It is the greatest mistake to imagine all the Spartans eating of the same dishes at the same table. The so-called common meals were taken in small groups of fifteen members each, in separate houses. Every one was free to choose the group which he wished to join; but he was not admitted except by the unanimous vote of the members composing it.[215] We also know that the meals were somewhat luxurious, and that the famous black broth, μελάς ζῶμος, was merely the prelude to them.[216] It is, then, very evident that these common repasts, whose meaning or object we need not here try to discover, have not the slightest connection with a common life and certainly not with community in land.[217]
M. Viollet also refers to the feasts which the fifty Athenian prytanes used to celebrate near the sacred hearth; reminds us that when the young Athenian was received into the phratria, the phratria performed a sacrifice which was followed by a feast; and refers to the feasts which the Roman curiae celebrated before an altar on certain festivals. But one must indeed be dominated by a fixed idea to suppose that these three different kinds of feasts are a proof of community in land. It is exceedingly ingenious to say that “these meals are the lingering evidence of a primitive nomad life and of community in the soil;”[218] but the fact is that they were simply religious ceremonies. They were celebrated around an altar, according to prescribed rites. The custom of a common meal in the presence of the divinity is found in many religions.
9. For his ninth proof, M. Viollet sets before us “a widespread tradition which represents the inhabitants of a country as dividing its soil amongst themselves;” and in support of this he gives a few references to Diodorus. He might have given many more, and to other writers also.[219] What he takes for a vague tradition is an historical fact perfectly well known and authenticated. We know that every Greek city preserved the memory of its foundation, which was the occasion of a yearly festival. This tradition was handed down either by means of religious songs repeated from year to year without any change, or on bronze inscriptions kept in a temple. It is from these sacred records that we obtain such exact evidence as to the founding and founder of each city. Now these records lay stress on two circumstances; the founding of the town on a given day by the performance of a religious ceremony; and the division of the land amongst the citizens,—a division which was effected by a drawing of lots, called κληρουχία or κληροδοσία. These two operations took place at the same time; we might almost say on the same day. Where M. Viollet makes the mistake is in saying that “this division presupposes primitive community, and puts an end to an era of non-division” (p. 473). It is precisely the contrary; for whenever we see Greek emigrants making settlements on territory either previously unoccupied or else conquered by them, we find them immediately founding a town and immediately dividing the soil.[220] The soil may have been conquered in common, but not for one single year is it cultivated in common. They do not divide it “in order to get out of a system of non-division”; but they make haste to divide the country that they have just found unoccupied or have just conquered, so that it shall not remain for one moment undivided.
In those cities, indeed, which date from very early times, there was no occasion for a division. We do not find it in Athens. Why? Because we know that Attica was at first occupied by some hundreds of independent families, γένη; and that these families afterwards were grouped into phratries, and finally into a city. There is no partition here, for each family keeps the land which has belonged to it for centuries. But when it is a case of a colony, a body of people who emigrate and take possession of fresh territory, a division is quite needful. Only this division does not, as M. Viollet would suppose, come at the end of a period of non-division; it is the first step in the establishment of the colony. The practice is one of the most re-markable, and one of the best authenticated of those early times. It proves that the Greek city never cultivated its land in common; that it had no wish for a common ownership of the soil; that the very idea of such a system was unknown to it. If M. Viollet had studied the κληρουχία in all the authorities which refer to it, he would not have supposed for a moment that it could be a proof of community in land, and he would have taken care not to bring it forward in support of a theory of which it is in reality the refutation.
10. I shall not dwell long upon another argument of M. Viollet’s (p. 481). I have elsewhere pointed out that in the most ancient Greek law, as well as in early Hindoo law and with many other peoples, the land originally attached to a family was so closely bound up with it that it could neither be sold, nor transferred to another family, either by bequest or as dower.[221] This rule is clearly explained in many Greek writings; it is the result of the conception of property not as an individual right, but as a family right. A father was compelled to leave it to his sons. Even if there were no son, he could not bequeath or sell it; it must pass to the nearest relation. M. Viollet imagines that there is another explanation. The prohibition of sale and bequest results, according to him, from the circumstance that land was originally common to all. I do not follow the argument. If the soil was originally the common property of the people, and the people maintained a kind of eminent domain over it (which is M. Viollet’s theory), one cannot see why the law should have forbidden the sale of land to another member of the same people; one cannot see why the law should have prohibited any family from parting with it, even in favour of the people itself. The old rule, or rather the ancient custom which forbids a family to separate itself from its land, cannot be a proof of community in land. It only proves the ownership of property by the family. As Plato says, in a passage where he expresses not his own private utopias but the ideas of the men of his time: “You cannot leave your property to whomsoever you please, because your property belongs to your family, that is, to your ancestors and your descendants.”[222] The hypothesis that M. Viollet sets against this is purely fanciful. He appears to believe that the restriction as to sale and bequest weakened the rights of property; he does not observe that it renders inheritance more absolute, and secures the rights of the family. One may search through the whole of Greek law and the whole of Greek literature without finding either the “eminent domain” of the State, or a restoration of the land to a supposed ownership common.
11. M. Viollet’s last argument is taken from a passage of Theophrastus. When Greek law at last authorised the sale of land—property being from that time onwards looked upon as an individual right,—it required that the sale should take place under certain conditions of publicity. “Many legislators,” says Theophrastus, “require that sales should be made by a public crier, and that they should be announced several days beforehand; others prefer that they should take place in the presence of a magistrate; while some lay down that notice of sale must be posted up for sixty days. There are two motives for all this: in the first place that claims may be presented against the seller, and secondly, that all may know who is the new owner.” This sentence is perfectly clear; it tells us that a sale ought to be made publicly, so that it may be surrounded by all possible guarantees; but M. Viollet sees in it something different from this. “If the public are present,” he says, “it is because the land belongs to the people” (pp. 484-485). This is drawing a conclusion of which Theophrastus never dreamt. When he described the various kinds of publicity which were enjoined in the matter of sale, and when he explained in such a natural manner the reasons for this publicity, he did not suppose that his meaning would be so far distorted as to lead to the conclusion that the land had once been common. But M. Viollet has a fixed idea and follows it. If he reads that neighbours act as witnesses to a sale, he adds that their consent had doubtless to be asked, since the land properly belonged to all. If he reads in another passage that it was the custom in a certain town for the purchaser to present three of the neighbours with a small piece of money, so that they might afterwards remember the act and be able to vouch for it, he at once adds that “this piece of money is the price which the purchaser pays to the three neighbours for their original rights over the land.” All this is pure imagination. The Greeks certainly did not connect any idea of community in land with these simple customs.
Such, then, are the eleven authorities by whose help M. Viollet tries to prove that the early Greek cities held their land in common during a period more or less protracted. M. Viollet does not give a single other reference. Now the first taken from Plato, the fifth from Diodorus, and the seventh about Tarentum are absolutely incorrect; the second, third and fourth from Virgil, Trogus Pompeius and Tibullus are beside the subject, since they apply to the tradition of a savage state which does not here concern us; the sixth, the one about Pythagoras, points to an exceptional episode, only lasting for a brief period, and clearly not in harmony with Greek habits; the eighth, about public meals, has been misunderstood; the ninth about the κλερουχίαι, and the tenth concerning the primitive inalienability of land belonging to the family, are absolutely opposed to M. Viollet’s theory; the eleventh points to publicity of sale, not community in land. And so out of eleven quotations or arguments there is not a single one which on examination stands firm.
And this is not all. Supposing that there could be found in the whole of Greek literature two or three, or even eleven, quotations, which seemed to imply community in land, it would still be the duty of every serious historian to look at the evidence on the other side; to search, that is, for other passages or other facts which point to an opposite conclusion. It did not occur to M. Viollet to do this. If he should ever think of undertaking the task, I venture to point out to him four classes of authorities or of facts: 1st, Those to be found in Homer, Hesiod and the most ancient documents, which show us the land held as private property, with no mention or trace of community. 2nd, Those vestiges of the oldest Greek law which have come down to us, which do not contain the slightest trace of a state of things in which the land belonged to the people, and which do contain, on the contrary, precise rules as to family property. 3rd, The rites of ancient religions, which show the worship of land and of consecrated bounds; and this side by side with the worship of the dead. 4th, and finally, the records of all the κληρουχίαι; that is, the division of the soil into hereditary portions, a division which was made on the very day of the founding of each city, and almost implies an actual inaptitude for common ownership. Here will be found, not eleven imaginary pieces of evidence, but a whole body of evidence and of facts; and this mass of evidence proves precisely the opposite of a system of community. History would be too easy a science if it were enough to pick out here and there isolated lines and interpret them as one liked. Every authority ought to be consulted, the whole of Greek literature ought to be studied, in treating of such a problem as M. Viollet’s. One cannot judge of the whole Greek world from a chance occurrence in the Lipari isles. Eleven quotations, which, even if they were exact, would be insignificant in comparison with the rest of Greek literature, are not enough to build a system upon. What is especially surprising is that the author of such a theory should not have thought of studying either the law, or the beliefs, or the permanent institutions of the Greeks. He has solved the question without so much as setting himself to investigate it.
May I add that I am sorry to find myself taken to task by M. Viollet? “M. Fustel,” he says (p. 464), “was unable to recognise this great historical fact (i.e., the supposed community in land), because he saw that every family had its own hearth, its own worship, its own ancestors.” This is true. I willingly grant that the facts which I saw, and which I have completely proved, prevented me from seeing the imaginary facts that M. Viollet thought he descried in his eleven quotations. He further adds (p. 465), that since I admitted the existence of property common to the family, it was an easy thing to go a little further and recognise, as he did, the common-ownership of the people. Here M. Viollet throws a little too much light upon his own method of proceeding. According to him, an historian who recognises one fact or institution ought to guess at another fact or institution, merely because there is an apparent analogy between them; in this way logic takes the place of evidence, and the imagination can construct all the systems it chooses. I am not bold enough for this; I do not find in history what I wish to find, but only what is there. I am careful not to insert anything I do not find. I saw in ancient law and ancient religion the co-proprietorship of the family, and I said so. I did not see the common ownership of the whole people, and I did not say I did. History is not a science of speculation; it is a science of observation.
No one, moreover, but M. Viollet, considers that the co-proprietorship of the family and the common ownership of the whole people “are two things which resemble one another.” It is clear to every careful observer that they are essentially different, both in character and in results. The co-proprietorship of the family is an ownership which is complete, absolute, hereditary, independent even of the State. If it is undivided, it is because the family at this time is itself still undivided. It is, besides, legally in the hands of the head of the family, the real owner, who is absolute master of it, and does what he likes with it; but who can neither transfer it or bequeath it “because he owes it to his descendants such as he has received it from his ancestors.” What resemblance is there between such a system and one under which the land would be common to all, and belong to a whole nation?