4 ON THE HISTORY OF LEASES OF LANDS 



with the western tide of immigration, the contract of lease 

 reached Greece through the much nearer Palestine. 



The lease is likely to have been known in a less perfect state 

 in Greece previous to 345 B.C., at which time there is recorded a 

 toleraljly perfect lease. It indicates the coloni liberi rather than 

 the coloni 2Jcirtiarii was an ancient Attic lease, and is now to be 

 seen cut in stone in the University of Leyden. It is of un- 

 doubted authenticity, and there is little in it to which a modern 

 farmer would object ; indeed, as Mr Caird says, it " indicates a 

 considerable knowledge of agriculture." The use of the land- 

 was for cultivating vines and fruit trees. The farm was called 

 the Phalais, situated near Mount Hymettus, and belonged to the 

 townspeople of ^Exone. The Athenian one much resembles the 

 Attic, an example being found in Sir George Cornewall Lewis' 

 translation of Boeckh's " Public Economy of Athens." The 

 Pirffians offered lands by advertisement cut in stone on the fol- 

 lowing conditions : — 1st, the tenants for more than a certain 

 sum are to give security for the rent, and those for a smaller sum 

 are to provide a surety whose property shall also be liable for the 

 rent ; 2d, the lands are let duty and tax free, and if any pro- 

 perty-tax be imposed according to the valuations, the burghers 

 will pay it ; 3d, the tenants shall not be allowed to remove 

 wood or earth, or damage the wood on the farm ; 4th, the 

 tenants of pasture lands shall pay half the rent in the first, and 

 the other half in the sixth month ; 5th, the tenants of arable 

 land to cultivate for the first nine years as they please, and 

 according to custom ; 6th, but in the tenth year they shall 

 plough no more than the half of the land, so that the succeed- 

 ing tenant may proceed in preparing the soil from the 16th 

 Anthesterion, and if he plough more the produce to become the 

 property of the burghers. One of the farms is, in accordance 

 with clause 7, to have a house in connection. 



There is little doubt that the infection of civilisation, 

 which as it travelled westwards caught hold of Greece, had a 

 similar effect upon Italy. The civilisation of the Etruscans, 

 whom Dionysius described as " not resembling any people in 

 language or in manners," points to their ha\'ing emigrated from 

 the East. The inscriptions on their tombs, though not cunei- 

 form, have a distmct translation accorded to them by Stickel, 

 who considers them of a purely Semitic origin ; and another 

 authority traces them to Babylonia, as the land of their fathers. 

 They flourished in the sixth century B.C., and although they 

 outran the neighbouring nations in their knowledge of irrigation, 

 embankment, draining, sewage, tunnelling, and other similar 

 practices, still it is to a much later period we have to look for 

 any authentic notion of location — the advancement of their 

 agriculture being merely quoted to show the continuity of the 



