Inasmuch as the worship of private or public gods consisted mainly of offerings of food, of beasts or produce of the earth, and wine, every tribesman or citizen must have had the means of providing his share in the offerings, besides supporting himself and his family. Those devoted to handicraft or merchandise were often despised by the regular tribesman or citizen, and sometimes therefore formed separate clans by themselves, like the smiths in Arabia. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the membership of the tribe or city should have carried with it the right to the possession of some portion of the arable land and of the pasture, upon which all were regarded as being dependent. In this way the possession of land was intimately related to the status and the duties of the owner. It was the visible mark of his full tribal privilege, and was the practical means of his fulfilling his duty towards his fellows and the public religion, as well as to the needs of his ancestors and household. It seems also to have been believed that, in partaking of the hospitality or sharing in the sacrificial feast of any family, a bond was for the time being created which was in most respects practically equivalent to relationship by blood to the members of that family.[350]
Many tribal customs survived in the kindred and the household.
Apart from the tribal character of the qualification for citizenship, the most conservative organisation wherein had been stereotyped the most precious of tribal customs, was that of the kindred.
It is suggested that the vitality of the customs surrounding the bond of family relationship was due to the importance attached to the religious and social functions incumbent on all members of a household united by kindred blood. The actions of the individual members were constrained by their weighty responsibilities towards the continuance and prosperity of the composite household, in which they moved, and apart from which their existence could not but be altogether incomplete.
The worship of ancestors occupied a prominent place in the needs of the Athenian household, and, no doubt, had a corresponding influence in the preservation of its unity. The same of course cannot be said for Wales, where Christianity had replaced, in the records at any rate, whatever religious beliefs may have existed earlier. But the grouping of the kindred according to grades of relationship was adhered to by the Welsh as an intrinsic part of their very conception of a kindred; and this would point to the conclusion that such subdivisions were due to wider needs than can be found in any particular form of religious belief or worship.
But these survivals mostly found in post-Homeric records.
If, as has been suggested, in adhering to these customs, the Greeks were still treading in the tracks of their tribal ancestors, how is it that the most convincing evidence comes from as late as the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and mainly from the most highly civilised of the cities of Greece?
The Iliad and the Odyssey may perhaps be trusted as truly portraying, so far as they go, the manners and customs of the great period of Achaian civilisation, known as Mycenean, which may be said to have culminated just before the Dorian invasion. Whence then came the public recognition of those household ceremonies of ancestor-worship, which filled such a large place in the life of the Athenian citizen, and which, it has been suggested, were consciously or unconsciously slurred over by the Homeric poets?
They perhaps belonged to the pre-Achaian inhabitants of Greece.
Mr. Walter Leaf has already found an answer to this question,[351] viz. that these ceremonies were the long cherished customs of the ancient Ionian or Pelasgian inhabitants of Greece, who had formed the substratum of society under Achaian rule, and who only came into prominence on the removal of their superiors at the time of the Dorian invasion. And this continuity, underlying the superficial rule of the Achaians, seems to be borne out by recent research and discovery.[352]