"_Flaith_ seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires, says Sir James Ramsay. [Footnote: _Foundations of England_, i. 16, Note 4.] If land, contrary to the tribal ideal, came into private hands in early Ireland, we can hardly suppose that, in the more advanced and settled Homeric society, no man but the king held land equivalent in extent to a number of "lots." The [Greek: gerontes], the gentry, the chariot-owning warriors, of whom there are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in Ireland there were many _flaith_ to one _Ri_) probably, in an informal but tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position in the _Iliad_, high above the nameless host, can we imagine that they did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically shifting, "lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless _freemen_, and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of the [Greek: gerontes] or the _flaith_? Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vi. 319-339.] holds different opinions. He points out that among a man's possessions, in the _Iliad_, we hear only of personal property and live stock. It is in one passage only in the Odyssey (XIV. 211) that we meet with men holding several lots of land; but _they_, we remark, occur in Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced civilisation from of old. Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be "outsiders," such as are attached to certain villages of Central and Southern India; [Footnote: Maine, _Village Communities_, P. 127.] or they may answer to the _Fuidhir_, or "broken men," of early Ireland, fugitives from one to another tribe. They would be "settled on the waste lands of a community." If so, they would not be lotless; they would have new lots. [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vi. 322, 323.]