They are accustomed to wipe their swords on the heads of those killed, as a way of averting the impurity of murder. Or, that on killing someone they would cut off the murder victim's extremities, and hang them around his armpit, so that (he says) he would become too weak to punish the murderer in return. So Apollonius [wrote]: "you were cutting off the first sacrificial extracts of the dead". [This is said] about Jason.[1] Or, that those waging a civil war would mutilate the people killed, cutting off [the extremities] from every part of the body, and would hang them around themselves, stringing the extremities together. In this way they took away the power of those [they killed], so they would not suffer anything horrible from those [they killed] later on. And they would wear the extremities around their armpits: they would call this "putting under the armpits".[2] Sophocles [writes]: "so think whether the corpse in the tomb would accept these burial honours kindly—when the corpse is dead by her hand without honour, mutilated with hostility, and its head wiped off spots in the bath". [This is said] about Agamemnon.[3]