In _Odyssey_ iv. 171-177 Menelaus says that he would have given to Odysseus, had he been there on his return from Troy, a whole ‘city to dwell in,’ and that he would have built for him a house, and brought him from Ithaca, together with all his wealth, his son and all his people, ‘making one city desolate, of those that lay around, in his domain.’ H. Seebohm finds it difficult to understand this passage in the light of his tribal theory of the Achaeans. It is, he says,[82] unusual, and merely shows the despotism to which a tribal chief frequently attained. But we prefer to see in Menelaus the typical Achaean over-lord, who by virtue of his kinship with Agamemnon, and of his own feudal and military power, tramples with impunity upon a whole city and moves a whole people from place to place, not as a chief would lead his tribe, but as a medieval baron might move his _villeins_ from one part of his territory to another. In the realm of Odysseus one seeks in vain for cogent evidence of tribal conditions. The shameless conduct of the suitors of Penelope, in devouring the substance of the absent Odysseus, and in plotting the assassination of his son and heir,[83] as also the cruel hyper-vengeance which Odysseus with impunity wreaked upon them, seem to us more suggestive of feudalism and autocracy than of genuine tribalism. In tribal communities an immense importance attaches to questions of marriage and inheritance. The voice of the ‘folk-moot,’ of the clan-gathering, can and must be heard. It is true that in the _Odyssey_[84] the disguised Odysseus, in questioning his son as to why he had not driven the suitors from his house, asks significantly: ‘Do the people hate thee?’ But it is equally true that in the domestic drama of the realm of Odysseus the rank and file of the people are ignored. For our part we feel that we move in that atmosphere of autocratic militarism which, in ancient Thessaly or Macedonia, and in medieval Europe, exalts the dagger of the assassin and the intrigue of the paramour. In _Odyssey_ xiv. 208 we are told that when a certain rich man, named Castor, died, his sons divided up and cast lots for his property. This procedure would be perfectly normal in modern society if the owner died intestate and the property was not entailed. We hear nothing in this narration of any clan-council having determined the right of succession, as would ordinarily occur in tribal conditions.