A man had a {Greek: klaeros} or lot (ILIAD, XV. 448), but what was a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically shifted-& partage noir of the Russian peasants. Kings and men who deserve public gratitude receive a {Greek: temenos} a piece of public land, as Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI. 194). In the case of Melager such an estate is offered to him, but by whom? Not by the people at large, but by the {Greek: gerontes} (IX. 574).
Who are the {Greek: gerontes}? They are not ordinary men of the people; they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from tribal conditions as is the Homeric time—far advanced beyond ancient tribal Scotland or Ireland—we conceive that, as in these countries during the tribal period, the {Greek: gerontes} (in Celtic, the Flaith) held in POSSESSION, if not in accordance with the letter of the law, as property, much more land than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman had a right to a "lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of cattle; and a bogire, a man of many kine, let them out to tenants. Such a rich man, a flatha, would, in accordance with human nature, use his influence with kineless dependents to acquire in possession several lots, avoid the partition, and keep the lots in possession though not legally in property. Such men were the Irish flaith, gentry under the RI, or king, his {Greek: gerontes}, each with his ciniod, or near kinsmen, to back his cause.
"Flaith seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires, says Sir James Ramsay. {Footnote: Foundations of England, i. 16, Note 4.} If land, contrary to the tribal ideal, came into private hands in early Ireland, we can hardly suppose that, in the more advanced and settled Homeric society, no man but the king held land equivalent in extent to a number of "lots." The {Greek: gerontes}, the gentry, the chariot-owning warriors, of whom there are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in Ireland there were many flaith to one Ri) probably, in an informal but tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position in the Iliad, high above the nameless host, can we imagine that they did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically shifting, "lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless freemen, and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of the {Greek: gerontes} or the flaith?
Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vi. 319-339.} holds different opinions. He points out that among a man's possessions, in the Iliad, we hear only of personal property and live stock. It is in one passage only in the Odyssey (XIV. 211) that we meet with men holding several lots of land; but they, we remark, occur in Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced civilisation from of old.
Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be "outsiders," such as are attached to certain villages of Central and Southern India; {Footnote: Maine, Village Communities, P. 127.} or they may answer to the Fuidhir, or "broken men," of early Ireland, fugitives from one to another tribe. They would be "settled on the waste lands of a community." If so, they would not be lotless; they would have new lots. {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vi. 322, 323.}
Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his own labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says, "the land having thus been won from the wastes (the {Greek: gae aklaeros te kai aktitos} of H., Ven. 123), was a {Greek: temenos} or separate possession of Laertes." The passage is in the rejected conclusion of the Odyssey; and if any man might go and squat in the waste, any man might have a lot, or better than one lot. In Iliad, XXIII. 832-835, Achilles says that his offered prize of iron will be useful to a man "whose rich fields are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones compete for the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each a mere lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed to hold in perpetuity, apart from the temenos, which, in Mr. Ridgeway's opinion, reverted, on the death of each holder, to the community, save where kingship was hereditary. Now, if {Greek: klaeros} had come to mean "a lot of land," as we say "a building lot," obviously men like Teucer and Meriones had many lots, rich fields, which at death might sometimes pass to their heirs. Thus there was separate landed property in the Iliad; but the passage is denounced, though not by Mr. Ridgeway, as "late."
The absence of enclosures ({Greek: herkos arouraes}) proves nothing about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.
My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.
Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the Iliad held no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure, though we get clearer lights on it in the Odyssey.
The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible, if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing societies universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller {Footnote: Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.} justly warns us against the attempt "to apply universally certain fixed rules of property development. The passages in Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones, occurring in similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions the formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be little more than an intellectual exercise."