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Perdiccas symbolically claims possession of the hearth (ἑστία) of the house and thus of the whole estate of its master, and then calls the sun to witness his claim to house and land. The primitive Germans seem to have looked on the sun as the original source of all rights to land; so Grimm says of a symbolic taking possession of a new fief: ‘The new holder early in the morning rode out fully armed and with his naked sword (cf. μάχαιρα) made three strokes crossways in the air as soon as he saw the sun rise’; cf. also iii. 86.

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