Adam Smith once wrote in "Of the Checks Which the State of Europe Received After the Fall of the Roman Empire": From the beginning of the disturbances caused by the Germanic peoples and Scythians in the western part of the Roman Empire, Europe underwent tremendous changes. The plundering of the native inhabitants by barbarian tribes forced trade between town and country to cease. Cities stood empty, fields went untilled, and Europe, once exceptionally wealthy under the rule of the Western Roman Empire, became poor and barbaric.
In ancient Rome, land was merely a means of sustaining life and providing pleasure—for instance, growing wheat and grapes to make bread or wine. The Romans gave every one of their children, regardless of age or gender, a piece of land. At the time, "wealth" referred to slaves, gold and silver, livestock. Magnificent Rome had been built by slaves.
Rome was an agricultural people; herding belonged to nomadic peoples. Because they had no horses, Roman cavalry was outnumbered by infantry, and the infantrymen were mainly independent farmers. They followed their commanders into war and, like the heroes who conquered Troy, carried off the defeated nation's people as slaves. They also looted local artworks to decorate their mansions and courtyards. Many ancient Roman artworks were in the Greek style, and even Roman mythology merely changed the names of the Greek gods.
But when land ceased to be merely a means of sustaining life and became a means of power as well, it seemed more appropriate to pass it down whole to one person. Thus, primogeniture came into being.
This had not appeared overnight; it was a very gradual process. During the constantly turbulent Middle Ages, great landowners spent all their energy defending or expanding their estates, neglecting the cultivation and improvement of their land. When