Clergy

Kleros ( Greek  κλῆρος , “the landless”) denotes the land of an oikos ( οἶκος , “household”) in ancient Greece .

In the early Greek Poleis (city-states), the land was divided by lot to the population. The same procedure was used in the colonies. Already in archaic times , the succession was established as an estate regulation, the lottery procedure became less important. Nevertheless, the term kleros for the respective country of a Greek oikos was preserved throughout ancient Greece.

The oikos and the kleros were firmly connected, the sale of the kleros by the head of the household ( kyrios ) was forbidden (at least in Athens , because only here reliable statements are possible).

On the kleros were the graves of the ancestors, from which the respective oikos were derived. Thus the kleros was not only the material basis of the oikos and thus of ancient Greek society, but also the immediate religious cult area of ​​the Greek family.

literature

• Thomas Lenschau : Κλῆροι 2. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XΙ, 2, Stuttgart 1893ff., Sp. 810-813 ( digitized version ).