[220] We do not doubt that there were some exceptions. What Diodorus tells us of the Lipari Islands is one of them. It might occasionally sometimes happen, for some reason or other, that the partition was put off for a few years. [221] Heraclides of Pontus, edit. Didot, vol. ii. p. 211; Aristotle, _Politics_, ii. 4, 4; vii. 2, 5; Plutarch, _Instituta laconica_, 22; _Life of Agis_, 5; _Life of Solon_, 21. Cf. _Laws of Manou_, ix. 105-107, 126. [222] Plato, _Laws_, xi. [223] The statement of M. Viollet is in the _Revue critique_, 1886, vol. ii., p. 109. The document of 890 ought not to be interpreted from the extract he gives from it; it is necessary to read the whole of it, as it is to be found in the _Urkundenbuch der Abtei S. Gallen_, nᵒ 662, vol. ii., p. 265. III. _Mommsen’s theory as to community of land amongst the Romans._ One never for a moment expected to find agrarian communism amongst the Romans; in the first place because Rome was one of the youngest of the cities of the ancient world, and, at the date of its birth, private property had long held sway in Italy; and, in the second place, because it is well known that the Romans had a very precise and very firm conception of the right of private property, and did as much as any other ancient people to define and protect it. And yet Professor Mommsen states that with the Romans “land was originally held in common;” that “community in land is closely bound up with the constitution of the city;” that “it was only in later times that the land was divided amongst the citizens as private property.”[224] In support of this assertion, the learned and able historian gives three references--to Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch. But on examining these three references it seems to me that none of them says exactly what Professor Mommsen makes them say. The first is from Cicero in the _De Republica_, II., 14. _Numa agros quos bello Romulus ceperat divisit viritim civibus._ The meaning of this passage is that the lands which had been conquered by Romulus in his wars with the neighbouring cities had not been divided by him amongst the citizens. But it does not prove, as we shall presently see, that the small Roman territory occupied prior to these conquests was not divided when the city was founded. The quotation from Cicero applies to a certain area of land; it does not apply to all land. It does not imply that no division had taken place before this time; and Cicero does not say a single word which can refer to a period of community.