Niebuhr clearly[24] denied the existence of the plebs until Ancus incorporated the Latins and bestowed upon them peculiar privileges thus forming a new and third class distinct from both patricians and clients. Had Niebuhr succeeded in establishing this view, the right to landed property would appear to be wholly vested in the patricians, for a client, from the very nature of his position, could hold nothing independent of his master. But this theory has fallen to the ground and no writer of the present day pretends to uphold it. The plebeians existed from the very first and some of them held land in full private ownership very little different from the quiritarian ownership of the patricians. Cicero, who in his Republic[25] has occupied himself with the ancient constitution of Rome and has spoken in detail of the division of the lands, always speaks of the distribution among the citizens without regard to quality of patrician or plebeian, _divisit viritim civibus_. He has nowhere written that territorial riches were the exclusive appanage of the patriciate. It must be confessed, however, that it is doubtful whether he intended to embrace the plebeians in his _civibus_. For more than two centuries before the time of Cicero the plebeians had enjoyed the full rights of Roman citizenship, but for more than that length of time property had been concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy. This result was the consequence of the Roman constitution[26] and the establishment of a populous city in the midst of a narrow surrounding country. Roman policy had never been conducive to this concentration, and it will hereafter appear that the nobility who had the chief direction and administration of public affairs had little by little usurped the property which formed the domain of the state, _i.e. Ager Publicus_, and swallowed up the revenues due the treasury. [Footnote 1: Cato, _De Re Rustica_, I, lines 3-8. "Majores nostri ... virum bonum cum laudabant, ita laudabant, bonum agricolam bonumque colonum. Amplissime laudari existimabatur, qui ita laudabatur."] [Footnote 2: Muirhead, _Roman Law_, 36 _et seq_.] [Footnote 3: Varro, _De Lingua Latina_, V, 143.] [Footnote 4: Frag, to Digest, 287 and 147 of Title 16, Bk. 50 with notes of Schultung and Small.] [Footnote 5: Plutarch's _Romulus_, § 19.] [Footnote 6: Mommsen, _History of Rome_, l, 194.] [Footnote 7: Sismondi, _Etudes sur l'econ. polit._, 1, 2, § 1.] [Footnote 8: Pseudo Fabius Pictor, Bk. I, p. 54; Plut., _Numa_, 16; Festus V° Pectustum Palati, p. 198 and 566, Lindemann.] [Footnote 9: Arnold, _Roman History_, I, ch. 3, par. 4.] [Footnote 10: Mommsen, I, 75.] [Footnote 11: Strabo, Bk. 5, 253.] [Footnote 12: Strabo, Bk. 5, ch. 3, § 2.] [Footnote 13: Arnold, I, ch. 3.] [Footnote 14: Dionysius, II, 55; V, 33, 36; III, 49-50; Livy, I, 23-36.] [Footnote 15: Dionysius, IV, 13.] [Footnote 16: Varro, _De Lingua Latina_, V, 33.]