PUBLIC LANDS AND AGRARIAN LAWS OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.




CHAPTER I.

SEC. 1.--LANDED PROPERTY.


The Romans were a people that originally gave their almost exclusive
attention to agriculture and stock-raising. The surnames of the most
illustrious families, as Piso (miller), Porcius (swine-raiser), Lactucinius
(lettuce-raiser), Stolo (a shoot), etc., prove this. To say that a man was
a good farmer was, at one time, to bestow upon him the highest praise.[1]
This character, joined to the spirit of order and private avarice which
in a marked degree distinguished the Romans, has contributed to the
development among them of a civil law which is perhaps the most remarkable
monument which antiquity has left us. This civil code has become the basis
of the law of European peoples, and recommends the civilization of Rome to
the veneration of mankind.

The corner-stone of this legislation was the constitution of the law of
property.[2] This property applies itself to everything in the law of Rome,
to land, to persons and to obligations.

_Urbs_, the name of the village, takes its origin, according to an
etymology given by Varro,[3] from the furrow which the plow traced about
the habitations of the earliest dwellers. But what is of more interest to