“What food, drink, (and) fuel are to be _daily_ given by the inhabitants of a town to the king let the head of a town take,”(306) the line always being drawn between legitimate demands and tyrannical extortion. “For those servants appointed by the king for protection (are) mostly takers of the property of others (and) cheats; from them he (_i.e._ the king) should protect these people.”(307) (M137) Under the rule of the Persians, all Asia was parcelled out in such a way as to supply maintenance (τροφή) for the Great King and his host throughout the whole year.(308) The satrap of Assyria kept at one time so great a number of Indian hounds, that four large villages of the plain were exempted from all other charges on condition of finding them food.(309) (M138) Solomon’s table was provided after the same method. “And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel which provided victuals for the king and his household; each man his month in a year made provision.... And Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen and twenty oxen out of the pastures and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl.... And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life.... And those officers provided victual for king Solomon, and for all that came unto king Solomon’s table, every man according to his charge.”(310) (M139) Sesostris is said to have obtained his revenue from the holders of κλῆροι in Egypt in proportion to the amount of land in each man’s occupation;(311) and Pharaoh, having bought all the land at the time of the famine in Egypt except that which supported the priests, took one-fifth of all the produce, leaving the remainder “for seed of the field,” and for the food of the cultivators, and their households and little ones. “And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s.”(312) In this case Pharaoh became proprietor by purchase of the land in Egypt. But it must not be supposed that by exacting a payment from the occupier, the overlord as a rule had any power over the ownership of the soil. He no doubt had proprietary rights over his own estate, and may or may not have had power to regulate any further distribution of the waste. But the right of receiving dues, or of appointing another to receive them, gave him no power over the actual tillage of the soil.