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Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic by Andrew Stephenson
page 16 of 124 (12%)
highest importance in determining the civil condition of the country and
the prosperity of the people. Whenever but one class among the people
is privileged to have property in land a most exclusive oligarchy is
formed.[7] When the land is held in small portions by a great number and
nobody is legally or practically excluded from acquiring land, there we
find provided the elements of democracy.

According to the strictest right of conquest in antiquity the defeated lost
not only their personal freedom, their moveable and landed[8] property, but
even life itself. All was at the mercy of the conquerors. In practice a
modification of this right took place and in Rome extreme severity was
applied only in extreme cases, generally as a punishment for treason.[9]

This magnanimity was not rare and it even went so far as to restore the
whole of the territory to the people subdued.[10] But let us not suppose
that this humanity toward a conquered people sprang from any pity inspired
by their forlorn condition. It was due merely to the interest of the
conquerors themselves. The conquered lands must still be cultivated and the
depleted population restored. For this reason the conquered had generally
not only life and freedom left them but also the means of livelihood,
_i.e._ some portion of their land. This portion they held subject to no
restrictions or services save those levied upon quiritarian property. It
was private property to the full legal extent of the expression, thus being
in the unlimited disposition of the individual.[11] These people formed
the nucleus of the plebeians, the freemen who were members of the Roman
state[12] without actually having any political rights.

The _Ager Publicus_ was the property of the state and as such could be
alienated only by the state.[13] This alienation could be accomplished in
two ways:
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