(M130) When once the hospitable board had laid its mysterious spell on the relations of host and guest, the bond was not easily dissolved. Glaukos and Diomedes meet “in the mid-space of the foes eager to do battle,” fighting on opposite sides. Nevertheless because the grandfather of one had entertained the grandfather of the other for twenty days and they had parted with gifts of friendship, their grandsons refrain from battle with each other, pledge their faith, and exchange armour as a witness to others that they are guest-friends by inheritance (ὄφρα καὶ οἵδε γνῶσιν, ὅτι ξεῖνοι πατρώιοι εὐχόμεθ᾽ εἶναι).(288) If such force lay in the entertainment of a guest for a few days, some idea can be formed of the virtue underlying the meaning of such words as ὁμοσίπυοι and ὁμόκαποι, and binding together those habitually nourished at the same board. (M131) If sons married during their father’s lifetime without any particular means of livelihood, they could live under his roof and authority, forming a great patriarchal household like that of Priam and his married sons and daughters at Troy. But when a household dispersed before the marriage of the sons and the inheritance was divided amongst them, it was deemed indispensable for them to take wives, and each provide for the establishment of his house and succession. This necessity is the underlying motive of the compulsion over the only daughter left as ἐπίκληρος to marry before a certain age, exercised by the Archon at Athens. There the idea of the need of a continuous family (as well as for other purposes), to keep together the property, had grown up apparently as a reflection, so to speak, of the obvious importance of the property to the family for the maintenance of itself and its ancestral rites. Though evidence is wanting for the _raison d’être_ of this sentiment in Homer, the existence of the feeling can hardly be denied. The κλῆρος, at any rate, continued to pass from father to son in the family of the tribesman or citizen. Hector encourages his soldiers by reminding them that though they themselves fall in the fight, their children, their house (οἶκος), and their κλῆρος will be unharmed, provided only that the enemy are driven back.(289) The sentiment that a man was not really “established,” according to the estimation of the Homeric Greeks, until the continuity of his house was provided for, seems to explain the two references to Telemachos in the _Iliad_. Odysseus is twice mentioned, as Mr. Leaf points out in his _Companion to the Iliad_,(290) as the father of Telemachos, simply because it was considered a title of honour to be named as sire of an established house. No other mention of Telemachos occurs in the _Iliad_. Failure of heirs was, as in later times, the great disintegrating factor and danger to the continuity of the family holdings. As long as a direct descendant was to be found, the property was safe.