ĂGER PUBLĬCUS, the public land, was the land belonging to the Roman state. It was a recognised principle among the Italian nations that the territory of a conquered people belonged to the conquerors. Accordingly, the Romans were constantly acquiring fresh territory by the conquest of the surrounding people. The land thus acquired was usually disposed of in the following way. 1. The land which was under cultivation was either distributed among colonists, who were sent to occupy it, or it was sold, or it was let out to farm. 2. The land which was then out of cultivation, and which, owing to war, was by far the greater part, might be occupied by any of the Roman citizens on the payment of a portion of the yearly produce; a tenth of the produce of arable land, and a fifth of the produce of the land planted with the vine, the olive, and other valuable trees. 3. The land which had previously served as the common pasture land of the conquered state, or was suitable for the purpose, continued to be used as pasture land by the Roman citizens, who had, however, to pay a certain sum of money for the cattle which they turned upon it. The occupation of the public land spoken of above under the second head was always expressed by the words _possessio_ and _possidere_, and the occupier of the land was called the _possessor_. The land continued to be the property of the state; and accordingly we must distinguish between the terms _possessio_, which merely indicated the use or enjoyment of the land, and _dominium_, which expressed ownership, and was applied to private land, of which a man had the absolute ownership. The right of occupying the public land belonged only to citizens, and consequently only to the patricians originally, as they were the state. The plebeians were only subjects, and consequently had no right to the property of the state; but it is probable that they were permitted to feed their cattle on the public pasture lands. Even when the plebeians became a separate estate by the constitution of Servius Tullius, they still obtained no right to share in the possession of the public land, which continued to be the exclusive privilege of the patricians; but as a compensation, each individual plebeian received an assignment of a certain quantity of the public land as his own property. Henceforth the possession of the public land was the privilege of the patricians, and an assignment of a portion of it the privilege of the plebeians. As the state acquired new lands by conquest, the plebeians ought to have received assignments of part of them, but since the patricians were the governing body, they generally refused to make any such assignment, and continued to keep the whole as part of the ager publicus, whereby the enjoyment of it belonged to them alone. Hence, we constantly read of the plebeians claiming, and sometimes enforcing, a division of such land. With the extension of the conquests of Rome, the ager