Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/56

32 council without some one to call it together; and we may perhaps assume that the headman was an original institution of the group, which in some cases grew steadily more important as time went on, or even came to supersede the council altogether. This simple government doubtless exercised a customary judicial power, as it does in Russia at the present day, and regulated the property of the community.

Thirdly, the land from which the group drew its subsistence, and the cultivation of which was the chief employment of its members, was held in common by all the families of which the group consisted. The correspondence in this particular between village communities in various parts of the world is most striking. It might be indeed, and in all probability was most often the case, that the land thus held by the community was held under a lord, i.e. from a large owner of land, and that some kind of rent was paid to him. The occupiers may even have been in a condition for which we can find no other word but serfdom, though it was perhaps in reality much more favourable than any to which that word can now be applied. But whether they held it from another or not, their tenure of it was a common tenure, and they used it for the advantage, not of individuals, but of the community. In most existing village communities the land, apart from that on which the village stands, is divided into two parts —