The absence of enclosures ({Greek: herkos arouraes}) proves nothing about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.
My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.
Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the Iliadheld no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure, though we get clearer lights on it in the Odyssey.
The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible, if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing societies universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller {Footnote: Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.} justly warns us against the attempt "to apply universally certain fixed rules of property development. The passages in Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones, occurring in similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions the formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be little more than an intellectual exercise."
We have not the materials for a scientific knowledge of Homeric real property; and, with all our materials in Irish law books, how hard it is for us to understand the early state of such affairs in Ireland! But does any one seriously suppose that the knightly class of the Iliad, the chariot-driving gentlemen, held no more land—legally or by permitted custom—than the two Homeric swains who vituperate each other across a baulk about the right to a few feet of a strip of a runrig field? Whosoever can believe that may also believe that the practice of adding "lot" to "lot" began in the period between the finished composition of the Iliad(or of the parts of it which allude to land tenure) and the beginning of the Odyssey(or of the parts of it which refer to land tenure). The inference is that, though the fact is not explicitly stated in the Iliad, there were men who held more "lots" than one in Iliadic times as well as in the Odyssean times, when, in a solitary passage of the Odyssey, we do hear of such men in Crete. But whosoever has pored over early European land tenures knows how dim our knowledge is, and will not rush to employ his lore in discriminating between the date of the Iliadand the date of the Odyssey.
Not much proof of change in institutions between Iliadic and Odyssean times can be extracted from two passages about the ethna, or bride-price of Penelope. The rule in both Iliadand Odysseyis that the wooer gives a bride-price to the father of the bride, ethna. This was the rule known even to that painfully late and un-Homeric poet who made the Song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. In that song the injured husband, Hephaestus, claims back the bride-price which he had paid to the father of his wife, Zeus. {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 318.} This is the accepted custom throughout the Odyssey(VI. 159; XVI. 77; XX. 335; XXI. 162; XV. 17, &c.). So far there is no change of manners, no introduction of the later practice, a dowry given with the bride, in place of a bride-price given to the father by the bridegroom. But Penelope was neither maid, wife, nor widow; her husband's fate, alive or dead, was uncertain, and her son was so anxious to get her out of the house that he says he offered gifts withher (XX. 342). In the same way, to buy back the goodwill of Achilles, Agamemnon offers to give him his daughter without bride-price, and to add great gifts ( Iliad, IX. l47)—the term for the gifts is {Greek: mailia}. People, of course, could make their own bargain; take as much for their daughter as they could get, or let the gifts go from husband to bride, and then return to the husband's home with her (as in Germany in the time of Tacitus, Germania, 18), or do that, and throw in more gifts. But in Odyssey, II. 53, Telemachus says that the Wooers shrink from going to the house of Penelope's father, Icarius, who would endow (?) his daughter ({Greek: eednoosaito}) And again ( Odyssey, I. 277; II. 196), her father's folk will furnish a bridal feast, and "array the {Greek: heedna}, many, such as should accompany a dear daughter." Some critics think that the gifts here are dowry, a later institution than bride-price; others, that the father of the dear daughter merely chose to be generous, and returned the bride-price, or its equivalent, in whole or part. {Footnote: Merry, Odyssey, vol. i. p. 50. Note to Book I 277.} If the former view be correct, these passages in Odyssey, I., II. are later than the exceedingly "late" song of Demodocus. If the latter theory be correct the father is merely showing goodwill, and doing as the Germans did when they were in a stage of culture much earlier than the Homeric.
The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing. Has her father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not perhaps still a married woman with a living husband? Telemachus would give much to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's house, where the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus sends his mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine to her father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character among men (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his foster-son, Hauskuld, he offered to give {Greek: hedna}. "I will lay down as much money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he says to Flosi, "if thou wilt think of making this match." {Footnote: Story of Burnt Njal, ii. p. 81.}
Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the Iliadif we have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete, and on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope. {Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik, pp. 193-194.} We must not be told that the many other supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest, have "cumulative weight." If we have disposed of each individual supposed note of change in beliefs and manners in its turn, then these proofs have, in each case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are not more ponderous than a feather.
CHAPTER XII
LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier and later.
Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later grammarin Iliad and Odyssey. In the Iliadfour or five Books are infected by "the later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The main division, that of Iliadand Odyssey, shows a distinct advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group with the Odysseyfour Books of the Iliadwhose Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions ..." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. X.} We are here concerned with linguisticexamples of "lateness." The "four Books whose Odyssean physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the IliadMr. Leaf adds Iliad, XI. 664-772: "probably a later addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in character," says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.} The value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see The Interpolations of Nestor).