he come to be deposed ? What is the status of Telemachus on the assumed death of his father away from home ? Who are the Suitors, and how were they enabled to put pressure on Penelope to marry one of their number? Can their proceedings at Ithaca he accounted for on any principles of early tribal law ? Lastly, how are we to explain the perplexing device by which Penelope evaded their wooing ?
Before we can attempt to answer these questions we must, I think, briefly consider the position of the Homeric King, the Homeric landed system, and the Homeric marriage law.
To begin with the Homeric King : even when, like Agamemnon, he is commander-in-chief of the army, he is not a despotic monarch ; he is assisted and usually guided by the advice of a council. Even in a petty state like Ithaca there was such a council ('Αγορή). Athene proposes that Telemachus should convene it, and lay before its members his charge against the Suitors : we learn incidentally that until this meeting it had not been convened since the departure of Odysseus.[1]
Again, the scanty references to the tenure of land in Homer enable us, by the aid of Professor Ridgeway's admirable commentary,<ref.Journal Hellenic Studies, vol. vi., p. 319, seqq. For the Common Mark, see Iliad, x., 351, seqq.; xii., 421, seqq. ; xv., 498 ; xviii., 541, seqq. ; xxii., 421 ; Odyssey, viii., 124, seqq.</ref> to conclude that in the main the communal system prevailed, and we find various references which imply the existence of the Common Mark. But, as we can understand from the analogy of similar cases in other lands, this variety of tenure was beginning to decay. As usual, the first step in that direction was the apportionment of a separate garth or demesne for the king; this in Homer is peculiar to him and to the temples of the gods. Thus among the gods, Demeter, Zeus, Aphrodite, and the river-god Spercheios have garths. Among heroes and chiefs
- ↑ Odyssey, i., 90, seqq., ii., 26, 27.
