The defence of private property has been a feature of philosophical, theological and legal discourse from antiquity to the present day. This book seeks to explore the ancient ‘foundational’ texts concerning ideas of property and their reception up to the early nineteenth century. I begin with Plato's thoughts on property in the Republic as expressed in his vision of the ideal polity, or Kallipolis. Other texts or foundation narratives include New Testament passages on the community of the first Christians at Jerusalem and the poverty of Christ and his apostles, and a collection of texts on primeval humanity drawn from a variety of literary works. But in addition to examining the various discussions relating to property and property regimes, I set out to challenge the dominant historical paradigm that the ancient world made little, or in some accounts no, contribution to Rights Theory, and in particular to the right to private property.

I am particularly interested in the confrontation that occurs in the works of philosophers, theologians and jurists, and other literary genres, between regimes of sharing of one sort or another and private property regimes, and I study the ways in which the themes of the origin of private property, and the transition to private property from primitive communality (as I call it), are handled by authors from antiquity to the Age of Revolution and the immediately following decades.