The arts of building which began with 34 the settlement of the tribe, and which were used in completing the raising of the burg and the walling of the common homestead, now received further impetus from being used for the great temple of the eponomous ancestor (that is, the original father of the tribe, real or supposed) of the whole community, in which each clan (of the þeoð) had its own shrine or chapel dedicated to its own special ancestor.
By the time this was accomplished the city was the one unit of life and centre of worship, and of the group-organisations, the lands of the community surrounding it being the property of those clans, and exploited by them for their livelihood, while their social and religious home was in the city itself.
But in the city social was being fast transformed into political life by the destruction of the independence of the ancient groups, and the dying out of real personal relations between their members; for this was accompanied by the change in the ownership of land 35 which now made the citizen a representative and possessor of a portion of the city territory; whereas heretofore the land was an affix to the social group, the individual member of which enjoyed its advantages simply as a member of that corporation.22 In short, in the earlier times the land belonged to the group; now the individual belonged to the land.
Accompanying this change there took place a development of the market, which before this centralisation was infrequent and spasmodic, depending on periods of truce between warring tribes, but which now became a regular and settled institution under the protection of the burg and its citizens, and was thus one of the chief elements in the growth of the importance and power of the cities. And the communication between different districts and countries which this settled and protected market set on foot, also tended to the federation of the cities, 36 which was one of the leading ideas of the ancient historical period.