§ 1. The Κλῆρος And Its Form. In trying to realise the methods of land tenure amongst the Greeks, we are baffled by the indirectness of the evidence available. (M96) We know that the estate which descended from father to son, and was in theory inalienable from the family of its original possessors, was called a κλῆρος or “lot,” but the familiarity with which the poets, historians, and orators use the word does not afford information as to what the κλῆρος really was and how it was made use of in practice. The law concerning these family holdings, says Aristotle,(187) and concerning their possible transmission through daughters was not written. It was a typical example of customary law. This statement gives a hint as to the usual treatment of questions arising under this head. Methods of land tenure were not of rapid growth, nor were they easily changed; they had their source with the slow devotion to agriculture of pastoral tribes, and were dependent on a class unaffected by the growth of education and the arts. (M97) The intricate connection of the system of land tenure with the composition of the family removed the consideration of questions of ownership from the sphere of written law, and delegated them to the most conservative department of customary procedure, ranking them on a par with questions of family religious observances.(188) The deposit of some ancestor’s bones in a certain field was occasionally a valuable link in the title to possession of that piece of land as private property;(189) and the possession of land at all was in part a guarantee of the pure native blood in the veins of the possessor.(190) It is a striking illustration of the truth of this that, throughout all the extant speeches of Isaeus dealing with the disposal of κλῆροι of dead citizens, not a single case turns upon evidence for or against a sale or transfer of property. The speeches all deal exclusively with family matters; the line of argument always leads to the proof of near kinship by blood or adoption to the previous owner; and the right of possession of the inheritance seems taken for granted as following incontrovertibly the establishment of the required relationship.(191) “It seems to me that all those who contend for the right of succession to estates, when like us they have shown themselves to be both nearest in blood to the person deceased, and most connected with him in friendship (φιλίᾳ), are dispensed from adding a superfluity of other arguments.”(192)