Greek, Irish, or French, the poets have a professional motive: there are many courts of princes wherein they may sing, but only one court of the Over Lord. In this partisanship Homer is relatively moderate; his Agamemnon is perhaps the most subtle of all his portraits; unsympathetic as is the Over Lord, his Zeus-given supremacy always wins for him respect. The whole picture of Over Lord and princes is a genuine historical document, a thing of a single age of culture, far behind the condition of the Ionian colonists. The princes themselves owe their position to birth, wealth, and courage. Except Aias and Odysseus, chiefs of rocky isles, all own abundance of chariots. They are surrounded by a class of gentry (the Irish _Flaith_) who are also fighters from chariots, and stand out above the nameless members of the host. It is they (_Iliad_ ix. 574) who promise to Meleager a demesne out of the common land. I conceive that such a τέμενος, or demesne, was much more than a κλῆρος, or ‘lot’; he was a very poor man who had no lot (_Odyssey_ xi. 490). Probably the gentry, or γέροντες, had their gift of a τέμενος, or demesne, ratified in the popular assembly, which, I think, did no more than ratify their decisions. The gentry held rich fields, ‘very remote from any town’ (_Iliad_ xxiii. 832-5). Society was feudal or chivalrous, not democratic. It is true, as Mr. Ridgeway says (_J. H. S._, vi. 319-39) that we do not hear of land in the lists of a man’s possessions, but of livestock, gold, iron, and chariots and arms. On the other hand, the gentry certainly held rich fields remote from the cities. We have no clear light on Homeric land-tenure, but land was held by individuals, in firm possession, if not in property; a prince like Menelaus has whole cities to give away. If a prince lent stock to the owner of a lot, and if the owner became bankrupt, the lot, legally or illegally, would glide into the possession of the prince. The people were free, like the lotless man who employs labourers--_their_ situation is not clear--and like the artisans--smiths, carpenters, workers in gold--and the slaves, men and women, were captives in war, or persons kidnapped by pirates--though they may have been of high rank at home, like the swineherd Eumaeus. In war it was open to a man to kill a prisoner or to set him at ransom, as in the Middle Ages. The various crafts had their regular professors, though it pleased Odysseus to be a master of all of them, from ploughing to shipbuilding. It was a very tolerable state of society; slaves were well treated; women, of course, held a position high above what was theirs in historic Greece. True, they were usually purchased with a bride-price; but the lofty level of their morality, infinitely above that of Europe in the age of chivalry, suggests that men allowed a free choice to their daughters.