Standard accounts of the history of legal institutions in Athens typically follow an evolutionary model: from an inherently unstable situation characterized by powerful aristocratic kinship groups, self-help, and weak central institutions emerges a civic legal order capable of regulating the cycles of feud and violence to which the previous instability had inevitably given rise. In literature, the moment in Athens' institutional history in which this new legal order established itself is captured in Aeschylus' Oresteia, with its depiction of the foundation of the first Athenian homicide court, the Areopagus. This dramatic foundational event represents the historical process by which the emerging polis wrested for itself the authority to enforce a final and binding resolution of disputes among its citizens. With this, the dynamic of retaliation and feud depicted in Agamemnon and Choephoroi yields to a public order maintained by a system of laws and courts. Henceforth, citizens may not pursue private vengeance for wrongs done them, but must bring their case before the representatives of the polis and submit to its judgment. The principle of blood vengeance, embodied by the Erinyes, is transformed and incorporated within the new framework of civic institutions where it will help to preserve Athens from enemies within and without.