H._ p. 258. [22] _Op. cit._ p. 42. [23] _Laws_ xi. 929 A-C. [24] Reading ὅσοιπερ ἂν ὦσι ... μὴ τέλειοι. [25] _Supra_, p. 8. [26] _Infra_, pp. 230, 236 ff. [27] Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 57. [28] _Laws_, ix. ch. 15. [29] ὁμόγονος.