Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/91

 CHAP. VI. THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 85 them the family was sole master in this field. The tomb had established an indissoluble union of the fam- ily with the land — that of ownership. In the greater number of primitive societies the right of property was established by religion. In the Bible, tiie Lord said to Abraham, "I am the Lord, that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land, to inherit it;" and to Moses, "Go up hence, . . . into the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thee will I give it." Thus God, the piimitivo proprietor, by right of crea- tion, delegates to man his ownership over a part of the soil.' There was something analogous among the an- cient Graeco-Italian peoples. It was not the religion of Jupiter that founded this right, it is true; peiliaps because this religion did not yet exist. The gods who conferred upon every family its right to a portion of the soil, were the domestic gods, the sacred fire, and the manes. The first religion that exercised its empire on their minds was also the one that established the right of property among them. It is clearly evident that private property was an in- stitution that the domestic religion had need of This religion required that both dwellings and burying- places should be separate from each other; living in common was, therefore, impos^^ible. The same religion required that the hearth should be fixed to the soil, that the tomb should neither be destroyed nor dis- placed. Suppress the right of property, and the sacred 'fire would be without a fixed place, the families would ' Same traditio i among the Etruscans : " Quiim Jupiter ter- rain EiruricE siui vindicavit, consiituit jussitque metiri campos signarique agros." Auctores Rei A^raria, in the fragment en- titled Idem Vegoiee Arrunti, edit. Goez.