14 The Forest of the Ancients. 



Out of religious conceptions and priestly shrewdness 

 arose church property in farms and forests among 

 the Indian Brahmans, the Ethiopians and Egyptians, 

 as also among Greeks and Romans. 



It appears that the oriental kings were exclusive 

 owners of all unappropriated or public forests. This 

 was certainly the case with the princes of India and 

 of Persia, and such ownership can be proved defini- 

 tely in many other parts, as in the case of the forests 

 of Lebanon, of Cyprus, and of various forest areas 

 in Asia Minor. 



That in the Greek republics the forests were mainly 

 public property seems to be likely; for Attica, at 

 least, this is true without doubt. 



While the first Roman kings seem to have owned 

 royal domains, which were distributed among the 

 people after the expulsion of the kings, the public 

 property which came to the republic as a result of 

 conquest was in most cases at once transferred to 

 private hands, either for homesteads of colonists, or 

 in recognition of services of soldiers and other public 

 officers, or to mollify the conquered, or by sale, or for 

 rent, not to mention the rights acquired by squatters. 

 The rents were usually farmed out to collectors 

 (publicani) or to corporations formed of these. Livy, 

 however, mentions also State forests in which the 

 cutting was regulated, probably by merely reserving 

 the ship timber. 



That occasionally single cities and other smaller 

 municipal units owned forest properties in common 

 seems also established. 



Private forest properties connected with farm 



