204 Foreign land-systems 



Greek and Greco-oriental influences, and the advance in this respect 

 is reflected in the more scientific precepts of Varro as compared with 

 those of Cato. But, so long as the industrial aim, the raising of large 

 crops for the urban market, prevailed, this change could not tend to 

 revive the farming peasantry, whose aim was primarily an independent 

 subsistence, and who lacked the capital needed for agricultural enter- 

 prise on industrial lines. Meanwhile there was the large-scale slavery 

 system firmly established, and nothing less than shrinkage of the 

 supply of slaves was likely to shake it. 



But the course of Roman conquest and formation of Provinces had 

 brought Italy into contact with countries in which agriculture and its 

 relation to governments stood on a very different footing from that tradi- 

 tional in Roman Italy. The independent peasant farmer living by his 

 own labour on his own land, a double character of citizen and soldier, 

 untroubled by official interference, was a type not present to the eyes 

 of Romans as they looked abroad. Tribal ownership, still common in 

 the West, had been outgrown in Italy. The Carthaginian system, from 

 which much had been learnt, was an exploitation-system, as industrial 

 as a government of merchant princes could make it. In Sicily it met a 

 Hellenistic system set up by the rulers of Syracuse, and the two seem 

 to have blended or at least to have had common characteristics. The 

 normal feature was the payment of a tithe of produce (Se/mr??) to the 

 State. For the State claimed the property of the land, and reserved to 

 itself a regular 10% m acknowledgement thereof. This royal title had 

 passed to Rome, and Rome accordingly levied her normal decumae, 

 exemption from which was a special favour granted to a few com- 

 munities. Now the principle that the ultimate ownership of land is 

 vested in the King 1 was well known in the East, and is to be traced 

 in several of the monarchies founded by the Successors of Alexander. 

 In the Seleucid and Attalid kingdoms there have been found indications 

 of it, though the privileges of cities and temples checked its general 

 application. But in Egypt it existed in full vigour, and had done so 

 from time immemorial. It was in fact the most essential expression 

 of oriental ideas of sovranty. Combined with it was the reservation 

 of certain areas as peculiarly ' royal lands ' the cultivators of which 

 were * royal farmers,' j3a<ri\i,/col yewpyoi,, standing in a direct relation 

 to the King and controlled by his administrative officials. The interest 

 of the sovran was to extract a regular revenue from the crown-lands : 

 hence it was the aim of government to secure the residence of its 



1 See Rostowzew, Rom Colonat, for detailed inquiry into Eastern phenomena, Egyptian 

 in particular. For the case of China see reference to Macgowan [Appendix D 6]. A very 

 interesting account of the system in Hindustan in the 1 7th century, with criticism of its grave 

 abuses, may be found in the Travels in the Mogul empire by Franois Bernier, ed i by 

 V A Smith, Oxford 1914, pages 226-38. I believe the legal phrase is 'Eminent Domain.' 



