The Mark System. 39 



The condition of the Teutonic serf is also worthy of descrip- 

 tion. He has his own house, famil}'-, and land, for which he 

 pays his lord a share of the produce. Excepting in certain 

 tribes where regal government has been established the 

 freedman does not possess a social condition much above the 

 slave. He, indeed, is not liable to death or mutilation like the 

 latter, but he has no political status either in family or tribe. 



So far we have collected extracts from both authors as they 

 appeared suitable for our purpose. Now it is necessary to bear 

 in mind that 150 years intervenes between the date of Csesar's 

 history and that of Tacitus. 



Much depends upon the proper interpretation of one 

 paragraph in the twenty-sixth chapter of the latter author's 

 Germania^ as to the mood in which we approach the conflicting 

 theories with regard to the Mark system. We therefore give 

 this important and difficult passage in full : — 



" Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis in vices [vicis] occu- 

 pantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem partiunter, 

 facihtatem partiendi camporum spatia prsestant. Arva per 

 annos mutant, et superest ager." 



Were, then, the lands in proportion to the number of culti- 

 vators taken possession of '' ab universis vicis," ^ by whole 

 communities, or " ab universis in vices," by whole communities 

 in turn ? The first reading lays stress on a common land 

 tenure, the other on the annual shifting — a circumstance re- 

 ferred to in the very next sentence, " Arva per annos mutant." 



Now the earlier history of Csesar agrees with the latter form. 

 " They are not studious of agriculture," he writes,^ " the chief 

 part of their diet consisting of milk, cheese, and flesh ; nor has 

 any one a determinate portion of land, his own peculiar pro- 

 perty, but the magistrates and chiefs allot every year, to tribes 

 and clanships forming communities as much land and in such 



^ The Bamberg Codex has " ab universis vicis." The Leyden Codex 

 has '• in vicem." It would appear possible that some early scribe may 

 have omitted the preposition " in " after " ab universis," but then in 

 vices is not such good Latin as in vicem. Hence some commentators 

 have converted it into vicis, and others into in vicem. — Vide Stubb.s, 

 Constit. History, chap. ii. p. 19, note 3. 



- Csesar, Bell Gall., vi. chap. xxii. 



