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[German version] ( Leges agrariae). Since the beginning of the Roman conquest of Italy, the record reports the confiscation of defeated people's lands. Such land initially became ager publicus populi Romani and its use the subject of political conflicts. The earliest preserved attempt at a lex agraria is Sp. Cassius' application in 486 BC to have the confiscated lands of the Hernici distributed (Liv. 2,41), an application whose historicity is doubted in scholarship. However, disputes over land use were undoubtedly a major theme in the histo…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient and Egypt As early as the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC metals (copper and silver, later also tin and gold) fulfilled monetary functions as a medium of exchange, a means of payment for religious, legal or other liabilities, a measure of value and a means of storing wealth. Until the 1st millennium fungible goods, primarily corn, also served as a medium of exchange and measure of value. Economies in the Near East and Egypt were characterised by subsistence production, self-sufficient palace and oîkos economies. The need for goods or services w…

[German version] [1] Criminal punishment The censors were permitted to repossess the horse of an eques, which was financed with public means, as a criminal punishment. Furthermore, they could also tribu movere, aerarium facere (or aerarium relinquere, and also in aerarios referre). The sources are not consistently clear (ThLL 1, 1055) but the lex repetundarum (Roman Statutes, no. 1) 1,28 and the lex Latina Tabulae Bantinae (Roman Statutes, no. 7) 1,6 together with literary sources permit the conclusion that tribu movere and aerarium facere had identical meanings or, when the t…

[German version] The aerarium populi Romani was the treasure of the Roman people, which was kept in the Saturnus temple at the Forum Romanum. The name derives from the fact that the liquid wealth of the res publica originally only consisted of aes, bronze, but not gold and silver. From an early, albeit uncertain time, the aerarium populi Romani was subject to the quaestores urbani, though their powers were restricted to administration; in the Republican period the power to dispose of the monies in the aerarium rested with the Senate alone. Roman municipia and colonies also had an aerarium (T…

[German version] A. Patricians and Nobility It was generally assumed during the late Roman Republic that under the Monarchy and the early Republic political and religious power rested in the hands of a series of patrician gentes ( gens ). The origins of the patrician class were traced back to Romulus (Liv. 1,8,7). The patrician gentes sometimes belonged to one family, but more frequently to several, not necessarily closely related families. Some of the gentes derived their descent from the Trojans who according to legend settled in Latium under the leadership of Aenea…

[German version] According to Livy (1,43,9), Servius Tullius provided that the res publica would give an eques, a horseman, money for the purchase of a horse and that the property of wealthy widows would be used for the maintenance of horses. According to Plutarch, Camillus used the property of wealthy orphans in particular for purchasing horses (Camillus 2). Gaius (4,27) considered it a practice of the past that a horseman had the right to demand security from those paying for the horse and its maintenance. He also related the name of two institutions, the aes equestre and the aes hordiariu…

[German version] It is possible that there was already an ager publicus (AP), public land, on Rome's territory in the city's early period. However, the largest part of the AP was created through confiscation of defeated peoples' territories inside and outside of Italy and of royal lands such as the Attalici agri in the former kingdom of Pergamum. The ager publicus populi Romani was used for some time to varying degrees for equally divided assignations, the foundation of Roman and Latin colonies in conquered territories and the distribution of land to the p…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Debt incurred by the population which lived on agriculture is a general phenomenon in agrarian societies. It ultimately led to debt bondage, thus threatening the social equilibrium. Debt redemption by sovereign decree was a common means of reducing or eliminating the consequences of debt, i.e. of restoring ‘justice in the land’. Instances of debt redemption are well attested in Mesopotamia from the 3rd millennium BC, but more especially between the 20th and 17th cen…