94 HISTORY OF GREECE. ments which rose upon the ruins of the Western Empire ot the right as "well as duty of private revenge, for personal injury or insult offered to any member of a family, and the endeavor to avert its effects by means of a pecuniary composition levied upon the offender, chiefly as satisfaction to the party injured, but partly also as perquisite to the king, was adopted as the basis of their legislation. This fundamental idea was worked out in elaborate detail as to the valuation of the injury inflicted, where- in one main circumstance was the rank, condition, and power of the sufferer. The object of the legislator was to preserve the society from standing feuds, but at the same time to accord such full satisfaction as would induce the injured person to waive his acknowledged right of personal revenge, the full luxury of which, as it presented itself to the mind of an Homeric Greek, may be read in more than one passage of the Iliad. 1 The Ger- Rogge (Gerichtswcscn der Germancn, capp. 1, 2, 3), Grimm (Deutsche- Rcchtsalterth timer, book v. cap. 1--2), and Eichhorn (I)eutschcs Privat-Recht. sect. 48) have expounded this idea, and the consequences deduced from it among the ancient Germans. Aristotle alludes, as an illustration of the extreme silliness of ancient Greek practices (ev->i-&rj Tru/iTrav), to a custom which lie states to have still continued at the JEoVic Kyme, in cases of murder. If the accuser produced in support of his charge a certain number of witnesses from his own kin- dred, the person was held peremptorily guilty, olov iv Kv/iy Trept TU tyoviKii vo/iOf ECITIV, uv 7ivb)i?oc TI TTapaa^rai [taprvpuv 6 6iuKuv rbv tyovov ruv G.VTOV ffvyyevCiv, ivo^ov elvai r<j5 <p6v<f> rbv QeiiyovTa (Polit. ii. 5, 12). This presents a curious parallel with the old German institution of the Eides- helfern, or conjurators, who, though most frequently required and produced in support of the party accused, were yet also brought by the party accusing. See Rogge, sect. 36, p. 186 ; Grimm, p. 862. 1 The word KOIVT) indicates this satisfaction by valuable payment for wrong done, especially for homicide : that the Latin word paena originally meant the same thing, may be inferred from the old phrases dare paenas, pendere pcenas. The most illustrative passage in the Iliad is that in which Ajax, in the embassy undertaken to conciliate Achilles, censures by comparison the inexorable obstinacy of the latter iu setting at naught the proffered presents of Agamemnon (II. ix. 627) : tir/X^f nal /*ev rff re KaafyvqToio tyovoio Tloivrjv, ff ov naidbf tde$aro TedvstuToc Kai /5' 6 fiiv ev dijfiy /nevei aiirov, Tro/l/l' in Tov 6e r' epijTverai Kpadirj nal -&v/j.oc up'/vup,
