Note 141 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

That already in Homer the circle of the ἀγχιστεῖς (in the Athenian legal sense) was called upon to prosecute the blood-feud is certainly probable in itself; it cannot, however, be proved from examples occurring in Homer. Leist’s statements in Graecoital. Rechtsges., p. 42, are not quite exact. The facts are: a father is called upon to avenge his son, and a son his father, and a brother to avenge his brother (γ 307; I 632 f.; ω 434); once the avengers are the κασίγνητοί τε ἔται τε of the murdered man, ο 273. ἔται has a very wide sense and is not even confined to kinship; at any rate it is not simply “cousins” (ἔται καὶ ἀνεψιοί side by side. I 464).—In Attic law, too, in certain cases the duty of prosecuting the murderer extended beyond the limits of the ἀνεψιαδοῖ to more distant relatives and even to the φράτορες of the murdered man (Law ap. D. 43, 57).