eneration of mankind.

The corner-stone of this legislation was the constitution of the law of
property.[2] This property applies itself to everything in the law of Rome,
to land, to persons and to obligations.

_Urbs_, the name of the village, takes its origin, according to an
etymology given by Varro,[3] from the furrow which the plow traced about
the habitations of the earliest dwellers. But what is of more interest to
us is that the legal signification of _Urbs_ and _Roma_ was different. The
former was the village comprised within the sacred enclosure; the latter
was the total agglomeration of habitations which composed the village,
properly[4] so called, and the outskirts, or suburbs. The powers of
certain magistrates ceased with the sacred limits of the _Urbs_, while the
privileges accorded to a citizen of Rome extended to the village and the
suburbs and finally embraced the entire Roman world.

The most ancient documents which have reached us from the history of India
and Egypt reveal that they had landed property fully established, while
Roman annals reveal to us the very creation of this institution. Whatever
modern criticism may deduce, Dionysius, Plutarch, Livy, and Cicero agree in
representing the first king of Rome as merely establishing public property
in Roman soil. This national property, the people possessed in common and
not individually. Such appears to us to be the quiritarian property _par
excellence_[5] and its primitive form was a variety of public community[6]
of which individual property was but a later solemn emancipation. To this
historic theory attaches the true notion of quiritarian land of which we
will speak in greater detail hereafter.

As regards the organization and constitution of individual and private
property, the traditions themselves attribute this to the second king of
Rome, the real founder of Roman society, who divided the territory among
the citizens, marking off the limits of individual shares and placing them
under the protection of religion. In this way a religious charter was
granted to the institutions of private property. Thus a primitive division
of territory appears to have been the basis of these varied traditions, but
the precise form of this division eludes us.

The Roman territory was confined for many ages to a surface of very limited
extent, which properly bore the name of _Ager Romanus_. This name with
signification slightly changed appeared to be still in us