On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but shall be “punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated offence” (_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation, corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog humanely, and to “wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him, just as they would care for a righteous man.” On this important point Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations. A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the enemy’s approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.