§ 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.