As to development of forest property we have also only fragmentary
information. Nomads do not know soil as property. When they become
settled farmers the plowland, the vineyard or olive grove and orchard
are recognized as private property, but all the rest remains common
property or nobody’s in particular; and even the private property was
not at first entirely exclusive. Hence for a long time (and in some
parts even to date) the exclusive property right in forests is not fully
established. At least the right to hunt over all territory without
restriction was possessed by everybody, although an owner might prevent
undesirable hunters from entering his property if it was enclosed. The
setting aside of hunting grounds for private use came into existence
only in later Roman times. But woodland parks, planted or otherwise,
like the “paradises” of the Persian kings and the _nemora_ of the Romans
and Carthaginians were early a part of the private property of princes
and grandees from which others were excluded.
Forests formed a barrier and defense against outsiders, or a hiding
place in case of need, hence we find in early times frontier forests, or
as the Germans called them “Grenzmarken,” set aside or designated for
such purposes and withdrawn from use, and sometimes additionally
fortified by ditches and other artificial barriers. Even before the
“Grenzmarken” of the Germans the forest was used by Greeks, Romans and
still earlier among Asiatic tribes to designate the limit of peoples as
well as to serve as a bulwark against attacks from invaders.
Again, the pantheistic ideas of the ancients led to consecrating not
only trees but groves to certain gods: holy groves were frequent among
the Greeks and Romans, and also among other pagans; the Jews, however,
were enjoined to eradicate these emblems of paganism in the promised
land with axe and fire, and they did so more or less, removal and
re-establishment of holy groves varying according to the religious
sentiment of their rulers. Altogether, in Palestine the forests were
left to the free and unrestricted use of the Israelites.
Out of religious conceptions and priestly shrewdness arose church
property in farms and forests among the Indian Brahmans, the Ethiopians
and Egyptians, as also among Greeks and Romans.
It appears that the oriental kings were exclusive owners of all
unappropriated or public forests. This was certainly the case with the
princes of India and of Persia, and such ownership can be proved
definitely in many other parts, as in the case of the forests of
Lebanon, of Cyprus, and of various forest areas in Asia Minor.
That in the Greek republics the forests were mainly public property
seems to be likely; for Attica, at least, this is true without doubt.
While the first Roman kings seem to have owned royal domains, which were
distributed among the people after the expulsion of the kings, the
public property which came to the republic as a result of conquest was
in most cases at once transferred to private hands, either for
homesteads of colonists, or in recognition of services of soldiers and
other public officers, or to mollify the conquered, or by sale, or for
rent, not to mention the rights acquired by squatters. The rents were
usually farmed out to collectors (_publicani_) or to corporations formed
of these. Livy, however, mentions also State forests in which the
cutting was regulated, probably by merely reserving the ship timber.
That occasionally single cities and other smaller municipal units owned
forest properties in common seems also established.
Private forest properties connected with farm estates existed in
Ethiopia, in Arabia, among the Greeks and among the Romans at home as
well as in their colonies. Especially pasture woods (_saltus_) connected
with small and large estates (_latifundia_) into which probably most
forest areas near settlements were turned, are frequently mentioned as
in private ownership; but also other private forests existed.
The institution of servitudes or rights of user (_usus_ and
_usus-fructus_) and a considerable amount of law regarding the
conditions under which they were exercised and regarding their
extinguishment were in existence among the Romans in the first centuries
of the Christian era.