ke the other animals classified as res maficipi, horses were not much used for agricultural work. Until the invention much later ot the horse collar, horses had little pulling power. A further, repealing, point appears incidentally. Ciaius shows that the classification has no sur\ i\ ing rational \ alue. Idephants and camels are not res numeipi, not because they lack the characteristics of the objects of that class, hut because they were not known when the classification became fi.xed. Gaius betra\ s no disquiet at this lack of fit. rhe remote origins of the classification probably cannot be determined. It ma\' he that originally there was no rigid distinction between res nuineipi and other things; there was only the feeling that for greater securitx', important things should be transferred before witnesses. What these things were gradually became fi.xed, as did the details of the required ceremony. .\n alternati\ e thesis might be that some things were conceix ed of as being more "famih " property than other things' and were at first inalienable or (both at first and later) alienable only publich’. In either e\entualitx’, slates, horses, cattle, asses, and mules are an ob\ ious unit. Cireater precision is not needed here. Italic land is also classified as res muneipi along with these animate beings, though it is (to us) obv iously different in nature. Whether or not it was always S() classified-perhaps, not, if, as is sometimes claimed, land in earl\' times was not in private ownership-cannot, 1 think, be established, hut the application to it of the ceremony of maneipatio is our first glimpse of pragmatism in this context. Wiuiei2 See, e.g., P. Vigneron, ie cheval dans 1’antiquité gréco-romaine (Nancy, 1968), pp. i39ff; K.D. White, Roman Farming {London, 1970), pp. 288ff. Some uses of horses was, however, made by farmers. See Cato, De agri cultura, 138. 3 See, e.g., P. Bonfante, Corso di diritto romano vol. 2, La proprietå (Rome, 1927), p. 182; for a different opinion see, e.g., G. Diösdi, Ownership in Ancient and Preclassical Roman Law (Budapest, 1970), pp. 22ff. 66
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