It made use of them in part for its
own flocks and herds, which were intended for sacrifice and other
purposes and were always kept up by means of the cattle-fines; and
it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them
out upon the common pasture for a moderate payment (-scriptura-).
The right of pasturage on the public domains may have originally
borne some relation -de facto- to the possession of land, but no
connection -de jure- can ever have subsisted in Rome between the
particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the
common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the
--metoikos--, but the right to use the common pasture was only
granted exceptionally to the --metoikos-- by the royal favour.
At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but
a subordinate place in the national economy generally, for the
original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the
conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed
immediately as arable land among the clans or at a later period
among individuals.

Handicrafts

While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted
occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to
accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of
urban life in that emporium of the Latins. In fact eight guilds of
craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of king Numa, that
is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time
immemorial. These were the flute-blowers, the goldsmiths, the
coppersmiths, the carpenters, the fullers, the dyers, the potters,
and the shoemakers--a list which would substantially exhaust the
class of tradesmen working to order on account of others in the very
early times, when the baking of bread and the professional art of
healing were not yet known and wool was spun into clothing by the
women of the household themselves. It is remarkable that there
appears no special guild of workers in iron. This affords a
fresh confirmation of the fact that the manufacture of iron was of
comparatively late introduction in Latium; and on this account in
matters of ritual down to the latest times copper alone might be
used, e.g. for the sacred plough and the shear-knife of the priests.
These bodies of craftsmen must have been of great importance in
early times for the urban life of Rome and for its position towards
the Latin land--an importance not to be me