(7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times--and, indeed, early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that it is not easy to prove advance towards separate property in the _Odyssey_--beyond what was the rule in the time of the _ILIAD_. In the Making of the Arms (XVIII. 541-549) we find many men ploughing a field, and this may have been a common field. But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at once on a Scottish runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on several common fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and services, from the laird. These common fields were not common property. In XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it does not follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such quarrels were common in Scotland when the runrig system of common fields, each man with his strip, prevailed. [Footnote: Grey Graham, _Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century_, i. 157.] A man had a [Greek: klaeros] or lot (_ILIAD_, XV. 448), but what was a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically shifted-& _partage noir_ of the Russian peasants. Kings and men who deserve public gratitude receive a [Greek: temenos] a piece of public land, as Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI. 194). In the case of Melager such an estate is offered to him, but by whom? Not by the people at large, but by the [Greek: gerontes] (IX. 574). Who are the [Greek: gerontes]? They are not ordinary men of the people; they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from tribal conditions as is the Homeric time--far advanced beyond ancient tribal Scotland or Ireland--we conceive that, as in these countries during the tribal period, the [Greek: gerontes] (in Celtic, the _Flaith_) held in POSSESSION, if not in accordance with the letter of the law, as property, much more land than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman had a right to a "lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of cattle; and a _bogire_, a man of many kine, let _them_ out to tenants. Such a rich man, a _flatha_, would, in accordance with human nature, use his influence with kineless dependents to acquire in possession several lots, avoid the partition, and keep the lots in possession though not legally in property. Such men were the Irish _flaith_, gentry under the _RI_, or king, his [Greek: gerontes], each with his _ciniod_, or near kinsmen, to back his cause.