(M123) But in the great common field all was toil and action; many ploughers therein drave their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about.(259) The holding of the common tribesman was not an estate (τέμενος) cut out of the plain, but an allotment (κλῆρος), probably of strips as in Palestine to-day, in the open fields that lay around the town. On the wheatbearing plain round Troy(260) lay the stones that former men, before the ten years’ war, had used to mark the balk or boundary of their strips (οὖρον ἀρούρης).(261) One of these Athena uses to hurl against Ares, who, falling where he stood, covers seven of the _pelethra_ that the stones were used to divide. A pinnacle of stones is the only boundary to be seen to this day between the strips of cornland in Palestine. Easily dislodged as these landmarks were, they were specially protected by a curse against their removal, and were with the Greeks under the awful shadow of a special deity of boundaries.(262) They seem however to have been liable to considerable violation. The ass, according to Homer, being driven along the field-way, if his skin was thick enough, easily disregarded the expostulations of his attendants, and made free with the growing crop.(263) Homer also describes a fight between two men with measuring rods in the common field,(264) and Isaeus(265) relates how an Athenian citizen flogged his brother in a quarrel over their boundary so that he afterwards died, whilst the neighbours, working on their land around, were witnesses of what took place. Land was brought into cultivation, no doubt, as it was wanted. Achilles contemplates that some of the rich fields of his friends may be exceedingly remote, so that it would be a great thing to spare the ploughman a journey to the nearest blacksmith. And no doubt the powerful men of the community would, by means of their slaves or retainers, acquire additional wealth by reclaiming lands out of the way and therefore requiring a strong hand to protect them, which were profitable by reason of their very fatness.(266) Such acquisitions would not be included in the τέμενος of the prince, the very word τέμενος implying an area of land cut out of the cultivated land of the community, generally described as being in the plain (πέδιον). (M124) Such allotments of land seem only to have been made to princes and gods, but when once allotted, remained as far as can be seen the property of their descendants. It was a common fancy of the Homeric prince that he was worshipped as a god, and they often mistook each other for some deity. The godlike Sarpedon asks his cousin Glaukos, wherefore are they two honoured in Lykia as gods, with flesh and full cups and a great τέμενος.(267)