The father retains all the power of the
patriarch within his family, the patrician in his gens or house,
but, outside of it, is met and controlled by the city or state.
The heads of houses are united in the senate, and collectively
constitute and govern the state. Yet, not all the heads of
houses have seats in the senate, but only the tenants of the
sacred territory of the city, which has been surveyed and marked
by the god Terminus. Hence the great plebeian houses, often
richer and nobler than the patrician, were excluded from all
share in the government and the honors of the state, because they
were not tenants of any portion of the sacred territory. There
is here the introduction of an element which is not patriarchal,
and which transforms the patriarch or chief of a tribe into the
city or state, and founds the civil order, or what is now called
civilization. The city or state takes the place of the private
proprietor, and territorial rights take the place of purely
personal rights.
In the theory of the Roman law, the land owns the man, not the
man the land. When land was transferred to a new tenant, the
practice in early times was to bury him in it, in order to
indicate that it took possession of him, received, accepted, or
adopted him; and it was only such persons as were taken
possession of, accepted or adopted by the sacred territory or
domain that, though denizens of Rome, were citizens with full
political rights.
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