Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/83

 CHAP. VI. THE RIGHT OF PEOPERTV. 77 proprietor of the harvest, but not of the land. The case is still the same among a part of the Semitic race, and among some of the Slavic nations. On the other hand, the nations of Greece and Italy, from the earliest antiquity, always held to the idea of private property. We do not iind an age when the soil was common among them;^ nor do we find any- thing that resembles the annual allotment of land which was in vogue among the Germans. And here we note a. remarkable fact. Wiiile the races that do not accord to the individual a property in the soil, allow him at least a right to the fruits of his labor, — that is to say, to his harvest, — precisely the contrary custom prevailed among the Greeks. In many cities the citizens were required to store their crops in common, or at least the greater part, and to consume them in common. The individual, therefore, was not the master of the corn M'hich he had gathered ; but, at the same time, by a singular contradiction, he had an absolute property in the soil. To him the land was more than the harvest. It appears that among the Greeks the conception of private property was develojDcd exactly contrary to what aj)pears to be the natural order. It was not applied to the harvest first, and to the soil afterwards, but fol- lowed the inverse order. ' Some historians have expressed the opinion that at Rome property was at first public, and did not become private till Isunia's reign. This error comes from a false interpretation of three passages of Plutarch (Numa, IG), Cicero (Republic, II. 14), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (II. 74). These three authors fay, it is true, that Numa distributed lands to the citizens, but they indicate very clearly that these lands were conquests of his predecessor, agri quos belJo Romulus ceperat. As to the Roman si;i! itself — ager Romanus — it was private property from the origin of the city.