Among the ancient Germans,[241] the Greeks of the Homeric age,[242] and in some early Italian states[243] certain families had become noble, and others were on the way to nobility. For ancient Ireland the entire process can be followed. A common freeman enters the service of some chief, from whom he receives permission to use large portions of the tribe land.[244] By pasturing cattle, he grows wealthy, becomes a bo-aire (cow-nobleman) and secures a band of dependents. Supported by these followers, he preys upon his neighbors and, if successful, becomes in time a powerful noble.[245] After “a certain number of generations” he can no longer be distinguished from the blooded nobility.[246] Here is an instance of a common freeman’s becoming noble through service to a chief. In like manner among the Saxons who had conquered England the ceorl who “thrived so that he had fully five hides of land,” or the merchant who had “fared twice over the wide sea by his own means,” became a thane; “and if the thane thrived, so that he became an eorl, then was he henceforth worthy of eorl-right.”[247] “The thanes were the immediate companions of the king—his comitatus—and from their first appearance in English history they took rank above the earlier nobility of Saxon eorls, who were descended from ancient tribal chiefs. Thus the thanes as a nobility of newly rich corresponded to the cow-noblemen of an earlier time.”[248] In the way just described many rose from the lower ranks to nobility. In fact, eminent authorities assert that the inferior nobles, especially of the middle age, were more often of servile than of free origin, as the common freemen were inclined to think it degrading to be seen among the comites of a chief.[249]