(M140) The maintenance of the prince was a first charge apparently upon the property of his subjects; and it is easy to see how the lion’s share would always be allotted to him, alike of booty as of acquired territory. As long as the community was pastoral, it is also easy to imagine how the chief both increased his own wealth and admitted favoured companions or resident strangers to a share in the elastic area of the common pasturage. After agriculture had assumed equal importance in the economy of the tribe as the tending of flocks and herds, one is apt to forget that for centuries—perhaps for thousands of years—the system of agriculture that grew up, still possessed much of the elasticity of the old pastoral methods. Under the open field system, such a custom as that described by Tacitus and in the Welsh Laws, viz. of ploughing up out of the pasture or waste sufficient to admit of each tribesman having his due allotment, and letting it lie waste again the next year, admitted of considerable readjustment to meet the exigencies of declining population, as well as providing an easy means whereby any stranger prince, like Bellerophon, who might be admitted to the tribe, could be allotted either a τέμενος apart, or a κλῆρος in the open plain. Pindar describes this method of cultivation when he says:— “Fruitful fields in turn now yield to man his yearly bread upon the plains, and now again they pause and gather back their strength.”(313) (M141) It is noticeable that the Aetolians offered Meleagros a τέμενος in the fattest part of the plain, wherever he might choose, as a _gift_ (δῶρον); and as the τέμενος would certainly be cultivated by slave or hired labour, what they really gave him was the right of receiving the produce from the 50 _guai_ composing the τέμενος. But this gift was meant as a special honour or bribe, and took a special form in being in land as a means of permanent enrichment. In similar wise Ezekiel suggested the capitalisation, as it were, by a gift of land of the contributions to the princes, which no doubt were felt to be very irksome. In the division of the land, a portion was to be set aside first for the use of the temple and priests, then a portion for the prince. “In the land shall be his possession in Israel, and my princes shall no more oppress my people; and the rest of the land shall they give to the house of Israel according to their tribes. Thus saith the Lord God, Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel; remove violence and spoil and execute judgment and justice, and take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord God.”(314) And again:— “Moreover the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession; but he shall give his sons inheritance out of his own possession; that my people be not scattered every man from his possession.”(315)