You're committing fallacy of reinterpreting past cultures in terms of your own culture.
Weregild was not a penalty, and had nothing to do with guilt. It was debt towards family to compensate for their economic loss with no consideration of "guilt" whatsoever. Wikipedia doesn't say so, but it was debt of extended family to extended family.
Thinking in terms of "guilt" doesn't even make that much sense to cultures that organized society in terms of clans or families instead of individuals. Such cultures used to be very common. Even as late as 19th century there was no legal personhood for most women, and there still isn't much of it for young people (they're treated as children instead far longer than makes sense; more or less like women were treated in earlier times).
taw:
Weregild was not a penalty, and had nothing to do with guilt. It was debt towards family to compensate for their economic loss with no consideration of "guilt" whatsoever. Wikipedia doesn't say so, but it was debt of extended family to extended family.
As you say, these people were illiterate, and they didn't leave much record of their feelings and abstract opinions in these cases. But the fact is that if you killed someone, you'd be obliged to submit to legal sanctions, and if you failed to do so, you were in big trouble. This is not a si...
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