IV. As to the custom by which a husband and wife contributed equal shares to a common stock and allowed the income arising from it to accumulate, I cannot understand in what way this proves that there was no landed property. M. de Jubainville ingeniously explains that what was contributed could not have consisted of land “because its produce cannot be hoarded,” and that it must have consisted of herds of cattle, because cattle can much more easily be set aside for a particular object. In his long argument there is only one thing that he overlooks, and this is that it is possible to sell the crops and set aside the produce of the sale. Moreover, he gives an incorrect rendering of Cæsar, VI. 19: hujus omnia pecuniæ fructus servantur. Pecunia, in legal phraseology, is used not only of money, of not only personal property, but also of property of every kind, including land;[251] and fructus does not simply mean produce in the literal sense of the word, but revenues of every description. Cæsar, then, is speaking of possessions of every sort, of which the income may be set aside. These possessions may be an estate under cultivation, or a herd of cattle, or a stock in trade, or a sum of money placed out at interest (for this was not unknown to the Gauls); the income might be the produce of the sale of the crops, or the increase of the herd, or the profits of trade, or the interest on the loan. Whichever it may have been, Cæsar did not intend to imply that the Gauls were unacquainted with landed property.
I am anxious not to pass over a single argument brought forward by this learned and able writer. He observes that the names of private domains, such as we find them in the Roman and Merovingian periods, are all derived from Roman proper names. This is quite true, and I had myself made the same observation in an earlier essay; but what I had carefully abstained from saying, and what is maintained by M. de Jubainville, is that these Latin names of the Roman period prove the non-existence of domains in the Gallic period. The most they could prove is that, after the conquest, the names of domains were latinised as well as the names of individuals. Just as Gallic landowners adopted Roman names for themselves, they bestowed the same names on their estates; and consequently domains were called Pauliacus, Floriacus, Latiniacus, Avitacus, Victoriacus, etc. To conclude from this that there were no private estates before the conquest would indeed be a rash argument.
M. de Jubainville also alleges that Cæsar does not make use of the terms villæ and fundus in speaking of the Gauls; and he concludes from this that neither country estates, fundi, nor farms, villæ, were to be found in Gaul. “Before the conquest there were neither fundi nor villæ, and the land was in common.”[252] This is another surprising statement. M. de Jubainville should not have overlooked the fact that even if these two words do not occur in Cæsar, we find terms which are precisely synonymous. The Romans had more than one word to designate a country estate, fundus, or a farm, villa. Instead of fundus they sometimes said ager; and ager always bears this sense in Cato, Varro, and Columella, and frequently in Cicero and Pliny. Instead of villa they said ædificium. When Varro or Columella are speaking of the buildings standing in the midst of an estate, they use ædificium as often as villa. Turn to the Digest (Bk. L. Section XVI.) and compare the three fragments 27, 60, and 211; and you will recognise that the Romans were in the habit of calling a domain ager and the buildings on it ædificium. Now Cæsar, in speaking of the Gauls, often uses the word agri and still more often ædificia. Here are the domains and the villæ which M. de Jubainville was looking for. These ædificia were farms, not huts. They contained as a rule a somewhat numerous rural population; for Cæsar notes in one instance as something exceptional “that he found in the ædificia of the Bellovaci only a small number of men, as almost all had set out for the war” (viii. 7). They also included barns for the storing of crops; for the historian mentions “that the Tencteri, having invaded the country of the Menapii, supported themselves for several months on the corn that they found in the ædificia” (iv. 4). The Roman general was well aware that if he wished to find forage for his cavalry he must look for it in these farms, pabulum ex ædificiis petere (vii. 4, and viii. 10). What Cæsar says about the ædificium of Ambiorix shows that it was a large enough building to lodge a numerous body of followers. And so the words ager and ædificium take the place in Cæsar of the words fundus and villa, and disprove the assertion that “the Gauls had neither domains nor farms before the conquest.”
M. de Jubainville compares the whole Gallic territory with the ager publicus of Rome. I do not know whether the learned medievalist has a very clear conception of what the ager publicus really was. The subject is a very difficult one, and requires for its study a good deal of time, much minute research and great familiarity with Roman habits and customs. I do not wish to dwell on this point; and will content myself with saying that the ager publicus was not common land, but property of the State existing side by side with private property. To suppose that in Gaul the State was the master of all the soil and distributed it annually amongst the citizens, is to suppose something absolutely opposed to Roman habits and to the usages of the ager publicus. Moreover, it is impossible to find a single line in Cæsar which authorises such a supposition.[253]
To sum up: the attempt made by this ingenious scholar to discover community in land amongst the Gauls is supported by no original authorities. When we come to verify his quotations and test his arguments, we see that not one of his quotations bears the sense he attributes to it, and that not one of his facts fits in with a theory of common ownership in land. It is wisest to keep strictly to what Cæsar tells us.
[243] “Fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt.” It is well known that in legal language, the judicia publica are criminal cases; as the term implies, cases which concern crimes punished by a public authority; the judicia privata are those which concern private interests alone, and in which the State is not involved. See on this distinction Paul, Sententiæ, I., 5, 2; Ulpian XIII., 2; Fragmenta Vaticana, 197 and 326; Digest, XLVII., tit. 1 and 2; XLVIII., I.; I., l, l § 6; XXIII., 2, 43, § 11 and 12. To translate controversiæ publicæ in the passage from Cæsar as disputes between two peoples would run counter to the meaning of words. Publicus never means inter duos populos.
[244] It may be added that the social condition described by Cæsar is irreconcilable with agrarian communism, vi., 13: in omni Gallia plebs pæne serrorum habetur loco, etc. Notice the numerous clients of Orgetorix, i., 4; those of Vercingetorix, vii., 4; the many poor, not in the towns, but in the country, in agris agentes, vii., 4; the burden of the tributa, vi., 13. These traits are not those of a society where the land is common. They point rather to a system of great estates, with the soil in the hands of the magnates.
[245] This appears in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1887, pp. 65, et seq.
[246] M. de Jubainville has translated controversiæ publicæ, as if it were controversiæ inter duos populos. I know of no example in Latin literature where the word publicus has this sense. In Suetonius, Augustus, 29, the judicia publica are certainly not suits between peoples: they are criminal suits. When Cicero, defending Roscius of Ameria, says he is conducting his first causa publica, it is clear that he is not arguing for one people against another. He is defending Roscius, who is accused of parricide: it is a criminal proceeding.
[247] Cæsar, vi. 22: Nec quisquam (apud Germanos) FINES habet proprios. Ibidem: ne latos FINES parare studeant, potentioresque humiliores possessionibus expellant.