of co-proprietors.(3) Even the traditions of Roman law furnish
the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the
usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land
came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special
property.(4) Better evidence that such was the case is afforded
by the earliest designation of wealth as "cattle-stock" or
"slave-and-cattle-stock" (-pecunia-, -familia pecuniaque-), and of
the separate possessions of the children of the household and of
slaves as "small cattle" (-peculium-) also by the earliest form
of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the hand
(-mancipatio-), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable
articles;(5) and above all by the earliest measure of "land of one's
own" (-heredium-, from -herus-lord), consisting of two -jugera-
(about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to
garden-ground, and not to the hide.(6) When and how the distribution
of the arable land took place, can no longer be ascertained. This
much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was
based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute
for it, whereas the Servian constitution presupposes the distribution
of the land. It is evident from the same constitution that the
great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms,
which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of
the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of
the plough. The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not
been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already
been shown,(7) be estimated at less than twenty -jugera-(12 1/2
acres nearly).


Culture of Grain