We are, however, able to gather that these two successive partitions were not in every respect alike. The first related only to the _ager Romanus_, _i.e._, to that part of the territory which was in primitive times attached to the _Urbs_; the second related to conquered territory. In the first, the ground was distributed amongst the _curiæ_, each curia then distributing it amongst its _gentes_, whence it came about that these lots for a long time retained the name of the several Roman _gentes_; in the second partition, which followed the first but did not annul it, the land was divided according to heads, _viritim_. This innovation will be seen to be of deep importance by any one who is acquainted with the ideas of the ancients and with ancient law. At the time of the first division, property still belonged to the family; at the second, it belonged to the individual. Thus, then, the two kinds of proprietary right that the ancient world successively recognised are seen, one after the other, with an interval of but forty years between. The Roman nation was one of the first to substitute individual for family property. They made use of bequest and sale from an early date. Roman law did indeed retain some traces of the early rights of the family; but what really characterises it is that it brought about the triumph of the system of individual ownership. [224] Mommsen, _Roman History_, Engl. trans., vol. i., p. 194. This theory has been copied and reproduced word for word, without verification, by M. Viollet and M. de Laveleye. [225] Varro, _De re rustica_, I. 10: “Bina jugera, quod a Romulo primum divisa viritim, quæ heredem sequerentur.” [226] Pliny, XVIII. 2, 7: “Romulus in primis instituit.... Bina tunc jugera populo Romano satis erant nullique majorem modum attribuit.” Nonius, edit. Quicherat, p. 61. Festus, v. centuriatus ager. IV. _On the application of the comparative method to this problem._