Little is known about the pattern of land ownership before the Roman conquest, but there is no doubt that it radically changed after the Roman conquest. In particular, many free peasants who had farmed the same plots for generations (i.e. were owners under tribal customary law) would have found themselves reduced to tenants, obliged to pay rent to absentee Roman landlords or to the agents of the "procurator", the chief financial officer of the province, if their land was now part of an imperial estate. Even where their new landlord was a local tribal aristocrat, the free peasant may have been worse off, obliged to pay rent for land which he might previously have farmed for free, or pay fees to graze his herds on pastures which might previously have been communal.