354 'Peculiars' and Crown-property 



right to a limited amount 1 of task-labour from the free sub-tenants of 

 the small farms. That these labour-conditions were devised to meet a 

 difficulty in procuring enough slaves to carry on the cultivation of the 

 whole big estate, is an inference hardly to be resisted. That we find it 

 on more than one estate indicates that for the time it was serving its 

 purpose. But, in admitting that it probably began under the rule of 

 great private landlords, we must not lose sight of the fact that it was 

 liable to grievous abuse, and that even the regulations of Hadrian did 

 not remove the necessity of pitiful appeals for redress. 



An important characteristic of these estates was that they were 

 outside the municipal 2 system. Each of the so-called civitates had its 

 own charter or statute (lex) conforming more or less closely to a 

 common 3 model, under which the municipal authorities could regulate 

 the management of lands within its territory. But these great estates 

 were independent 4 of such local jurisdictions. And this independence 

 would seem to date from the times of private ownership, before the 

 conversion of many of them into imperial domains. Mommsen thought 

 that this separate treatment of them as 'peculiars' began in Italy 

 under the Republic, and was due to the influence of the land-owning 

 aristocracy, who were bent upon admitting no such concurrent au- 

 thority on their latifundia. This may have been so, and the extension 

 of large-scale possessions to the Provinces may have carried the system 

 abroad. At all events there it was, and it suited the convenience of a 

 grasping emperor: he had only to get rid of the present possessor and 

 carry on the administration of the domain as before: his agents stepped 

 into the place of those employed by the late landlord, and only slight 

 modification of the current regulations would be required. He issued 

 a statute for management of * crown-property ' as he would for a muni- 

 cipality. It was in effect a local law, and it does not appear that the 

 common law administered by the ordinary courts could override it. 

 The imperial procurator was practically the magistrate charged with 

 its administration in addition to his financial duties, for government 

 and extraction of revenue were really two sides of the same function. 

 Obviously the interests of the emperor, of his agent, of the head-tenants, 

 and of the peasant cultivators, were not the same. But the peasant, 

 who wanted to pay as little as possible, and the emperor who wanted 



1 De Coulanges seems hardly to recognize how small was the amount of operae, a few 

 days in the year. But in his tenth chapter he shews how vastly the system was extended (so 

 many days a week) in the early Middle Age. 



2 Mommsen in Hermes xv pp 391-6. 



3 Such as the lex coloniae Genetivae luliae of 44 BC, and the leges of Salpensa and Malaca 

 of 81-4 AD. Girard, and Bruns' Fontes. 



4 Esmein p 309 well refers to the passages in Lachmann's Feldmesser, Frontinus p 53 and 

 Siculus Flaccus p 164. Cf Hirschfeld I.e. p 558. 



