the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and
for freer human movement and intercourse. Every eighth day (-nonae-),
and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went
to town to buy and sell and transact his other business. But rest
from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several
festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion
of the winter sowing (-feriae sementivae-): during these set times
the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only,
but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.

Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was
cultivated in the earliest times. The next heirs had no protection
against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift
who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he
were a lunatic.(12) Women moreover were in substance divested of
their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member
of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to
retain the estate within the clan. The law sought to check the
overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in
the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference
of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the
creditor, partly, in the case of a simple loan, by the rigour of the
proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy;
the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its
object but very imperfectly. No restriction was imposed by law on
the free divisibility of property. Desirable as it might be that
co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage,
even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving
such a partnership open at any time to any partner; it was good that
brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do