According to the Consular Reports, the relations between landlord and tenant are governed more by local usage than by law, and the landlord generally takes on an average about 15 per cent. of the produce in kind on the threshing-floor, as rent, in cases where he does not supply more than the bare use of the land.(200)
(M101) There is little manuring; the light plough barely turns the surface of the land. Land is usually allowed to lie fallow every other year, sometimes two years out of three. Sheep and goats are the chief stock; they of course graze in summer on the mountains; villages sometimes own forests and waste lands in common.
(M102) In the islands of the Archipelago,(201) the holdings are frequently divided into separate plots consisting of a quarter or half acre apiece or even less, intersected by those belonging to other parties. Cattle are pastured on the fallow, roadsides, &c., near the village.
In Cephalonia,(202) holdings consist of from five to twenty-five acres, seldom in a continuous piece, but "cut up into patches and intersected by other properties."
In Corfu,(203) the holdings are similar--infinitesimally small and intermixed pieces of land, especially in the olive groves, where however there are no divisions on the land and the "oldest inhabitant" has to be asked for evidence of ownership in disputed cases.
Throughout the Greek nation, the peasants live in their houses in villages and not on separate estates. They help one another to avoid the expense of hired labour, and themselves work for hire on the estates of the large proprietors.
(M103) Professor Ridgeway has drawn attention to the knowledge of this open field system in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_;(204) and indeed the division of the land tilled by occupants of villages into small pieces or strips, in such a way that the holding of each consists of a number of isolated pieces lying promiscuously amongst the strips of others, over the whole area under plough, is a world-wide custom and is the habit alike of the east as of the west.
Though the assertion cannot yet be made that the { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} was thus arranged on the soil, it can do no harm at any rate to bear in mind this ancient and still used method of dividing land, whilst considering the question of the relation of the ownership of the soil to the rank and status of the tribesman.