§ 6. Early Evidence continued: The Τέμενος And The Maintenance Of The Chieftain.
The maintenance of the chiefs levied upon the people under the name of gifts.
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 [pg 115] 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]
The right to receive such “gifts” could be transferred to another.
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]
In India the chief of a town might receive the king's supplies.
In the Indian society that was regulated in [pg 116] 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]
The maintenance of the Great King,
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]
and of Solomon.
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]
Revenue from land in ancient Egypt.
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.
Grants of land to the prince easily made, in their elastic system of agriculture.
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 [pg 118] 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]
Such grants were a special honour, and served to relieve other contributions.
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]
Modern specimens of the elasticity of Greek methods.
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]
The gifts to the prince not actually food-rents for the land.
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.