Chapter 10

Γαῖαν παμμήτειραν ἀείσομαι, ἠυθέμεθλον, πρεσβίστην, ἣ φέρβει ἐπὶ χθονὶ πάνθ᾽, ὁπός᾽ ἐστὶν, ... ἐκ σέο δ᾽ εὔπαιδές τε καὶ εὔκαρποι τελέθουσι, πότνια, σεῦ δ᾽ ἔχεται δοῦναι βίον ἠδ᾽ ἀφελέσθαι θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισιν.

Homeric Hymn.

§ 1. The Κλῆρος And Its Form.

In trying to realise the methods of land tenure amongst the Greeks, we are baffled by the indirectness of the evidence available.

(M96) We know that the estate which descended from father to son, and was in theory inalienable from the family of its original possessors, was called a κλῆρος or “lot,” but the familiarity with which the poets, historians, and orators use the word does not afford information as to what the κλῆρος really was and how it was made use of in practice. The law concerning these family holdings, says Aristotle,(187) and concerning their possible transmission through daughters was not written. It was a typical example of customary law. This statement gives a hint as to the usual treatment of questions arising under this head. Methods of land tenure were not of rapid growth, nor were they easily changed; they had their source with the slow devotion to agriculture of pastoral tribes, and were dependent on a class unaffected by the growth of education and the arts.

(M97) The intricate connection of the system of land tenure with the composition of the family removed the consideration of questions of ownership from the sphere of written law, and delegated them to the most conservative department of customary procedure, ranking them on a par with questions of family religious observances.(188) The deposit of some ancestor’s bones in a certain field was occasionally a valuable link in the title to possession of that piece of land as private property;(189) and the possession of land at all was in part a guarantee of the pure native blood in the veins of the possessor.(190) It is a striking illustration of the truth of this that, throughout all the extant speeches of Isaeus dealing with the disposal of κλῆροι of dead citizens, not a single case turns upon evidence for or against a sale or transfer of property. The speeches all deal exclusively with family matters; the line of argument always leads to the proof of near kinship by blood or adoption to the previous owner; and the right of possession of the inheritance seems taken for granted as following incontrovertibly the establishment of the required relationship.(191)

“It seems to me that all those who contend for the right of succession to estates, when like us they have shown themselves to be both nearest in blood to the person deceased, and most connected with him in friendship (φιλίᾳ), are dispensed from adding a superfluity of other arguments.”(192)

(M98) In the early settlements, as Thucydides tells us, necessity was the ruling motive. Each man devoted his attention to providing the necessaries of life. There was superfluity neither of chattels nor of tilth. Men hesitate to sow when the harvest is to be reaped by their enemies.(193) The flocks and herds of the pastoral tribes could be driven for safety into the mountain strongholds; yet even they were liable to frequent losses. On one occasion Odysseus had to go to Messene “to recover a debt; which, to wit, the whole people owed him (πᾶς δῆμος): for the Messenians had lifted 300 sheep with their shepherds from Ithaka.”(194) As the newcomers increased in numbers and gained a reputation for ability to defend their own, sufficient to discourage the attacks of their neighbours, they would have leisure to devote some of their energies to the cultivation of the plains around them. Troy was founded first up in the hills,(195) and afterwards was moved down to a good position on the lower ground for the sake no doubt of the better pasture in the river meadows, and of the agriculture which had long been carried on over the “wheat-bearing plain” around the city,(196) before the ravages of the ten years’ war.

It is not proposed to enter in detail into the _methods_ of cultivation of the soil in vogue at various times in Greece; but inasmuch as whilst studying the kernel, assistance may often be obtained from knowledge of the shell, mention may be made in passing of such few points of interest in the physical features of agriculture as may be available.

(M99) In the Consular Reports on Land Tenure in Europe made in 1869, descriptions are given of the existing methods of tenure and cultivation in Greece and the Islands.

In Greece the usual holding of a small proprietor is said to be of fifteen to twenty-five acres (or sometimes double that area), and is called a _zeugarion_.(197) Many have only a couple of acres.

“The greatest inconvenience and frequent lawsuits arise from the manner in which these properties intersect each other. Moreover none of the usual precautions are adopted to mark the limits of the different properties, which, in the absence of any reliable land survey, are often very vaguely described in the title deeds.”(198)

In cases of intestacy real property is divided equally among the children or nearest relatives. When there is a will the testator can only reserve for his disposal a share of the estate equivalent to that which, after an equal division, descends by right to each of the direct heirs.

(M100) Professor Ansted, in his book on the Ionian Islands in the year 1863, thus describes the management of an estate on the Island of Santa Maura:—(199)

“According to Ionian law, all the members of a family share equally in the family property after the death of the father; but it does not follow as a matter of course that the property is divided. It is much more usual that the brothers and sisters, if young, continue to live together till they either marry or undertake some employment or business at a distance. If a sister marries, she is dowered with a sum equivalent to her share. If a brother however earns a separate income, from whatever source, whether he be married or remain single, and whether he live in the same or a different house, or even remove to another town or island, he pays in all his income to a joint fund, _the foundation of which is the income obtained from the paternal estate_. Those who do nothing else manage the estate. One brother, perhaps, remains in the village as cultivator, another lives in the town acting as factor, or merchant to the estate, receiving and selling the produce and managing the proceeds, whatever the case may be; and in addition selling, exporting, and otherwise conducting a general business in the same department. A third may perhaps receive and sell the goods in a foreign country. A fourth may be a member of the legislature, and a fifth a judge. Some marry and have families, others remain single: but the incomes of all are united, each draws out a reasonable share, according to his needs, and a very close account is kept of all transactions. If one brother dies, his children come into the partnership; and as time goes on, these again will grow up and marry, the daughters receiving a proportional and often large dower out of the joint fund, entirely without reference to the special property of their parents. This may go on indefinitely: but as family quarrels will arise, _there are always means of terminating the arrangement_, and closing accounts, either entirely as regards all, or partially as with reference to a _mauvais sujet_, or troublesome member of the partnership.... This curious patriarchal system, though obtaining more perfectly and frequently in Santa Maura than in the other islands, exists in Cephalonia and is said to be not quite unknown in Zante, where the state of society approximates far more to that common in the western countries of Europe. Santa Maura, being the most isolated of all the islands and that which retains all ancient customs most tenaciously, is naturally that in which this sort of communism can exist with smallest risk of interference.”

According to the Consular Reports, the relations between landlord and tenant are governed more by local usage than by law, and the landlord generally takes on an average about 15 per cent. of the produce in kind on the threshing-floor, as rent, in cases where he does not supply more than the bare use of the land.(200)

(M101) There is little manuring; the light plough barely turns the surface of the land. Land is usually allowed to lie fallow every other year, sometimes two years out of three. Sheep and goats are the chief stock; they of course graze in summer on the mountains; villages sometimes own forests and waste lands in common.

(M102) In the islands of the Archipelago,(201) the holdings are frequently divided into separate plots consisting of a quarter or half acre apiece or even less, intersected by those belonging to other parties. Cattle are pastured on the fallow, roadsides, &c., near the village.

In Cephalonia,(202) holdings consist of from five to twenty-five acres, seldom in a continuous piece, but “cut up into patches and intersected by other properties.”

In Corfu,(203) the holdings are similar—infinitesimally small and intermixed pieces of land, especially in the olive groves, where however there are no divisions on the land and the “oldest inhabitant” has to be asked for evidence of ownership in disputed cases.

Throughout the Greek nation, the peasants live in their houses in villages and not on separate estates. They help one another to avoid the expense of hired labour, and themselves work for hire on the estates of the large proprietors.

(M103) Professor Ridgeway has drawn attention to the knowledge of this open field system in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_;(204) and indeed the division of the land tilled by occupants of villages into small pieces or strips, in such a way that the holding of each consists of a number of isolated pieces lying promiscuously amongst the strips of others, over the whole area under plough, is a world-wide custom and is the habit alike of the east as of the west.

Though the assertion cannot yet be made that the κλῆρος was thus arranged on the soil, it can do no harm at any rate to bear in mind this ancient and still used method of dividing land, whilst considering the question of the relation of the ownership of the soil to the rank and status of the tribesman.

§ 2. The Relation Of The Κλῆρος To The Οἶκος.

(M104) The connection of the possession of land with the headship of the family finds its counterpart in the right of maintenance of those who had the true blood of that family. And in those countries where the sons remained until their father’s death under his _patria potestas_ they had to look to him for maintenance derived from the κλῆρος which descended to him as the means of sustenance for himself and his family. Where the head of the family alone was responsible for the rites to the dead at the family altars, the position of a son would always be incomplete if he tried to establish during his father’s lifetime a hearth and household of his own. And it has been already mentioned that it was necessary to emancipate a son from the family of his own father, before he could take property, passing on the death of his mother’s relations to her issue, and assume his rightful position as their representative and the living head of their household.(205)

According to Harpocration, the initiation into the mysteries of the hearth only took place on the actual assumption of the inheritance.(206)

(M105) Occasionally a father feeling the weight of years would be glad to pass on to his son during his lifetime some of his burden of responsibility by making him master of his estate (κύριος τῆς οὐσίας).(207) In this case, the son would be responsible for the maintenance of his parent, a duty much insisted on by Plato and Isaeus. In fact the conclusion is justified that the family, until final subdivision into separate οἶκοι, drew its supplies from the common inheritance, and that the subdivision of the means of subsistence was contemporaneous and co-extensive with the differentiation of the various branches of the original οἶκος along the lines of the rising generations.

The same may be inferred from the words of Demosthenes describing the division of the property of Bouselos amongst his sons and the foundation of their several οἶκοι.

“And all these sons of Bouselos became men, and their father divided his substance amongst them all, with perfect justice. And they having shared the substance, each of them married a wife according to your laws, and there were born children to them all, and children’s children, and there grew up five οἶκοι from the one οἶκος of Bouselos, and each dwelt apart, having his own house and his own offspring.”(208)

In the meanwhile, before division, all sons had equal right to participate in the family goods after the father’s death, and dowries had to be paid therefrom to the daughters. The eldest brother was guardian (κύριος) of his sisters and those of his brothers who were minors, inasmuch as he succeeded to his father’s position of head of his kindred at the altars of their ancestors. But in Greece at any rate his authority over his brothers when once a division had taken place seems to have been slight if it existed at all.

(M106) Amongst the Gods, the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, sons of Rhea, shared their inheritance from their father Kronos. They divided everything in three, shaking lots thereover (παλλομένων). Each took equal share of honour (ἔμμορε τιμῆς), but earth and Olympos were common (ξυνή) to all.(209) But Zeus was the first-born and “knew more things”—Ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς πρότερος γεγόνει καὶ πμείονα ᾒδη(210)—and Poseidon therefore avoided open strife with him, however unwillingly. Though Zeus be the stronger, grumbles the Sea-god, let him keep to his third share and not interfere with his brothers’ pleasure on their common ground, the earth. Let him threaten his sons and daughters who needs _must_ listen to him (ἀκούσονται καὶ ἀνάγκῃ). Yet because the Erinnyes ever take the side of the eldest born—ὡς πρεσβυτέροισιν Ἐριννύες αἰὲν ἕπονται—it were good counsel to knock under, even though the division was made in perfect equality (ἰσόμορον καὶ ὁμῇ πεπρωμένον αἴσῃ).(211)

(M107) This passage contrasts the recognised autocracy of the head of the family over his own household with the courteous deference of the younger brothers towards the eldest; and it is evidence, so far as it goes, that the eldest brother did not succeed to his father’s power over his grown-up brothers, but owed what influence he did not obtain from the superior advantages of his age and experience, to a superstitious feeling that something was due to him in his position of head of the eldest branch of the family.

In the _Odyssey_,(212) Zeus gives Poseidon the title of “eldest and best”—πρεσβύτατον καὶ ἄριστον—and elsewhere Hera lays claim to the same birthright.(213)

The power of the head of a household must have been something much more real. Telemachos declares that he is willing that some other _basileus_ in Ithaka should take the kingship, but he will be master over his own house—ἄναξ οὄκοιο ἡμετέροιο—“and over the slaves that the divine Odysseus won for me.”(214)

In the Homeric Hymn to _Hestia_, that deity receives the title of honour of firstborn: the poet, by a fanciful blending of ideas, implying that the honour paid to the sacred hearth by the eldest of the family, fell to her share as the eldest born of the children of Kronos.(215)

Aristotle says that every household is ruled (βασιλεύεται) by its oldest member,(216) and gives this prerogative of the household-_basileus_ as the type and origin of the kingship in the village and the State. Reference has already been made, in the section on the limitations of the ἀγχιστεία, to the passage in the Gortyn law, viz.—

“The father shall have power over the children and the property to divide it amongst them.... As long as they (the parents) are alive there is no necessity for division.”(217)

(M108) But it must be borne in mind that though the κλῆρος was set apart in theory for the use and sustenance of a head of a family with all his descendants, and was supposed to be inalienable therefrom, there is no reason to suppose that there existed among the Greeks a system of joint holding between father and son. The ownership and management of the property vested in the head of the family. It is true that brothers did not always divide their inheritance on the death of their father, but their undivided right to their respective equal shares remained to each one and his descendants as an individual property, and they always seem to have had the expectation of an ultimate subdivision amongst the separate οἶκοι that had sprung into being.(218)

(M109) The Gortyn Laws throw some light on the subject.

As long as the father is alive, no man shall buy or receive in pledge from the son any of the father’s property. But what the son himself has earned, or inherited, he may sell if he like.

So too the father may not dispose of the goods of the children which they have earned or inherited.

Yet may a son’s prospective share in his paternal inheritance be sold to pay any legal fine he has incurred.(219)

(M110) There is no joint holding here between father and son. The father is in undisputed possession, and nothing the son can do by private contract can affect his father’s occupation. But if the son had a right of maintenance from his father during the lifetime of both, his expectation of succession to an equal share with his brothers would give him, so to speak, a value in the public eye. In the event of his incurring a blood-fine, his father would presumably be obliged to pay it out of the patrimony; and when exaction of such penalties passed into the hands of a court, exception would hardly be made for long on behalf of the fine for murder over penalties for other crimes coming before the court. Although therefore for all ordinary purposes a son had no claim on the paternal estate beyond his maintenance, his right of succession might easily grow up in the eye of the law as an available asset capable of forfeiture with the theoretical assumption that the scapegrace was unfit to hold his position in the family.(220) His future portion, thus becoming deprived of a representative, might be wholly or in part confiscated to the State. There are many inscriptions confiscating to the State the goods of criminals who transgressed the laws therein; but Plato evidently contemplated the possibility of wiping out the individual without depriving his descendants of their inheritance.(221) In such a case as wife-murder, he says, the husband’s right of maintenance is extinguished from amongst his family, he should be banished and his name wiped out for ever, whilst his sons or relations enter upon the inheritance of his property _immediately_. No distinction is made by Plato, or in the Gortyn Laws in such a case between chattels and land. But inasmuch as all fines would be levied in the first instance upon the property of the guilty individual, it may be assumed that his own earnings went first, and that only in extreme cases would the ancestral land of the family be sold. Even then, in Israelite law, it was expected that the land would be _redeemed_ by the nearest relative,(222) so that the result would be that the land would go out of the family only when no relative could be found rich enough to pay the fine out of his chattels.

(M111) It is interesting to find analogous provisions in the customs of Gavelkind of ancient Kent. Under the system of Gavelkind equal division of property amongst sons obstinately held its own against the incursions of the right of primogeniture; and the connection of the family with their land seems to have been regarded as especially privileged in spite of the growth of Feudalism.

“If any tenant in Gauelkinde be attainted of felonie, for which he suffereth execution of death, the king shall have all his _goods_, and his heire forthwith after his death shall be inheritable to all his _landes_ and tenements which he held in Gauelkinde in fee, and in inheritance: and he shall hold them by the same services and customes as his auncestors held them: whereupon, it is said in Kentish:

“The father to the boughe, “And the sonne to the ploughe.”(223)

(M112) It had become customary to allot to a bastard son who was prevented by his birth from ranking with his brothers, and who had no place in the kindred, some smaller substance as a means of subsistence.

(M113) Odysseus pretends he was in this position, and relates how his proud brothers allotted him but a small _gift_ (παῦρα δόσαν) and a house as his portion.(224)

Isaeus mentions that, only on the acquiescence of the true son, was admission granted to a bastard into the phratria. Even then he was not apparently taken into his father’s family, but allotted a farm (χωρίον ἕν) by his brother and, as it were, launched into the world to start a family of his own, without any further claim upon the property of his father.(225)

His introduction and admission to a phratria and deme, as a descendant of an old family, so far removed the stigma of his birth as to give him the title of citizen, and thus afforded him the qualification for holding land. Yet the knowledge of his real parentage bereft him of the right of sharing equally with the rest of his father’s sons, and compelled him to be satisfied with the bare means of subsistence wherewith to found and continue a house of his own.(226)

(M114) When citizenship was conferred upon a beneficent stranger, it was the custom at the same time to assign him and his descendants a house and some land. We hear of grants on such occasions consisting of a κλῆρος in the plain, a house, and a garden free of taxes; a _half_-κλῆρος in the plain, a house and a garden of half the area of the preceding grant, &c. In the fourth century B.C. a similar grant takes the form of so many plethra as a patrimony or ever. Sometimes, as at Sparta in the second century B.C., the estate was allotted to the newly-made citizen only on condition of residence within the borders of the State.(227)

§ 3. The Householder In India: The Guest.

(M115) Sir Henry S. Maine in his _Early Law and Custom_(228) quotes Narada in illustration of the composition of the early Indian family. A son “is of age and independent in case his parents be dead: during their lifetime he is dependent, even though he be grown old.”

Further information on this subject is afforded by the Ordinances of Manu, where the position of the first-born with regard to his younger brothers is given at some length.(229)

(M116) “After both the father and the mother (are dead), the brothers, having come together, should divide the paternal inheritance: for while the two (parents) are alive the (sons) have no power (over the property).

“Now the eldest (or best) alone may take the paternal property without leaving anything, and the remaining (brothers) may live _supported by him_ just as (if he were their) father.”(230)

(M117) “By means of the eldest (son) as soon as he is born a man becomes possessed of a son, and is thus cleared of his debts towards the manes; therefore this (eldest son) deserves the whole (inheritance).”

Likewise: “If among brothers born of one father, one should have a son, Manu said _all those brothers_ would be possessed of sons by means of that son.”(231) But this seems to apply only to the son born to the eldest, for if a younger brother married before the eldest and performed the daily sacrifices, he sent himself, his brother, and his wife “to Hell.”(232)

The eldest, if he performs his duty, “causes the family to flourish” and “is most honoured among men.” He alone is “duty-born,” through him his father “pays his debt”; other sons are only “born of desire.” As long as his conduct is befitting, he must be honoured “like a father, like a mother,” but if not, he only receives the respect of an ordinary relative.(233)

The brothers may live together in this way,(234) but if they divide and live apart, the separate ceremonies necessitated by their separate households will multiply the performance of religious duties, to the advantage of all.

(M118) The title of _Householder_, moreover, was more than a name.

“As all beings depend on air, so all orders depend on the householder.”

“Because men of the three (other) orders are daily supported by the householder alone with knowledge and with food, therefore the householder (is) the chief order. That order must be upheld strenuously by one desiring an imperishable heaven, and who here desires perpetual happiness....”

“The seers, manes, gods, beings, and guests also make entreaty to those heads of families for support. (This duty must, therefore,) be done by a man of discernment.”(235)

“As all rivers, ... go to (their) resting-place in the ocean, so men of all orders depend on the householder.”(236)

Let a householder perform the household rites according to rule with the marriage fire and the accomplishment of the five sacrifices and the daily cooking. The sacrifices are:—

Teaching the Veda is the Veda sacrifice: Offering cakes and water is the sacrifice to the manes: An offering to fire (is the sacrifice) to the gods: Offering of food (is the sacrifice) to all beings: Honour to guests is the sacrifice to men.

“Whoever presents not food to those five, the gods, guests, dependents, the manes, and himself, though he breathe, lives not.”(237)

(M119) The guest takes a very high place, and his presence is a revered addition to the family sacrifices; so much so that it was thought necessary to state definitely that “if the guest appears after the offering to all the gods is finished, one should give him food as best one can, but should not make (another) offering.”(238)

The same virtue seems to have been considered by the Greeks also to lie in the presence of the guest. In Euripides’ Elektra, Aigisthos, hearing from Orestes that he and his friend are strangers, promptly invites them to share as his ξυνέστιοι in his impending sacrifice of a bull to the nymphs, promising to send them on their way in the morning.(239)

Earlier in the play during the plotting of Aigisthos’ death, it is taken for granted that directly he sees them he will call them thus to join him at the sacrifice and the feast.(240)

Alkinoos expresses the feeling of the Homeric age when he says:

“In a brother’s place stand the stranger and the suppliant, to him whose wits have even a little range.”(241)

Nestor at Pylos, making sacrifice to Poseidon with his sons and company, welcomes the unknown Telemachos and Mentor to the sacrificial feast.(242) When the duty of feeding the guests has been satisfactorily accomplished, he then asks them whether they are merchants or _pirates_, that “wander over the brine at hazard of their own lives bringing bale to alien men!”

It would appear that the virtue lay in the hospitality of the host and not in the worthiness of the guest, and that therefore it was worth while to run the risk of having invited the presence of a polluted man whose impiety in not refusing to partake would doubtless fall on his own head.

(M120) To return to the organisation of the Indian inheritance:—The duty of maintenance(243) of the younger members of the family devolves upon the eldest son at the death of his father. If the brothers are all “perfect in their own occupations,” and they come to an equal division, “some trifle should be given to the elder (brother) to indicate an increased respect for him.”(244) Also if in division there remains over an odd goat or sheep, or animal, it goes to the eldest brother.

If any brother has disgraced himself, he does not deserve a share in the property.(245)

Sisters’ portions are allotted out of all the brothers’ shares equally.(246)

Property is divided once only.(247) But if “on living together after being separated, they divide (the inheritance) a second time, in that case the division should be equal, (as) in that case no right of primogeniture occurs.”(248)

The father’s wealth acquired during his lifetime is at his own disposal, and need not be divided amongst his sons.(249) Likewise with any property acquired by the sons.(250) If “any one of the brothers, being able (to support himself) by his own occupation, does not desire (his share of the) property,” he may be excluded from the division, but “something for his support” should be given him to discharge his claim of maintenance from the family at any future time.(251)

§ 4. Tenure Of Land In Homer: The Κλῆρος And The Τέμενος.

(M121) In the Homeric poems, written, as they are, from an aristocratic or heroic point of view, a great gulf always exists between the royal or princely class and the ordinary tribesmen.

The βασιλεύς—the lion of his people(252)—has his select estate, his τέμενος, with orchards and gardens of considerable extent; while the swarms of tribesmen are allotted their κλῆροι in the open field, their share in the common pasture, and depend on each other for help in the vintage and harvest.

(M122) The possession of large estates and of multitudinous flocks and herds was one of the privileges of the chieftain or tribesman of princely rank.

“For surely his livelihood (_i.e._ Odysseus’) was great past telling, no lord in the dark mainland had so much, nor any in Ithaka itself; nay, not twenty men together have wealth so great, and I will tell thee the sum thereof. Twelve herds of kine upon the mainland, as many flocks of sheep, as many droves of swine, as many ranging herds of goats, that his own shepherds and strangers pasture. And ranging herds of goats, eleven in all, graze here by the extremity of the island with trusty men to watch them.”(253)

Bellerophon migrated from his own country and settled under the patronage of the king of Lykia.(254) He married the king’s daughter, and to complete his qualification and to confirm his princely status as a βασιλεύς of Lykia, he was allotted by the Lykians an estate where the plain was fattest on the banks of the river, consisting half of arable, half of vineyard, the latter presumably on the slopes of the sides of the valley.(255) Besides these no doubt he had flocks and herds on the mountains, with steadings and slaves for their protection. It is improbable that the fattest of the plain was unoccupied before, and it must therefore be supposed that the system of agriculture was such as to admit of such a partition and the consequent readjustment, or that the dispossessed tribesmen had to compensate themselves with land out of the common waste.

In somewhat similar wise Tydeus at Argos wedded one of the daughters of Adrastos, and dwelt in a house full of livelihood; and “wheatbearing ἄρουραι enough were his, and many were his orchards of trees apart, and many sheep were his.”(256)

In the description of the Shield of Achilles in the _Iliad_ a vivid contrast is drawn between the rich harvest of the βασιλεύς and the busy toil of the tribesmen.

“Furthermore he set therein a τέμενος deep in corn(257) where hinds (ἔριθοι) were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands ... and among them the βασιλεύς in silence was standing at the swathe with his staff, rejoicing in his heart.”

Meanwhile henchmen are preparing apart a great feast for himself and his friends, and the women are strewing much white barley to be a supper for the hinds.(258)

(M123) But in the great common field all was toil and action; many ploughers therein drave their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about.(259) The holding of the common tribesman was not an estate (τέμενος) cut out of the plain, but an allotment (κλῆρος), probably of strips as in Palestine to-day, in the open fields that lay around the town. On the wheatbearing plain round Troy(260) lay the stones that former men, before the ten years’ war, had used to mark the balk or boundary of their strips (οὖρον ἀρούρης).(261) One of these Athena uses to hurl against Ares, who, falling where he stood, covers seven of the _pelethra_ that the stones were used to divide. A pinnacle of stones is the only boundary to be seen to this day between the strips of cornland in Palestine. Easily dislodged as these landmarks were, they were specially protected by a curse against their removal, and were with the Greeks under the awful shadow of a special deity of boundaries.(262) They seem however to have been liable to considerable violation. The ass, according to Homer, being driven along the field-way, if his skin was thick enough, easily disregarded the expostulations of his attendants, and made free with the growing crop.(263) Homer also describes a fight between two men with measuring rods in the common field,(264) and Isaeus(265) relates how an Athenian citizen flogged his brother in a quarrel over their boundary so that he afterwards died, whilst the neighbours, working on their land around, were witnesses of what took place.

Land was brought into cultivation, no doubt, as it was wanted. Achilles contemplates that some of the rich fields of his friends may be exceedingly remote, so that it would be a great thing to spare the ploughman a journey to the nearest blacksmith. And no doubt the powerful men of the community would, by means of their slaves or retainers, acquire additional wealth by reclaiming lands out of the way and therefore requiring a strong hand to protect them, which were profitable by reason of their very fatness.(266) Such acquisitions would not be included in the τέμενος of the prince, the very word τέμενος implying an area of land cut out of the cultivated land of the community, generally described as being in the plain (πέδιον).

(M124) Such allotments of land seem only to have been made to princes and gods, but when once allotted, remained as far as can be seen the property of their descendants. It was a common fancy of the Homeric prince that he was worshipped as a god, and they often mistook each other for some deity. The godlike Sarpedon asks his cousin Glaukos, wherefore are they two honoured in Lykia as gods, with flesh and full cups and a great τέμενος.(267)

As the possession of full tribal blood was necessary for the ownership of a κλῆρος, so princely blood was the qualification for the enjoyment of a τέμενος. The honoured individual need not be a king or overlord, but besides his valour he must have in his veins the all-potent blood royal, without which his privilege was no greater than that of other rich tribesmen.

It was not till the king of Lykia had satisfied himself that Bellerophon was “the brave offspring of a god,” that he gave him honour, and the Lykians meted him out a τέμενος.(268) This great τέμενος on the banks of the Xanthos, half arable and half vineyard, remained in the possession of his grandchildren, Sarpedon and Glaukos, apparently still undivided, though they were not brothers but first cousins.(269)

The king of the Phæakians had his τέμενος and fruitful orchard near but apart from the fields and tilled lands of his townsfolk.(270) Odysseus it seems had more than one τέμενος.(271)

(M125) Once in the _Iliad_ the epithet πατρώιος is applied to a chief’s τέμενος.(272) According to Hesychius, πατρώιος means “handed down to one’s father from his ancestors,”(273) and Homer evidently uses the word in this sense.(274)

The kingship itself in Ithaka was considered as part of Telemachos’ patrimony: “Never may Kronion make thee king in sea-girt Ithaka, which is πατρώιον to thee by birth (γενεῇ).”(275)

But though the τέμενος and the kingship were both equally πατρώια, they did not together constitute an indivisible inheritance. Any one of the blood could enjoy possession of the land, whilst the over-lordship must necessarily descend in the eldest or the most able line.

In his answer to the malignant wish quoted above, Telemachos does not speak as if he contemplated giving up any tangible property. The bestowal of the kingship, though due to him by inheritance (πατρώιον) is in the hands of the gods; he means to be master (ἄναξ) of whatsoever Odysseus his father won for him.

(M126) It is interesting to compare this choice of Telemachos with the exactly opposite choice made by Iason, as told by Pindar, when he came back to claim his inheritance which had been seized in the meantime by his second cousin, Pelias.

He has come home, he tells Pelias, to seek his father’s ancient honour which Zeus had of old bestowed on his great-grandfather Aiolos and his sons. It is not for them now, being of the same stock (ὁμόγονοι), to divide the great honour of their forefathers with sword and javelin. He will give up all the sheep and herds of kine, and all the fields of late robbed from his sires, though they make fat beyond measure the house of Pelias (τεὸν οἶκον πορσύνοντ᾽ ἄγαν). But the kingly sceptre and throne of his father must be his without wrath between them. And Zeus, the ancestral god of them both (Ζεὺς ὁ γενέθλιος ἀμφοτέροις), is witness to their oath.(276)

(M127) Property in land could also be accumulated in the hands of individuals not necessarily of princely station. Odysseus tells a tale of how he took a wife of “men with many κλῆροι” (πολυκλήρων ἀνθρώπων) by reason of his valour.(277) The κλῆρος must therefore at that time have been at any rate roughly of some recognised area. Perhaps the tendency, so fatal to Sparta, for the possession of the original shares or allotments of many families to accumulate in the hands of the powerful or rich, had already set in. In later colonisations and assignments of new land the κλῆροι were often equally divided,(278) and the gift of citizenship, as has been already mentioned, was sometimes accompanied by a grant of a _half-kleros_ (ἡμικλήριον). Did the κλῆρος then represent in theory an area of cultivated ground capable of sustaining a single household?

§ 5. Early Evidence _continued_: The Κλῆρος And The Maintenance Of The οἶκος.

(M128) There are signs in Homer of the existence, already insisted upon for later times, of the connection of the ownership of property with the headship of a household. It follows that if the head of a family was the only owner of land, the desire of establishing a family and thereby preserving at the same time the acquired property and the name of the possessor, made the acquisition of a wife a real necessity for the owner of land.

Eumaios, the swineherd, says that Odysseus would have given him a property (κτῆσις), both an οἶκος and a κλῆρος and a shapely wife.(279) And Odysseus in one of his many autobiographies speaks of taking a wife as if it were the necessary sequel to coming into his inheritance.(280)

Even Hesiod, the son of a poor settler, without much property to keep together, if we can take Aristotle’s reading of the line, gives the necessary outfit for a peasant farmer in occupation of a small κλῆρος, as a house, a wife, and a plough-ox.(281)

Aristotle quotes this line of Hesiod, in his argument that the οἶκος was the association formed to supply the wants of each day,(282) its members being called by Charondas, he says, ὁμοσίπυοι (sharers in the mealbin), and by Epimenides the Cretan ὁμόκαποι (sharers of the same plot of ground).(283) And he might have added that Pindar uses the word ὁμόκλαροι to mean “twins.”(284)

(M129) A household, according to Aristotle, consisted thus partly of human beings, partly of property.(285)

So closely is the idea of livelihood bound up that of the house or οἶκος, that Telemachos can say without incongruity that his house is being _eaten_ by the wooers:—

ἐσθίεταί μοι οἶκος, ὄλωλε δὲ πίονα ἔργα.(286)

The sanctity shared by the hearth and its sustenance may be illustrated by Odysseus’ oath, which occurs three times in the _Odyssey_: “Now be Zeus my witness before any god, and the hospitable board and the hearth of blameless Odysseus whereunto I am come.”(287)

(M130) When once the hospitable board had laid its mysterious spell on the relations of host and guest, the bond was not easily dissolved. Glaukos and Diomedes meet “in the mid-space of the foes eager to do battle,” fighting on opposite sides. Nevertheless because the grandfather of one had entertained the grandfather of the other for twenty days and they had parted with gifts of friendship, their grandsons refrain from battle with each other, pledge their faith, and exchange armour as a witness to others that they are guest-friends by inheritance (ὄφρα καὶ οἵδε γνῶσιν, ὅτι ξεῖνοι πατρώιοι εὐχόμεθ᾽ εἶναι).(288)

If such force lay in the entertainment of a guest for a few days, some idea can be formed of the virtue underlying the meaning of such words as ὁμοσίπυοι and ὁμόκαποι, and binding together those habitually nourished at the same board.

(M131) If sons married during their father’s lifetime without any particular means of livelihood, they could live under his roof and authority, forming a great patriarchal household like that of Priam and his married sons and daughters at Troy. But when a household dispersed before the marriage of the sons and the inheritance was divided amongst them, it was deemed indispensable for them to take wives, and each provide for the establishment of his house and succession. This necessity is the underlying motive of the compulsion over the only daughter left as ἐπίκληρος to marry before a certain age, exercised by the Archon at Athens. There the idea of the need of a continuous family (as well as for other purposes), to keep together the property, had grown up apparently as a reflection, so to speak, of the obvious importance of the property to the family for the maintenance of itself and its ancestral rites.

Though evidence is wanting for the _raison d’être_ of this sentiment in Homer, the existence of the feeling can hardly be denied.

The κλῆρος, at any rate, continued to pass from father to son in the family of the tribesman or citizen. Hector encourages his soldiers by reminding them that though they themselves fall in the fight, their children, their house (οἶκος), and their κλῆρος will be unharmed, provided only that the enemy are driven back.(289)

The sentiment that a man was not really “established,” according to the estimation of the Homeric Greeks, until the continuity of his house was provided for, seems to explain the two references to Telemachos in the _Iliad_. Odysseus is twice mentioned, as Mr. Leaf points out in his _Companion to the Iliad_,(290) as the father of Telemachos, simply because it was considered a title of honour to be named as sire of an established house. No other mention of Telemachos occurs in the _Iliad_.

Failure of heirs was, as in later times, the great disintegrating factor and danger to the continuity of the family holdings. As long as a direct descendant was to be found, the property was safe.

Eurykleia comforts Penelope in her fear for the absent Telemachos, saying:—

“For the seed of the son of Arkeisios is not, methinks, utterly hated by the blessed gods, but someone will haply yet remain to possess these lofty halls and the _fat fields_ far away.”(291)

Is it by accident that she here chooses the name of Arkeisios to describe the head of the family of Laertes and Odysseus? He was Laertes’ father, and in Telemachos, if he was preserved alive, he would thus have a _great-grandson_ to represent his line in the succession to his property.

(M132) The diversion of inheritance to any property from the direct line is spoken of in Homer as a lamentable circumstance greatly intensifying the natural grief at the death of the direct heir.

“Then went he after Nanthos and Thoon, sons of Phainops, striplings both; but their father was outworn of grievous age, and begat no other son for his possessions after him. Then Diomedes slew them and bereft the twain of their dear life, and for their father left only lamentation and sore distress, seeing he welcomed them not alive returned from battle: _and kinsmen divided his substance_ (κτῆσις).”(292)

In the tumultuous times of the _Odyssey_ the right of succession must often have been interrupted by war and violence. Possessions, not only of land, had to be defended by the sword even during the lifetime of the acquirer. This prompts one of the wishes of Odysseus in his prayer at the knees of Arete:—

“And may each one leave to his children after him his possessions in his halls and whatever dues of honour the people have rendered unto him.”(293)

The same anxiety prompts his question to his mother in Hades, to which he obtains answer:—

“The fair honour (γέρας) that is thine no man hath yet taken, but Telemachos holdeth in safety (thy) demesnes (τεμένεα νέμεται).”(294)

(M133) The belief in the inseparability of the ancestral holding and the family was strong in Samaria at the time of Ahab. The King offered Naboth another vineyard better than his own in exchange for the one at Jezreel near the palace, or, should he prefer it, its worth in money. But Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid it me, that I should give _the inheritance of my fathers_ unto thee.”(295)

Both the Hebrew narrators and the Greek translators describe Ahab finally as taking the vineyard at Naboth’s death _by inheritance_ (LXX. κληρονομεῖν), in spite of the violence of the means of acquiring it adopted by Jezebel.

The limited right of the prince to alienate from his family any part of his possessions is thus alluded to by Ezekiel:—

“Thus saith the Lord God; If the prince give a gift unto any of his sons, the inheritance thereof shall be his sons’; it shall be their possession by inheritance. But if he give a gift of his inheritance to one of his servants, then it shall be his to the year of liberty: after it shall return to the prince: but his inheritance shall be his sons’ for them.”(296)

§ 6. Early Evidence _continued_: The Τέμενος And The Maintenance Of The Chieftain.

(M134) It must be borne in mind that the tribal idea of the chieftainship sanctioned the custom that the maintenance of the chieftain and his companions or retainers should be levied at will upon the property of the people. This privilege is very wide spread, and had its origin in the earliest times.

The levies were claimed under the name of _gifts_, and earned for the princes the title of δωροφάγοι. As Telemachos declares, “it is no bad thing to be a βασιλεύς, and quickly does his house become rich and he himself most honoured.”(297)

The royal family and nobles(298) levied contributions on their own or conquered peoples apparently at will in Homer. Agamemnon calls together the Greek chiefs:—

“Ye leaders and counsellors of the Argives ... who drink at the public cost (δήμια πίνουσιν) and each command an host (σημαίνουσιν ἕκαστος λαοῖς).”(299)

Priam chides his sons:—

“Ye plunderers of your own people’s sheep and kids (ἀρνῶν ἠδ᾽ ἐρίφων ἐπιδήμιοι ἁρπακτῆρες).”(300)

Telemachos declares that if the wooers eat up all his sheep and substance, he will go through the city (κατὰ ἅστυ) claiming chattels until all be restored.(301)

Alkinoos proposes to give gifts to Odysseus, and they themselves going amongst the people (ἀγειρόμενοι κατὰ δῆμον) will recompense themselves: “for hard it were for one man to give without return.”(302)

“Then I led him to the house,” says Odysseus, “and gave him good entertainment ... out of the plenty in my house, and for the rest of his company ... I gathered and gave barley meal and dark wine from the people (δημόθεν) and oxen to sacrifice to his heart’s desire.”(303)

(M135) These passages throw light on Agamemnon’s offer to Achilles of seven well-peopled towns, whose inhabitants would enrich him with plenteous gifts.(304) The proposal of Menelaos to empty a city _of Argos,_ to accommodate Odysseus and his people, seems to be of quite a different order, and betrays to us that the tyranny of the tribal chieftain, so conspicuous in other nations, was no less a reality also amongst the Greeks under Achaian rule.(305)

(M136) In the Indian society that was regulated in accordance with the _Ordinances of Manu_, the king appointed a chief of a town whose duty it was to report to the higher officials on any “evil arising in the town.” He likewise represented the king, and had the king’s right to receive supplies from those under his oversight.

“What food, drink, (and) fuel are to be _daily_ given by the inhabitants of a town to the king let the head of a town take,”(306)

the line always being drawn between legitimate demands and tyrannical extortion.

“For those servants appointed by the king for protection (are) mostly takers of the property of others (and) cheats; from them he (_i.e._ the king) should protect these people.”(307)

(M137) Under the rule of the Persians, all Asia was parcelled out in such a way as to supply maintenance (τροφή) for the Great King and his host throughout the whole year.(308) The satrap of Assyria kept at one time so great a number of Indian hounds, that four large villages of the plain were exempted from all other charges on condition of finding them food.(309)

(M138) Solomon’s table was provided after the same method.

“And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel which provided victuals for the king and his household; each man his month in a year made provision.... And Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen and twenty oxen out of the pastures and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl.... And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life.... And those officers provided victual for king Solomon, and for all that came unto king Solomon’s table, every man according to his charge.”(310)

(M139) Sesostris is said to have obtained his revenue from the holders of κλῆροι in Egypt in proportion to the amount of land in each man’s occupation;(311) and Pharaoh, having bought all the land at the time of the famine in Egypt except that which supported the priests, took one-fifth of all the produce, leaving the remainder “for seed of the field,” and for the food of the cultivators, and their households and little ones. “And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s.”(312)

In this case Pharaoh became proprietor by purchase of the land in Egypt. But it must not be supposed that by exacting a payment from the occupier, the overlord as a rule had any power over the ownership of the soil. He no doubt had proprietary rights over his own estate, and may or may not have had power to regulate any further distribution of the waste. But the right of receiving dues, or of appointing another to receive them, gave him no power over the actual tillage of the soil.

(M140) The maintenance of the prince was a first charge apparently upon the property of his subjects; and it is easy to see how the lion’s share would always be allotted to him, alike of booty as of acquired territory. As long as the community was pastoral, it is also easy to imagine how the chief both increased his own wealth and admitted favoured companions or resident strangers to a share in the elastic area of the common pasturage. After agriculture had assumed equal importance in the economy of the tribe as the tending of flocks and herds, one is apt to forget that for centuries—perhaps for thousands of years—the system of agriculture that grew up, still possessed much of the elasticity of the old pastoral methods. Under the open field system, such a custom as that described by Tacitus and in the Welsh Laws, viz. of ploughing up out of the pasture or waste sufficient to admit of each tribesman having his due allotment, and letting it lie waste again the next year, admitted of considerable readjustment to meet the exigencies of declining population, as well as providing an easy means whereby any stranger prince, like Bellerophon, who might be admitted to the tribe, could be allotted either a τέμενος apart, or a κλῆρος in the open plain.

Pindar describes this method of cultivation when he says:—

“Fruitful fields in turn now yield to man his yearly bread upon the plains, and now again they pause and gather back their strength.”(313)

(M141) It is noticeable that the Aetolians offered Meleagros a τέμενος in the fattest part of the plain, wherever he might choose, as a _gift_ (δῶρον); and as the τέμενος would certainly be cultivated by slave or hired labour, what they really gave him was the right of receiving the produce from the 50 _guai_ composing the τέμενος. But this gift was meant as a special honour or bribe, and took a special form in being in land as a means of permanent enrichment.

In similar wise Ezekiel suggested the capitalisation, as it were, by a gift of land of the contributions to the princes, which no doubt were felt to be very irksome. In the division of the land, a portion was to be set aside first for the use of the temple and priests, then a portion for the prince.

“In the land shall be his possession in Israel, and my princes shall no more oppress my people; and the rest of the land shall they give to the house of Israel according to their tribes. Thus saith the Lord God, Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel; remove violence and spoil and execute judgment and justice, and take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord God.”(314)

And again:—

“Moreover the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession; but he shall give his sons inheritance out of his own possession; that my people be not scattered every man from his possession.”(315)

But there can be no doubt, that although the prince may have had no power to dislodge any of the free tribesmen of his own people from their holdings, yet no one could gainsay him if he chose to enrich himself by planting or reclaiming any part of his domains, as Laertes is represented as having done.(316)

(M142) The modern usage in Boeotia and in the island of Euboea may very well represent the procedure of ancient times, and if it can be imagined that some method of the same sort was in vogue in Boeotia in the time of Hesiod, it will be understood how possible it was for Hesiod’s father to settle at Askra and gradually to acquire possession of a house and κλῆρος.

“There is some cultivation from Plataea to Thebes, but strangely alternating with wilderness. We were told that the people have plenty of spare land, and not caring to labour for its artificial improvement, till a piece of ground once, and then let it lie fallow for a season or two. The natural richness of the Boeotian soil thus supplies them with ample crops. But it is strange to think how impossible it is, even in these rich and favoured plains, to induce a fuller population.”(317)

At Achmetaga, in Euboea,

“The folk pay for their houses a nominal rental of a bushel of wheat per annum, in order to secure the owner’s proprietary claim, which would otherwise pass to the occupier by squatter’s right after thirty years of unmolested occupation. They are at liberty to cultivate pretty well as much land as they care to, paying to the landlord one-third in kind.... The produce here is almost exclusively wheat or maize, but every family maintains a plot of vineyard for home consumption.”(318)

(M143) Whether the free tribesman ever looked upon the contribution he made to the maintenance of the princes, under whose protection he had the privilege of living, as a condition of tenure of his land, is open to doubt; but from the right to demand indiscriminate gifts, to confiscate or eject in case of refusal, it is only one step to the exaction of a regular food-rent as a return for the occupation of land.

§ 7. Summary Of The Early Evidence.

It may be useful here briefly to summarise the results of the inquiry of the last three sections into the relation of the ownership of land to the structure of society in Homer and in early times.

(M144) the princes had their compact estates divided off from the other land of the community, so that a passer-by could point and say, “There is the king’s τέμενος.”(319) The ordinary tribesman on the other hand had a share in the common fields under cultivation, probably consisting of a number of scattered pieces of land lying mixed up with those of others, and therefore only referred to on the face of the land, under the comprehensive terms ἀγροὶ καὶ ἔργα ἀνθρώπων.(320)

This share of the tribesman was, as in later times, called a κλῆρος, it being possible for a man to enjoy several such holdings and deserve the epithet πολύκληρος, whilst the lowest class of freemen consisted of those who possessed no land, under the ignominious title of ἄκληρος.

(M145) The κλῆρος, descending from father to son, was apparently connected with the οἶκος or household, and supplied its maintenance. The οἶκος grew fat or was consumed in accordance with the capacity of its head, and its continuity was regarded as a matter of the utmost importance. Its members were bound together at their ancestral hearth by mutual ties of common maintenance. The sanctity of thus sharing the same loaf extended also to guests, whose relations to their hosts might last for several generations. It is the necessity of supplying the οἶκος and its dependents with the means of sustenance and hospitality among a pastoral people gradually adapting themselves to agriculture, that regulates the tenure of land and the duties of the householder.

(M146) The power of the chieftain to draw upon the resources of his people for the entertainment of his household and his guests by exactions payable in kind, supplemented by the power he also seems to have possessed to transfer at will the right of receiving these “gifts” to any one he chose, seems to contain the germs of the more complicated system of food-rents as a condition of land tenure, which is so important a feature of the Celtic tribal arrangements.

(M147) Inasmuch as the prince was a member of the tribe, he was entitled to an allotment in the land under cultivation, the very word κλῆρος implying the equal right of all members of the tribe to a share in the soil. But inasmuch as the prince possessed blood royal and claimed his descent from the very gods that the tribesmen worshipped, his dignity was above partaking with his tribesmen of a κλῆρος in the common fields. He was therefore allotted a τέμενος apart, and worthy of his divine parentage. Besides the bare single allotment of the τέμενος, land was set apart for him as a gift of honour by the people, from whom honour and gifts to their prince were due. Gifts in land formed a special mark of honour, and may at the same time have served another purpose from the giver’s point of view by way of a permanent source of income or endowment, as it were, whereby the continuous exactions towards the maintenance of the prince from the lands of the people might tend to be alleviated. Thus much of power over the property of his inferiors he undoubtedly retained, and he probably cultivated what he liked of the outlying lands under his sway.

(M148) But the evidence does not show that he ever had the right of coming between the οἶκος of his tribesmen and their κλῆρος: the only means at his disposal of severing the link between the family and the land, were those employed by Ahab and Jezebel to acquire the “inheritance” of the ancestral vineyard of Naboth at Jezreel.

§ 8. Hesiod And His Κλήρος.

In the time of Hesiod, the κλῆρος(321) could be sold in case of need and added to the possession of another.

(M149) But the case of Hesiod is in itself somewhat exceptional. His father had fled from his own country by stress of poverty, and settled on the barren land of Askra in Boeotia, where he was allowed to acquire some land.(322) He was therefore somewhat of a sojourner (the μετανάστης of Homer),(323) and, true to the Homeric doctrine, was unencumbered by the claims of kindred. Hesiod contrasts the ready help of the neighbour with the perfunctory slowness of the kinsman, duty-bound. The neighbour, he says, is prompted by the need of mutual protection of material property, the kinsman stays to bind on his sandals and gird his loins for the labour he is forbidden to shirk.(324)

Hesiod and his brother Perses had divided the κλῆρος of their father into two, and lived apart. Perses had squandered his half, and spent his time and his livelihood in the gay life of the town, but none the less seems to have expected to be allowed to draw still further on the resources of the paternal property, to the distress of his industrious brother.

Hesiod does not contemplate any possible means of making a living other than by tilling the soil; and his quaint ideas may be taken as typical of the small Boeotian peasant-farmer, allowance being made for the short time that his family had held land at Askra.

§ 9. Survivals Of Family Land In Later Times.

(M150) In later Greek writers it is several times stated that the κλῆροι or ἀρχαῖαι μοῖραι were inalienable. Yet all remark to what a deplorable extent the alienation and accumulation of land into few hands had been carried. Aristotle comments on the excellence of the ancient law, at one time prevalent in many cities, against the sale of the original κλῆροι, and the good purpose therein of making every one cultivate his own moderate-sized holding.(325)

Innumerable passages could be quoted from the speeches of Isaeus, referring to the law that forbade any one to alienate by will his landed estate from his lawful sons. Plato warns his friends that buying and selling is desecration to the god-given κλῆρος.(326)

“Now I, as the legislator, regard you and your possessions, not as belonging to yourselves, but as belonging to your whole family, both past and present.”(327)

Plutarch and Heraclides say that the same law against the sale of the κλῆρος existed anciently at Sparta.

(M151) Plutarch’s evidence, late as it is, of the ancient customs among the Spartans is worthy of further consideration.

In his _Life of Agis_ he states that the κλῆρος passed in succession from father to son—ἐν διαδοχαῖς πατρὸς παιδὶ τὸν κλῆρον ἀπολείποντος—until the Peloponnesian war.

In his _Life of Lycurgus_ he says that—

“When a child was born, the father was not entitled to maintain it (τρέφειν), but he took and carried it to a place called ‘lesche,’ where the _elders of his tribesmen_ were sitting, who, if they found the child pretty well grown and healthy, ordered its maintenance (τρέφειν), allotting to it one of the 9,000 kleroi (κλήρων αὐτῷ τῶν ἐνακισχιλίων προσνείμαντες).”(328)

Elsewhere in Greece at the introduction of the new-born child to the relations and friends a few days after its birth, symbolical gifts of food were made as the child was carried round the hearth.(329)

(M152) The important part of this ceremony at Sparta, described by Plutarch, seems to be the introduction of the infant to the elders of the tribe, and the recognition by them of its right to maintenance, if it appeared to them physically worthy of admission to the tribe. It cannot be supposed that Plutarch believed that vacant κλῆροι escheated, so to speak, to the community, because he elsewhere describes the lamentable tendency of estates to get into few hands, which the community would in that case surely have been able somewhat to prevent. Nor is it likely that a κλῆρος was actually set apart for the maintenance of each infant, who was apparently still nourished in its father’s house until seven years old, when its education and occupations were regulated by the State.

Reading this passage with the other in the _Life of Agis_, a natural inference is, that the child’s right to succeed to the property of his father only was thereby assured to him by the elders, _i.e._ the right on his attaining manhood to enjoy the possession of land. This is the view taken by M. de Coulanges;(330) but surely there is more underlying the account of the ceremony. What actually took place with regard to the allotment of a κλῆρος to the infant member of the tribe, cannot be decided here. The State at Sparta undertook to educate all her sons after a certain age, and gave the parent no further rights over the child. Is there in this ceremony a transfer of the claim for maintenance from against the head of the household to the larger unit represented by the elders of the tribe, irrespective of the inheritance of the son from his father?

It would be necessary for the adult Spartan citizen, of the class of ὁμοιοι at any rate, to have a right to the produce of some land, as otherwise it is difficult to see how he could contribute the necessary provisions that formed his share of maintenance at the joint table of his _syssition_; unless indeed he drew his allowance from his father’s estate.

(M153) In any case the idea of the dependence of a member of the tribe for sustenance upon his right to a κλῆρος is striking; and at the same time the evidence goes to show that his maintenance was a claim upon a group of kinsmen at Sparta, comprising more than the nearest relations, and was recognised as such by them.

(M154) The link that bound the cultivators to their land was so strong in early times at Athens, that mortgages could apparently not be paid off by mere transfer of the land itself; but the whole family of the debtor went with their mortgaged property and became enslaved to the creditor, having in future to work the land for him at a fixed charge.

This was the state of affairs that Solon set himself to mend, and it is instructive that the method, he seems to have chosen, was to loosen the tie between the owner and his land, and, by facilitating the transfer of land from one to another, to obviate the necessity of taking the debtor’s person with his family into slavery on account of the debt.(331)

Nevertheless, in spite of the radical legislation of Solon, the sentiment that bound the family to the soil remained long after his time.

(M155) Besides the prohibition to sell the family land which Aristotle speaks of as prevailing in Lokris, the Hypoknemidian Lokrians insisted on actual residence on that land in the case of their colony at Naupaktos. Though unable apparently wholly to forbid the participation of the colonists in the ancestral rites of their kin in Lokris, they took advantage of the prevailing sentiment with regard to the permanence of the family, and insisted that the continuance of the hearth of the colonist at Naupaktos should at any rate be considered of equal importance.

According to an inscription of the fifth century B.C.:—

“The colonist has the right to return to Lokris and sacrifice with his γένος both in the rites of his δᾶμος and his φοίνανοι for ever. He can only return permanently without paying the re-establishment tax if he has left ἐν τᾷ ἱστίᾳ at Naupaktos a grown-up son or a brother. If a γένος of the colonists is left without a representative (ἐχέπαμον) ἐν τᾷ ἱστίᾳ, the nearest of kin (ἐπάγχιστος) in Lokris shall take the property, provided he go himself, be he man or boy, within three months to Naupaktos. A colonist can inherit his share of his Lokrian father’s or brother’s property....”

“If a magistrate deals unfairly and refuses justice, he shall be ἄτιμος and shall lose his μέρος μετὰ οἰκιατᾶν.”(332)

(M156) Though the sale of estates could be effected at Athens in the fourth century B.C., yet, when the owner died without having sold, the succession was regulated by the ancient custom. If there were legitimate children, the inheritance to the land could not be diverted from them, even by will;(333) provided only that the children had gone through the ceremony of being accepted and enrolled by the phratria. If the descendant had neglected this formality, and had failed to be recognised as a legal member of the kindred or clan, he or she lost all rights to the property, which went to the devisee or next of kin.(334) The right to possess land was thus at Athens, as at Sparta, intimately connected with the tribal organisation; and the claim for maintenance from the paternal estate could only lie, after full acknowledgment of the necessary qualification had been granted by the larger unit of relationship.

§ 10. The Idea Of Family Land Applied Also To Leasehold And Semi-Servile Tenure.

(M157) Attention has been drawn to the reciprocal relations that existed between the family and its land, and their inseparability in the minds and phraseology of the Greeks at different times. There is a further development however arising from this point of view, without some notice of which the subject of the tenure of the κλῆρος would be incomplete, and which serves to confirm the method with which this subject has been treated.

Though alike in their estimation of the possession of land as a means of livelihood and for the accumulation of wealth, the Greeks had very different views with respect to the place of agriculture as a worthy occupation for a citizen. Sparta regarded it as entirely beneath the dignity of her sons and forbade their personal application to the cultivation of their κλῆροι. There was at Athens, on the other hand, a large class of citizens whose energies were entirely devoted to the production of fruits of the earth, whilst the life of a country gentleman, combined with that of the farmer, was by no means despicable in their eyes.

(M158) There were mainly two methods of enjoying the possession of a landed estate. Either the land was cultivated by the owner himself with the help of bought slaves or hired servants, few or many, as described in Hesiod and the _Oeconomics_ of Xenophon;(335) or the owner resided in the city or a neighbouring town, and the land was tilled by aliens or serfs (called sometimes κλαρῶται), like the Helots of Sparta, who paid an annual contribution from the produce to their landlord. The serf was often attached hereditarily to the soil in the sense of being unable to give up his holding, but also had certain rights as against his master, both in the matter of his own possessions and in that he could not be sold out of the country.(336)

(M159) There is a passage in the Gortyn Laws that states:—that if there are no rightful successors to inherit the property of a deceased Gortynian, his household’s κλῆρος, _i.e._ the persons composing it, shall inherit his property. That is to say, if a Gortynian family died out and no legal representative could be found, their proprietary rights were extinguished and the κλαρῶται who lived upon the land took all their property. This provision favours the idea that at Gortyn also the citizen-population came of a race of conquerors, who were not exactly looked upon as ground landlords upon whose land a subject family was settled or had been allowed to remain, but that, whilst the relation of the κλαρῶται to their land was of the closest if not an absolute bondage to the soil, the proprietary rights of their superiors and masters consisted of the conqueror’s overlordship and the power to derive their maintenance from the joint produce of their serfs’ labour and the land.(337)

This comprehensive use of the word κλῆρος, as meaning both the allotment of land and the family who were bound to occupy it, whose labour also created its value to its lord and master, is quite consistent with the use of the word in reference to the holdings of the Spartan citizens. The allotment of a κλῆρος at Sparta evidently meant also a transference of rights over the Helots that worked it; and even if this further implication was not actually included in the meaning of the word, it was so inseparable in thought that no explanation was necessary of the composite significance of the allotment.

(M160) The Athenians in their κληρουχίαι seem instinctively to have combined these two methods of agriculture. The κληροῦχοι were not colonists, who became citizens of a new city, but they remained citizens of Athens, holding however their κλῆροι in a remote district. But the chief feature of this method of landholding was that the owner, though remaining a citizen of Athens and liable to the same claims from the mother city in respect of military service, &c, as before, was yet supposed to reside in the neighbourhood of his new κλῆρος. This was the case, even when the land itself was left in the hands of the conquered population at a fixed annual charge.

(M161) An inscription found on the Acropolis of Athens, and relating to some date about 560 or 570 B.C., defines the legal status of the first κληροῦχοι sent to Salamis. They were assimilated to Athenian citizens as to taxes and military service; but they must reside on their land under pain of an absentee’s tax to the State.(338)

(M162) In the year 427 B.C. the Athenians conquered the island of Lesbos. They imposed no tribute on the subjugated islanders, but, making the land into three thousand κλῆροι “except the Methymnian land,” they first set apart three hundred κλῆροι as sacred to the gods, and on to the others they sent off κληροῦχοι chosen by lot from themselves; to these the Lesbians paid annually for each κλῆροι two minae, and _themselves worked the land_.(339)

According to the account of Aelian, the same method of procedure was adopted after the conquest of Euboea in about 510 B.C. The Athenians, having conquered the Chalkidians, apportioned their land to κληροῦχοι(340) in two thousand κλῆροι, _i.e._ the country called Hippobotos; and, setting aside τεμένη to Athena in the place called Lelantos, they let out(341) the rest according to the pillars that stand in the King’s Stoa, which thus bear record of the leases.(342)

(M163) The holding of each κληροῦχος may have varied in size according to the character of the soil and features of the country; but it may safely be asserted that it must have been of sufficient dimensions, not only to provide subsistence for the native population left on the soil, but also to pay a considerable portion towards the keep of the κληροῦχος himself, during his enforced residence in the conquered country.

The class of citizen from amongst whom the κληροῦχοι were chosen by lot, did not consist of families with much property in Athens.(343) Younger sons without occupation, whom their fathers had not been quite callous enough to “expose” in infancy,(344) and restless individuals without property in the mother country, would be most likely to offer themselves. And to such the two minae per annum, paid by the Lesbians from the produce of each κλῆρος, would appear a reasonable if not a sumptuous provision of livelihood. There were a hundred drachmae in the mina, and if it is true, as asserted by Plutarch,(345) that in the time of Solon one drachma was the price of a sheep, a yearly income of two hundred sheep, or their equivalent, would be forthcoming to each κληροῦχος—surely a considerable contribution to the maintenance of his family.(346)

Under these circumstances each κλῆρος served to provide maintenance for two households—both of whom had hereditary rights therein, though themselves in different strata of society. Both households also were in a sort attached to the soil, the one in practical bondage, the other bound by law to reside in the country wherein lay its substance, and (if we may use the common expression of the Welsh Laws) its privilege.

(M164) This double and continuous ownership was not confined to the semi-servile tenure of lands annexed by Athenian conquests.

Leases to be handed down from father to son _for ever_—τὸν πάντα χρόνον—subject of course to the regular payment of the rent, seem to have been quite usual.

What is said to be the oldest Greek contract we have, is of this nature.(347) It was found in Elis at Olympia, and runs as follows:—

“Contract with Theron and Aichmanor with regard to the land in Salamona of eighteen plethra. Rent, twenty-two manasioi of barley in the month Alphioios; if he omits, let them pay double. _They shall hold for ever._”(348)

There is an instance of a proprietor of land at Mylasa, in Karia, deliberately selling his estates to a sacred community for the benefit of the god, and receiving them again (like the Roman _precaria_) from the trustees on perpetual lease—εἰς πατρικά—as the patrimonial substance of his family, for himself and his issue or whosoever should take inheritance from him. He thus obtained a money value down in return for his property, but bound himself and his descendants to an annual rent of so many drachmae, to form part of the revenues of the god. Moreover his “family-land” in this case was apparently more inalienable now than before; for he might neither divide the land henceforth, nor share the responsibility for the rent with another.(349)

(M165) Do not these instances show that even leases were included in the same category with actual ownership of land, being embraced within the characteristic idea that the land that contributed to the maintenance of the family and had come to be regarded almost as giving that family its social if not its political status, should descend unintermittently from generation to generation in that family, though its occupation was subject to providing support likewise to a superior owner and his family, whose descendants in their turn also would demand their share in the produce?

Is the conclusion justified that the basis of this indomitable feeling was that the peculiar view of the family, as consisting of a long line of past and future representatives, precluded the individual, who happened to be the living representative at any given time, from taking an irresponsible position as absolute master of the property, upon which his family had been, was, and would be dependent?