134 Query primitive communal system? 



farmers into debt, and that the cruel operation of debt-laws- led to 

 serious internal troubles in the Roman state, the story is credible 

 enough. The superior organization of Rome enabled her to overcome 

 these troubles, not only by compromises and concessions at home, but 

 still more by establishing her poorer citizens on farms at the cost of 

 her neighbours. As the area under her control was extended, the 

 military force automatically grew, and she surpassed her rivals in the 

 cohesion and vitality of her power. At need, her armies rose from the 

 soil. So did those of other Italian peoples. But in dealing with them 

 she enjoyed the advantage of unity as compared with the far less 

 effective cooperation of Samnite cantons or Etruscan cities. Even the 

 capture of Rome by the Gauls could not destroy her system, and she 

 was able to strengthen her moral position by proving herself the one 

 competent defender of Italy against invasion from the North. When 

 the time came for the struggle with Carthage, she had to face a different 

 test. But no blundering on the part of her generals, no strategy of 

 Hannibal, could avail to nullify the solid superiority of her military 

 strength. And this strength was in the last resort derived from the 

 numbers and loyalty of the farm-population: it was in fact the product 

 of the plough rather than the sword. 



The agricultural conditions of early Rome 1 are a subject, and have 

 been the subject, of special treatises. Only a few points can be noticed 

 here. That a communal system of some kind once existed, whether in 

 the form of the associations known to inquirers as Village Communities 

 or on a gentile basis as Clan-estates, is a probable hypothesis. But the 

 evidence for it is slight, and, however just the general inferences may 

 be, they can hardly be said to help us much in considering the labour- 

 question. It may well be true that lands 2 were held by clans, that they 

 were cultivated in common, that the produce was divided among the 

 households, that parcels of the land were granted to the dependants 

 (clientes) of the clan as tenants at will (precario) on condition of paying 

 a share of their crops. Or it may be that the normal unit was a village 

 in which the members were several freeholders of small plots, with 

 common rights over the undivided common-land, the waste left free 

 for grazing and miscellaneous uses. And it is possible that at some stage 

 or other of social development both these systems may have existed 

 side by side. In later times we find Rome the mistress of a vast terri- 

 tory in Italy, a large part of which was reserved as state-domain (ager 

 publicus populi Romani\ the mismanagement of which was a source of 



1 Referred to in Iwan Muller's Handbuch iv ii 2, ed 3 pp 533 foil, article by H Bliimner. 



2 That the household as a vigorous unit outlived the gens is I think clear. I guess that 

 this was because production for the supply of life-needs was more closely correlated with the 

 former. Labour was more easily divorced from the clan-system than property was. 



