The result of all these facts was that the Roman territory was made the object of a division or a primitive distribution either among the three races of the first population, or a little later among the citizens or inhabitants.  This very same principle has been frequently observed in recent times in regard to confiscated[18] territories and conquered peoples.

Now what was the allotment of the first distribution of land?

Upon this topic the ancient authorities are blind and confusing to such an extent as to be wholly inadequate for the solution of the difficulty.  Among the more recent authorities, two opposing systems have been sustained, the one represented by Montesquieu, and the other by Niebuhr. (1) According to Montesquieu, the kings of Rome divided the land into perfectly equal lots for all the citizens and the title of the law of the Twelve Tables relative to successions was for no other object than to establish this ancient equality of the division of lands.[19] (2) Niebuhr,[20] on the contrary, claimed that territorial property was primitively the attribute of the patriciate and everyone who was not a member of this noble race was incapable of possessing any part of the territory.  From this theory the author deduced numerous consequences which are important both to law and history.  Neither of these systems is free from errors.  Montesquieu seems to have made no difference between patrician and plebeian in using the term citizen, while it is no longer disputed that the plebeian was not a burgess and consequently had no civic rights save those granted to him by the ruling class.  His idea of goods must have, at least, become chimerical at a very early date, as this equality was so little suspected by the ancients that Plutarch,[21] after having spoken of the efforts of Lycurgus to overturn the inequality of wealth among the Spartans, accuses Numa of having neglected a necessity so important.  It is moreover difficult to see how Montesquieu could think that testamentary disposition tended to maintain equality when the privilege was accorded to every citizen of disposing of his entire patrimony by will even to the prejudice of his children.[22] Again, the law of debts was hardly favorable[23] to equality.

Niebuhr clearly[24] denied the existence of the plebs until Ancus incorporated the Latins and bestowed upon them peculiar privileges thus forming a new and third class distinct from both patricians and clients.  Had Niebuhr succeeded in establishing this view, the right to landed property would appear to be wholly vested in the patricians, for a client, from the very nature of his position, could hold nothing independent of his master.  But this theory has fallen to the ground and no writer of the present day pretends to uphold it.  The plebeians existed from the very first and some of them held land in full private ownership very little different from the quiritarian ownership of the patricians.  Cicero, who in his Republic[25]