ABSTRACT
From its earliest appearance, and at each stage of its evolution, the hortus was concerned not only with property but also with Roman identity. In his encyclopaedic Natural History, Pliny the Elder called attention to the venerable meaning of hortus:
In our laws of the Twelve Tables the ‘farm’ [villa] is never named, instead the word ‘garden’ [hortus] is always used in that regard, while the garden proper is the ‘family estate’ [heredium].2
