Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/221

Rh evil in the commonwealth; on the contrary it was of most material service to it. Not only did it provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties; but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants on sufferance furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization, without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state may furnish land to those who have none, it cannot impart to one who knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield the plough.

Ground under pasture was not affected by the distribution of the land. The state, and not the clanship, was regarded as the owner of the common pastures. It made use of them on the one hand for its own flocks and herds which were intended for sacrifice and other purposes, and were always well kept up by means of the cattle-fines, while on the other hand it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them out upon the common pastures for a moderate payment (scriptura). The right of pasturage on the public domains probably from the first bore some sort of relation to the actual possession of land, but no legal connection can ever have subsisted in Rome between the particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the metoikos, but the right to use the common pasture always remained a privilege of the burgess and was only granted exceptionally to the metoikos by the royal favour. At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but a subordinate place in the national economy generally, tor the original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed immediately as arable land among the gentes, or at a later period among individuals.

While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of urban life in that emporium of the Latins. In fact eight guilds of craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of King Numa, that is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time immemo-