of the right to claim and defend
in equity. It was very nearly equivalent to the right of property.[4] The
sense of the Roman law was, then, that the _peregrinus_ could not bar or
proceed against a Roman, a disposition somewhat similar to the old law of
England.[5] And as it was necessary to be a citizen in order to acquire by
the civil and solemn means which dominated the law of property in Rome, it
followed that the _peregrini_ were excluded from all right to property in
land by these laws. This exclusive legislation for a long time governed
Europe and did not disappear even from the Code Napoleon of 1819.[6]

We have a forcible example of the severity of the old Roman law in this
regard in the text of Gaius,--_Aut enim ex jure quiritium unusquisque
dominus erat, aut non intelligebatur dominus._[7]

_Dominium_ was therefore inseparable from _Jus Quiritium,_ the law of
the Roman city, the _optimum jus civium Romanorum_. The _peregrinus_ was
excluded from landed property both Roman and private; he could neither
inherit nor transmit; claim nor defend in equity. Moreover the name
_peregrinus_ was not confined to the stranger proper but was also bestowed
upon subjects of Rome[8] who, being deprived of their property and also
of political liberty by right of conquest, had not received the right of
citizenship which was for a long time confined within very narrow limits.
It would thus appear conclusive from the law quoted that the client and
plebeian could not at first hold land _optimo ex jure quiritium_.

Thus the tenure of the patricians was threefold: First, they had full
property in the land; second, they had a seigniorial right, _jus in re_, in
the land of their clients and the plebeians whose property belonged to the
_populus, i.e._ the generality of the patricians; in the third place, in
their own hands, they held lands which were portions of the domain and
which were held by a very precarious tenure called _possessio_.

According to Ihne, all lands in Rome were held by the above mentioned
tenure until the enactment of the Icilian law _de Aventino publicando_
which involved a change of tenure by converting the former dependent and
incumbered tenure of the plebeians into full property.

[Footnote 1: De Officiis, I, 12; Gaius, Frag., 234: Digest, 50, 16.]

[Footnote 2: Varro, De L.L.V. 14; Plautus, _Trinummus_, Act I, Scene 2, V.
75; Harper's _Latin Dictionary_; Cicero, _De Off_., I, 12: "Hostis enim
apud majores n