§ 4. Tenure Of Land In Homer: The Κλῆρος And The Τέμενος.
The βασιλεύς and his τέμενος contrasted with the tribesman and his κλῆρος.
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.
The possessions of the βασιλεύς.
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 [pg 103] 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]
The κλῆρος of the tribesman probably in the open fields in the plain.
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 [pg 105] 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).
The βασιλεύς “honoured like a god with gift of a τέμενος.”
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. [pg 106] 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]
The τέμενος descended from father to son.
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 [pg 107] 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.
Iason's claim upon his great-grandfather's estate.
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᾽ [pg 108] 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]
Rich tribesman might hold several κλῆροι.
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?