[57]
“LawsProclamation shall be made in the market-place to the shedder of blood by
a kinsman within the degree of cousin and cousinship, and cousins and sons
of cousins and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law and clansmen shall join in the
pursuit. To secure condonation, if there be father or brother or sons, all
must concur, or whoever opposes shall prevail. And if there be none of these
and the slaying was involuntary, and the Fifty-one, the Ephetae,1 shall agree that the slaying
was involuntary, let the clansmen, ten in number, grant the right of
entrance to the shedder of blood, if they see fit; and let these be chosen
by the Fifty-one according to rank. And those who had shed blood before the
enactment of this statute shall be bound by its provisions.—And
when persons die in the demes and no one takes them up for burial, let the
Demarch give notice to the relatives to take them up and bury them, and to
purify the deme on the day on which each of them dies.”
1 The Ephetae formed a court of fifty-one nobles (Eupatridae) having jurisdiction over cases of homicide. See Aristot. Ath. Pol. 57, with Sandys's note.
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