Feud limiting and ending conflicts between individuals and groups who are related by kinship, as described by anthropologist Max Gluckman in his article "The Peace in the Feud" in 1955. A blood feud is a feud with a cycle of retaliatory violence, with the relatives of someone who has been killed or otherwise wronged or dishonored seeking vengeance by killing or otherwise physically punishing the culprits or their relatives. In the English-speaking world, the Italian word vendetta is used to mean a blood feud, but in reality it means (personal) "vengeance" or "revenge", originating from the Latin "vindicta" (vengeance), while the
Feud of its members. Sometimes two separate branches of the same family have even come to blows, or worse, over some dispute. The practice has mostly disappeared with more centralized societies where law enforcement and criminal law take responsibility for punishing lawbreakers. In Homeric ancient Greece, the practice of personal vengeance against wrongdoers was considered natural and customary: "Embedded in the Greek morality of retaliation is the right of vengeance... Feud is a war, just as war is an indefinite series of revenges; and such acts of vengeance are sanctioned by the gods". In the ancient Hebraic context, it was considered