has occupied himself with the ancient constitution of Rome and has spoken in detail of the division of the lands, always speaks of the distribution among the citizens without regard to quality of patrician or plebeian, divisit viritim civibus.  He has nowhere written that territorial riches were the exclusive appanage of the patriciate.  It must be confessed, however, that it is doubtful whether he intended to embrace the plebeians in his civibus.  For more than two centuries before the time of Cicero the plebeians had enjoyed the full rights of Roman citizenship, but for more than that length of time property had been concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy.  This result was the consequence of the Roman constitution[26] and the establishment of a populous city in the midst of a narrow surrounding country.  Roman policy had never been conducive to this concentration, and it will hereafter appear that the nobility who had the chief direction and administration of public affairs had little by little usurped the property which formed the domain of the state, i.e.  Ager Publicus, and swallowed up the revenues due the treasury.

[Footnote 1:  Cato, De Re Rustica, I, lines 3-8.  “Majores nostri ... virum bonum cum laudabant, ita laudabant, bonum agricolam bonumque colonum.  Amplissime laudari existimabatur, qui ita laudabatur.”]

[Footnote 2:  Muirhead, Roman Law, 36 et seq.]

[Footnote 3:  Varro, De Lingua Latina, V, 143.]

[Footnote 4:  Frag, to Digest, 287 and 147 of Title 16, Bk. 50 with notes of Schultung and Small.]

[Footnote 5:  Plutarch’s Romulus, Sec. 19.]

[Footnote 6:  Mommsen, History of Rome, l, 194.]

[Footnote 7:  Sismondi, Etudes sur l’econ. polit., 1, 2, Sec. 1.]

[Footnote 8:  Pseudo Fabius Pictor, Bk.  I, p. 54; Plut., Numa, 16; Festus V deg.  Pectustum Palati, p. 198 and 566, Lindemann.]

[Footnote 9:  Arnold, Roman History, I, ch. 3, par. 4.]

[Footnote 10:  Mommsen, I, 75.]

[Footnote 11:  Strabo, Bk. 5, 253.]

[Footnote 12:  Strabo, Bk. 5, ch. 3, Sec. 2.]

[Footnote 13:  Arnold, I, ch. 3.]

[Footnote 14:  Dionysius, II, 55; V, 33, 36; III, 49-50; Livy, I, 23-36.]

[Footnote 15:  Dionysius, IV, 13.]

[Footnote 16:  Varro, De Lingua Latina, V, 33.]

[Footnote 17:  Sigonius, De Antiq.  Juris Civ.  Rom., Bk.  I, ch. 2.]

[Footnote 18:  Hume’s Hist, of Eng., I, ch. 4:  IV, ch. 61.]

[Footnote 19:  Esprit des lois, Liv. 27, c. 1.]

[Footnote 20:  Roman Hist., II, 164; III, 175 and 211.]

[Footnote 21:  Lycurgus and Numa, II; Cicero, De Repub., II, 9.]

[Footnote 22:  Muirhead, Roman Law, 46 and note—­“uti legasset suae rei ita jus esto.”]

[Footnote 23:  Muirhead, 92-96.]