Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/214

194 of very frequent occurrence. Even the traditions of Roman law furnish the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special property. More reliable evidence that such was the case is afforded by the designation of wealth as "cattle-estate," or "slave-and-cattle-estate," (pecunia, familia pecuniaque), and of the special possessions of the children of the household and of slaves as "lesser cattle" (peculium); also by the earliest form of acquiring property, the laying hold of it with the hand (mancipatio), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable articles (P. 162); and above all by the oldest measure of land, the "lordship" (heredium, from herus lord), consisting of two jugera (about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to garden-ground, and not to the hide. When and how the distribu-