On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay Part 12

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 ?????? And The ??e???.

(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 cla.s.s and the ordinary tribesmen.

The as??e??-the lion of his people(252)-has his select estate, his t?e???, with orchards and gardens of considerable extent; while the swarms of tribesmen are allotted their ?????? 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 mult.i.tudinous 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 as??e?? 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 part.i.tion 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 ?????a? enough were his, and many were his orchards of trees apart, and many sheep were his."(256)

In the description of the s.h.i.+eld of Achilles in the _Iliad_ a vivid contrast is drawn between the rich harvest of the as??e?? and the busy toil of the tribesmen.

"Furthermore he set therein a t?e??? deep in corn(257) where hinds (??????) were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands ...

and among them the as??e?? 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 (t?e???) cut out of the plain, but an allotment (??????), 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 (?????

???????).(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 a.s.s, 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 t?e??? of the prince, the very word t?e??? implying an area of land cut out of the cultivated land of the community, generally described as being in the plain (p?d???).

(M124) Such allotments of land seem only to have been made to princes and G.o.ds, 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 wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d, and they often mistook each other for some deity.

The G.o.dlike Sarpedon asks his cousin Glaukos, wherefore are they two honoured in Lykia as G.o.ds, with flesh and full cups and a great t?e???.(267)

As the possession of full tribal blood was necessary for the owners.h.i.+p of a ??????, so princely blood was the qualification for the enjoyment of a t?e???. 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 G.o.d," that he gave him honour, and the Lykians meted him out a t?e???.(268) This great t?e??? 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 Phaeakians had his t?e??? and fruitful orchard near but apart from the fields and tilled lands of his townsfolk.(270) Odysseus it seems had more than one t?e???.(271)

(M125) Once in the _Iliad_ the epithet pat????? is applied to a chief's t?e???.(272) According to Hesychius, pat????? means "handed down to one's father from his ancestors,"(273) and Homer evidently uses the word in this sense.(274)

The kings.h.i.+p itself in Ithaka was considered as part of Telemachos'

patrimony: "Never may Kronion make thee king in sea-girt Ithaka, which is pat????? to thee by birth (?e?e?)."(275)

But though the t?e??? and the kings.h.i.+p were both equally pat???a, they did not together const.i.tute an indivisible inheritance. Any one of the blood could enjoy possession of the land, whilst the over-lords.h.i.+p 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 kings.h.i.+p, though due to him by inheritance (pat?????) is in the hands of the G.o.ds; he means to be master (??a?) 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 (???????), 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 (te?? ????? p??s????t? ??a?). But the kingly sceptre and throne of his father must be his without wrath between them. And Zeus, the ancestral G.o.d of them both (?e?? ? ?e??????? ?f?t?????), is witness to their oath.(276)

(M127) Property in land could also be acc.u.mulated in the hands of individuals not necessarily of princely station. Odysseus tells a tale of how he took a wife of "men with many ??????" (p????????? ?????p??) by reason of his valour.(277) The ?????? 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 acc.u.mulate in the hands of the powerful or rich, had already set in. In later colonisations and a.s.signments of new land the ?????? were often equally divided,(278) and the gift of citizens.h.i.+p, as has been already mentioned, was sometimes accompanied by a grant of a _half-kleros_ (?????????). Did the ?????? then represent in theory an area of cultivated ground capable of sustaining a single household?

- 5. Early Evidence _continued_: The ?????? And The Maintenance Of The ?????.

(M128) There are signs in Homer of the existence, already insisted upon for later times, of the connection of the owners.h.i.+p of property with the heads.h.i.+p of a household. It follows that if the head of a family was the only owner of land, the desire of establis.h.i.+ng 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 (?t?s??), both an ????? and a ?????? 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 ??????, as a house, a wife, and a plough-ox.(281)

Aristotle quotes this line of Hesiod, in his argument that the ????? was the a.s.sociation formed to supply the wants of each day,(282) its members being called by Charondas, he says, ??s?p??? (sharers in the mealbin), and by Epimenides the Cretan ???ap?? (sharers of the same plot of ground).(283) And he might have added that Pindar uses the word ????a???

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 ?????, that Telemachos can say without incongruity that his house is being _eaten_ by the wooers:-