to your family, that is, to your ancestors and your descendants.”[222] The hypothesis that M. Viollet sets against this is purely fanciful. He appears to believe that the restriction as to sale and bequest weakened the rights of property; he does not observe that it renders inheritance more absolute, and secures the rights of the family. One may search through the whole of Greek law and the whole of Greek literature without finding either the “eminent domain” of the State, or a restoration of the land to a supposed ownership common. 11. M. Viollet’s last argument is taken from a passage of Theophrastus. When Greek law at last authorised the sale of land--property being from that time onwards looked upon as an individual right,--it required that the sale should take place under certain conditions of publicity. “Many legislators,” says Theophrastus, “require that sales should be made by a public crier, and that they should be announced several days beforehand; others prefer that they should take place in the presence of a magistrate; while some lay down that notice of sale must be posted up for sixty days. There are two motives for all this: in the first place that claims may be presented against the seller, and secondly, that all may know who is the new owner.” This sentence is perfectly clear; it tells us that a sale ought to be made publicly, so that it may be surrounded by all possible guarantees; but M. Viollet sees in it something different from this. “If the public are present,” he says, “it is because the land belongs to the people” (pp. 484-485). This is drawing a conclusion of which Theophrastus never dreamt. When he described the various kinds of publicity which were enjoined in the matter of sale, and when he explained in such a natural manner the reasons for this publicity, he did not suppose that his meaning would be so far distorted as to lead to the conclusion that the land had once been common. But M. Viollet has a fixed idea and follows it. If he reads that neighbours act as witnesses to a sale, he adds that their consent had doubtless to be asked, since the land properly belonged to all. If he reads in another passage that it was the custom in a certain town for the purchaser to present three of the neighbours with a small piece of money, so that they might afterwards remember the act and be able to vouch for it, he at once adds that “this piece of money is the price which the purchaser pays to the three neighbours for their original rights over the land.” All this is pure imagination. The Greeks certainly did not connect any idea of community in land with these simple customs.