_mansi_ and five-and-twenty slaves.[167] From all this the conclusion is inevitable that the _marca_ or _villa_ is an area belonging to one or more proprietors and cultivated by a much larger number of slaves or serfs--_mancipia_, _liti_, _coloni_. Maurer would have done better if, instead of devoting so much ingenuity to discovering in the collections of _Traditiones_ a few passages in support of his theory, he had noticed the evidence which is presented, not in a few scattered lines, but in every page and in every document, as to the way in which the land was actually distributed. As each document mentions where the landed property given or sold is situated, we are able to gather that the geographical unit is the _pagus_, and the rural unit the _villa_, sometimes called the _marca_. The customary form is: _res sitas in pago N, in villa quæ dicitur N_. The word _villa_ is the same word as we find used in Gaul to designate an estate; the word _marca_ which takes its place in about one out of every eight instances, is but its synonym. Sometimes the villa belongs to a single owner, sometimes it is divided amongst several. But, in the one case as in the other, it preserves its earlier unity. The land within it falls into two classes, a _dominicum_ and several _mansi_. The _dominicum_ or _curtis dominicata_ or _mansus dominicatus_ is the portion that the owner has reserved for his own use; the other _mansi_ or _hubæ_, are the tenant-holdings which he has put into the hands of his _coloni_ or his serfs. To take an example. Ansfrid in 863 was owner of the villa of Geizefurt, which comprised a _dominicum_ of three mansi together with nineteen servile _mansi_.[168] In 868 the _marca_ of Gozbotsheim had a _dominicum_ of three _mansi_, seventeen servile _mansi_, and serfs to the number of a hundred and forty-six.[169] In 989 a woman represents herself as owning in the marca of Schaffenheim 4 _hubæ dominicales_, 8 _hubæ serviles_, 5 _mansi_, vineyards, meadowland, woodland and a mill, to all which are attached thirty slaves.[170] The _dominicum_ is described in the same way in many other documents.[171] Maurer supposes (p. 137) that this expression refers to all that part of the ancient common mark which has become private property. This is a mistake. The _dominicum_ is the land that the proprietor has not entrusted to tenants.[172] Wherever we find the _dominicum_, it is an unmistakable sign of a large private estate. A _dominicum_ necessarily implies a lord and his serfs or _coloni_. With time the interior organisation of the villa is modified; it is split up as a consequence of inheritance and sale, and so we see proprietors owning not more than four or two _mansi_, or perhaps only one. Many of the peasants may also have become free men. But the _dominicum_ is still there and bears witness that in an earlier age the _villa_ or _marca_ had a single owner who stood out above a numerous body of serfs.