Failure of heirs was, as in later times, the great disintegrating factor and danger to the continuity of the family holdings. As long as a direct descendant was to be found, the property was safe.
Eurykleia comforts Penelope in her fear for the absent Telemachos, saying:—
“For the seed of the son of Arkeisios is not, methinks, utterly hated by the blessed gods, but someone will haply yet remain to possess these lofty halls and the fat fields far away.”[291]
Is it by accident that she here chooses the name of Arkeisios to describe the head of the family of Laertes and Odysseus? He was Laertes' father, and in Telemachos, if he was preserved alive, he would thus have a great-grandson to represent his line in the succession to his property.
Diversion of inheritance by death of heir a sore evil.
The diversion of inheritance to any property from [pg 113] the direct line is spoken of in Homer as a lamentable circumstance greatly intensifying the natural grief at the death of the direct heir.
“Then went he after Nanthos and Thoon, sons of Phainops, striplings both; but their father was outworn of grievous age, and begat no other son for his possessions after him. Then Diomedes slew them and bereft the twain of their dear life, and for their father left only lamentation and sore distress, seeing he welcomed them not alive returned from battle: and kinsmen divided his substance (κτῆσις).”[292]
In the tumultuous times of the Odyssey the right of succession must often have been interrupted by war and violence. Possessions, not only of land, had to be defended by the sword even during the lifetime of the acquirer. This prompts one of the wishes of Odysseus in his prayer at the knees of Arete:—
“And may each one leave to his children after him his possessions in his halls and whatever dues of honour the people have rendered unto him.”[293]
The same anxiety prompts his question to his mother in Hades, to which he obtains answer:—