]
[Footnote 26: Dureau de la Malle, _Mem. sur les pop. de l'Italie, 500 et
seq_.]
SEC. 2.--QUIRITARIAN OWNERSHIP.
Citizenship was the first requisite to the right of property in Roman
territory. This rule, although invariable and inherent in the Roman state,
bent under the influence of international politics or the philosophy of
law, yet its severity affords us a notable characteristic of the law of
ancient Rome. Cicero and Gaius have preserved to us an important monument
of this law in a fragment of the Twelve Tables which proclaims the solemn
principle, _adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto.[1] Hostis_ in the old
Latin language was synonymous with stranger, _perigrinus_[2] This Roman
name was moreover applied to a person who had forfeited the protection
of the law by reason of a criminal condemnation, and who was therefore
designated _peregrinus_.[3]
_Auctoritas_ also had in old Latin a different signification from what it
has in later Latin. It expressed the idea of the right to claim and defend
in equity. It was very nearly equivalent to the right of property.[4] The
sense of the Roman law was, then, that the _peregrinus_ could not bar or
proceed against a Roman, a disposition somewhat similar to the old law of
England.
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