If 100 large cattle were the number which qualified a Roman for the first class, there was every reason why Licinius and Sextus should have taken 100 as the maximum number of cows which a citizen could keep on the public pastures.
Next I shall show that the method of rating by cattle and not by land was that actually practised in Sicily. That island stood in such close relations to the Italian Peninsula both geographically and ethnologically that we may reasonably infer that the method of rating in use there was also in use in Italy.
Now we learn from Aristotle's Oeconomica (II. 21) that when the tyrant Dionysius oppressed the Syracusans with excessive exactions, they ceased to keep cattle:
[Greek: Tôn de politôn dia tas eisphoras ou trephontôn boskêmata, eipen hoti hikana ên autô pros tosouton; tous oun nyn ktêsamenous ateleis esesthai, pollôn de tachy ktêsamenôn polla boskemata, hôs atelê hexontôn, epei ôeto kairon einai, timêsasthai keleusas epebale telos, k.t.l.]
If the citizens of Syracuse, a great Greek trading city, were still rated in cattle in the time of Dionysius (405-367 B.C.), à fortiori we may expect the same primitive method of assessment to prevail among the pastoral peoples of Central Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.
Among the Kelts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, the same system probably prevailed. Thus in the ancient Irish laws, where the various classes of freemen are described, there are a number of them called Bo-aires[1], cow-freemen.
As modern research has shown that everywhere among the Aryans land was originally held in common, and that separate property in land sprung up only at a comparatively late period, we may with some confidence infer that in Italy likewise in early days a man's wealth was reckoned in his cattle, and not in lands, such as I have shown to have been the practice among the Greeks of the 'Homeric times' ('The Homeric Land System,' Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1885).
- ↑ Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. I. p. 61. O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, Vol. I. pp. 100 seq.
