Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his own labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says, "the land having thus been won from the wastes (the [Greek: gae aklaeros te kai aktitos] of _H., Ven._ 123), was a [Greek: temenos] or separate possession of Laertes." The passage is in the rejected conclusion of the Odyssey; and if any man might go and squat in the waste, any man might have a lot, or better than one lot. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 832-835, Achilles says that his offered prize of iron will be useful to a man "whose rich fields are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones compete for the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each a mere lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed to hold in perpetuity, apart from the _temenos_, which, in Mr. Ridgeway's opinion, reverted, on the death of each holder, to the community, save where kingship was hereditary. Now, if [Greek: klaeros] had come to mean "a lot of land," as we say "a building lot," obviously men like Teucer and Meriones had many lots, rich fields, which at death might sometimes pass to their heirs. Thus there was separate landed property in the _Iliad_; but the passage is denounced, though not by Mr. Ridgeway, as "late." The absence of enclosures ([Greek: herkos arouraes]) proves nothing about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century. My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric. Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the _Iliad_ held no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure, though we get clearer lights on it in the _Odyssey_. The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible, if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing societies universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller [Footnote: Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.] justly warns us against the attempt "to apply universally certain fixed rules of property development. The passages in Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones, occurring in similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions the formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be little more than an intellectual exercise."