The picture given by Thucydidês, of these very early and unrecorded times, can only be taken as conjectural,—the conjectures, indeed, of a statesman and a philosopher,—generalized too, in part, from the many particular instances of contention and expulsion of chiefs which he found in the old legendary poems. The Homeric poems, however, present to us a different picture. They recognize walled towns, fixed abodes, strong local attachments, hereditary individual property in land, vineyards planted and carefully cultivated, established temples of the gods, and splendid palaces of the chiefs.[195] The description of Thucydidês belongs to a lower form of society, and bears more analogy to that which the poet himself conceives as antiquated and barbarous,—to the savage Cyclopes, who dwell on the tops of mountains, in hollow caves, without the plough, without vine or fruit culture, without arts or instruments,—or to the primitive settlement of Dardanus son of Zeus, on the higher ground of Ida, while it was reserved for his descendants and successors to found the holy Ilium on the plain.[196] Ilium or Troy represents the perfection of Homeric society. It is a consecrated spot, containing temples of the gods as well as the palace of Priam, and surrounded by walls which are the fabric of the gods; while the antecedent form of ruder society, which the poet briefly glances at, is the parallel of that which the theory of Thucydidês ascribes to his own early semi-barbarous ancestors. [195] Odyss. vi. 10; respecting Nausithous, past king of the Phæakians: Ἀμφὶ δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει, καὶ ἐδείματο οἴκους, Καὶ νηοὺς ποίησε θεῶν, καὶ ἐδάσσατ᾽ ἀρούρας. The vineyard, olive-ground, and garden of Laërtes, is a model of careful cultivation (Odyss. xxiv. 245); see also the shield of Achilles (Iliad, xvii. 541-580), and the Kalydônian plain (Iliad, ix. 575). [196] Odyss. x. 106-115; Iliad, xx. 216.