5. The laws respecting the penalty of death, which prevailed in the Grecian, and especially in the Doric states, were derived from Delphi. They were entirely founded upon the ancient rite of expiation, by which a limit was first set to the fury of revenge, and a fixed mode of procedure in such cases established.(1064) Any person killing another without premeditation in the gymnastic contests and public battles was, according to the law which (as Plato states)(1065) came from Delphi, immediately released from all guilt, when he had been purified: it is however probable, that much of what the philosopher recommends in other cases was derived from the institutions of Draco, as well as from the Delphian laws, which were actually administered in the latter state by the Pythian court of justice.(1066) To what extent reconciliation with kinsmen by the payment of a fine was permitted, and in what cases the punishment of death was made compulsory, cannot be ascertained. The Delphian court having unjustly condemned Æsop to death, sentenced itself to the payment of a fine, and discovered some descendants or kinsmen of their victim, to whom the money was paid.(1067) The Delphian institutions were doubtless connected with those of Crete, where Rhadamanthus was reported by ancient tradition to have first established courts of justice, and a system of law,(1068) the larger and more important part of which, in early times, is always the criminal law. Now as Rhadamanthus is said to have made exact retaliation the fundamental principle of his code,(1069) it cannot be doubted, after what has been said in the second book on the connexion of the worship of Apollo and its expiatory rites with Crete, that in this island the harshness of that principle was early softened by religious ceremonies, in which victims and libations took the place of the punishment which should have fallen on the head of the offender himself.