Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/82

 76 THE FAJtlLY. BOOK U. from Cicero to Justinian, we see the two systems as rivals of each other, and contending in the domain of laAV. But in the time of the Twelve Tables, agnation was the only relationship known, and this alone con- ferred the right of inheritance. We shall see, farther on, that the case was the same among the Greeks CHAPTER VI. The Right of Property. Here is an institution of the ancients of which we must not form an idea from anything that we see around us. The ancients founded the right of property on principles different from those of the present gen- eration ; as a result, the laws by which they guaranteed it are sensibly different from ours. We know that there are races who have never suc- ceeded in establishing among themselves the right of private property, while others have reached this stage only after long and painful experience. It is not, indeed, an easy problem, in the origin of society, to decide whether the individual may appropriate the soil, and establish such a bond between his being and a portion of the earth, that he can say. This land is mine, this is the same as a part of me. The Tartars have an idea of the right of property in a case of flocks or herds, but they cannot understand it when it is a question of land. Among the ancient Germans the earth belonged to no one ; every year the tribe assigned to each one of its members a lot to cultivate, and the lot was changed the fo^k>wing year. The German vri%