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JOHNS HOPKINS DNIVERSITY STUDIES

Historical and Political Science

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor

History is past Politics and Politics present History — Freeman

NINTH *SERIES
VII-VIII

PUBLIC LANDS AND AGRARIAN LAWS

OF THE

* ROMAN REPUBLIC

BY ANDREW STEPHENSON, Ph.D.

I'ro/eisor of Uhloiij, Wesletjan Unioertity

baltimore

The Johns Hopkins Pkess

july- august, 1891

3'n»:'-'

JOHN MCBPHY & CO., PRINTERS.
BALTIMORE.

PREFACE

lu the followiug pages it lias been my object to trace the history
of the domain lands of Home from the earliest times to the estab-
lishment of the Empire. The plan of the work has been to sketch
the origin and growth of the idea of private property in land,
the expansion of the ager j^uhlicus by the conquest of neighboring
territories, and its absorption by means of sale, by gift to the peo-
ple, and by the establishment of colonies, until wholly merged in
private property. This necessarily involves a history of the agra-
rian la\vs, as land distributions were made and colonies established
only in accordance with laws previously enacted.

My reason for undertaking such a work as the present is found
in the fact that agrarian movements have borne more or less upon
every point in Roman constitutional history, and a proper knowl-
edge of the former is necessary to a just interpretation of the latter.

This whole question presents numerous obscurities before which
it has been necessary more than once to hesitate ; it offers, both in
its entirety and in detail, difficulties which I have at least earn-
estly endeavored to lessen. These obscurities and difficulties,
arising in part from insufficiency of historical evidence and in
part from the conflicting statements of the old historians, have
been recognized by all writers and call forth on my part no claim
for indulgence.

This monograph is intended as a chapter merely of a history of
the public lands and agrarian laws of Rome, written for the pur-
pose of a future comparison with the more recent agrarian move-
ments in England and America.

Andrew Stephenson.

MiDDLETOWN, CONN.

May 8, 1891.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page.
CHAPTER T.

Sec. 1. Landed Property 7

" 2. QuiRiTARiAN Ownership 13

" 3. Ager Publicus 15

" 4. RoMAK Colonies 19

CHAPTER II.

Sec. 5. Lex Cassia 24

" 6. Agrarian Movements between 486 and 367 26

(a). Extension of Territory of conquest up to the year 367

B. c 35

(6). Colonies Founded between 454 and 367 36

Sec. 7. Lex Licinia 36

" 8. Agrarian Movements between 367 and 133 46

(a). Extension of Territory by conquest between 367 and

133 59

(6). Colonies Founded between 367 and 133 60

Latipundia 62

Influence of Slavery 66

Lex Sempronia Tiberiana 69

Lex Sempronia Gaiana 77

CHAPTER HI.

Lex Thoria 79

Agrarian Movements between 111 and 86 88

Effect of the Sullan Revolution 91

Agrarian Movements between 86 and 59 93

Lex Julia Agraria 95

Distributions of Land after the Civil War between

CiESAR AND POMPEY 98

19. Distributions from the Death of C^sar to the time

OF Augustus 99

(a). Lex Agraria of Lucius Antonius 99

(6). Lex de Colonis in Agros Deducendis 99

(c). Second Triumvirate 100

Sec

((

10.

((

11.

12.

Sec

13.

((

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

PUBLIC LANDS AND AGRARIAN LAWS
OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.

CHAPTER I.

Sec. 1. — Landed Property.

The Roinaus were a people that originally gave their almost
exclusiv'e attention to agriculture and stock-raising. The sur-
names of the most illustrious families, as Piso (miller), Porcius
(swine-raiser), Lactucinius (lettuce-raiser), Stolo (a shoot), etc.,
prove this. To say that a man was a good farmer was, at
one time, to bestow upon him the highest praise.^ This char-
acter, joined to the spirit of order and private avarice which
in a marked degree distinguished the Romans, has con-
tributed to the development among them of a civil law
which is perhaps the most remarkable monument which
antiquity has left us. This civil code has become the basis
of the law of European peoples, and recommends the civiliza-
tion of Rome to the veneration of mankind.

Tiie corner-stone of this legislation was the constitution of
the law of property.^ This property applies itself to every-

^ Cato, De Re Rusdca, I, lines 3-8. " Majores nostri .... virimi bonum
cum laudabant, ita laudabant, bonum agricolam bonumque colonum. Am-
plissime laudari existimabatur, qui ita laudabatur."

' Muirhead, Roman Law, 36 et seq.

8 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [328

thing in the law of Rome, to land, to persons and to obli-
gations.

Urbs, the name of the village, takes its origin, according to
an etymology given by Varro,^ from the furrow which the
plow traced about the habitations of the earliest dwellers.
But what is of more interest to us is that the legal significa-
tion of Urbs and Roma was different. The former was the
village comprised within the sacred enclosure ; the latter was
the total agglomeration of habitations which composed the
village, properly ^ so called, and the outskirts, or suburbs. The
powers of certain magistrates ceased with the sacred limits of
the Ui'bs, while the privileges accorded to a citizen of Rome
extended to the village and the suburbs and finally embraced
the entire Roman world.

The most ancient documents which have reached us from
the history of India and Egypt reveal that they had landed
property fully established, while Roman annals reveal to us
the very creation of this institution. Whatever modern crit-
icism may deduce, Dionysius, Plutarch, Livy, and Cicero agree
in representing the first king of Rome as merely establishing
public property in Roman soil. This national property, the
people possessed in -common and not individually. Such
appears to us to be the quiritarian property par excellence j"^ and
its primitive form was a variety of public community* of
which individual property was but a later solemn emancipa-
tion. To this historic theory attaches the true notion of
quiritarian land of which we will speak in greater detail
hereafter.

As regards the organization and constitution of individual
and private property, the traditions themselves attribute this
to the second king of Rome, the real founder of Roman

^ Varro, De Ldngua Latina, V, 143.

2 Frag, to Digest, 287 and 147 of Title 16, Bk. 50 witli notes of Schultung
and Small.

' Plutarch's Romulus, ^ 19. * Mommsen, History of Rome, I, 194.

329] Landed Propei^ty. 9

society, who divided the territory among the citizens, mark-
ing off the limits of individual shares and placing them under
the protection of religion. In this way a religious charter
was granted to the institutions of private property. Thus a
primitive division of territory appears to have been the basis
of these varied traditions, but the precise form of this division
eludes us.

The Roman territory was confined for many ages to a sur-
face of very limited extent, which properly bore the name of
Ager Romanus. This name with signification slightly changed
appeared to be still in use in the time of the empire, and even
at the present day a portion of the Roman territory which
very nearly corresponds to the ancient territory of the imperial
period is called Agro Romano} That which was properly
called Ager Romanics at first only occupied the surface of a
slightly expanded arc whose chord was the river Tiber.^ Primi-
tive Rome did not extend beyond the Tiber into Etruria, and
toward Latium her possessions did not extend beyond the
limits of some five or six miles reckoning from the Palatine.
Toward the east the towns of Antemnae, Fidenae, Caenina,
Collatia and Gabia lay in the immediate neighborhood, thus
limiting the extension of the city in that direction within a
radius of five or six miles ;^ and northward the Anio* formed
the limit. To the southwest as you approach Lavinium, the
sixth milestone marked the boundary of Rome. Thus with
the possible exception of a small strip of land extending upon
either bank of the Tiber to its mouth, and embracing the old
site^ of Ostia, have we marked out all of ancient Rome.
Strabo ^ says it could be gone round in a single day. And
according to this same author it was within these limits that
the annual auspices ^ could be taken.

' Sismondi, Etudes sur I'econ. polit., I, 2, O-

" Pseudo Fabius Pictor, Bk. I, p. 54; Pint., Numa, 16; Festus V° Pectus-
tum Palati, p. 198 and 566, Lindemann.

^Arnold, Roman History, I, ch. 3, par. 4. *Moramsen, I, 75.

5 Strabo, Bk. 5, 253. ^ Strabo, Bk. 5, ch. 3, § 2. ' Arnold, I, ch. 3.

10 Public Lands of the Roman Republic^ [330

Both city and land increased with time. Property seemed
to have been added and lost successively during the reign of
the kings.^ The last increase of the Agei' Romanus was due
to the labors of Servius Tullius, and it was in the reign of
this king that it reached its greatest limit. Dionysius^ says :
" As soon as he (Servius) was invested with the government,
he divided the public lands among such of the Romans as
having no lands of their own, cultivated those of others. . . .
He added two hills to the city, that called the Viminal and
the Esquiline hill, each of which forms a considerable city ;
these he divided among such Romans as had no houses, to the
intent that they might build them. . . . This king was the
last who enlarged the circumference of the city by the addition
of these two hills to the other five, having first consulted the
auspices as the law decided, and performed the other religious
rites. Further than this the city has not since then been
extended." Without doubt these possessions received great
additions in later times,^ but they were not incorporated in
the Ager Romanus as the preceding had been. The subju-
gated territories kept their, ancient names while their lands
were made the object of distributions to the people, of public
sales to the citizens who also extended their possessions outside
of Roman* territory, or else the new conquests were abandoned
to municipia, given up to colonies, or became a part of that
which was called Ager Publious. In fine, it was a funda-
mental principle of the public law of Rome that the lands
and the persons of the people conquered belonged to the con-
queror, the Roman people, who either in person or by their
delegates disposed of them as it seemed best. Among the
ancients war always decided concerning both liberty and
property.

> Dionysius, II, 55; V, 33, 36; III, 49-50; Livy, I, 23-36.

* Dionysius, IV, 13.

' Varro, De Lingua Latina, V, 33.

* Sigonius, De Antiq. Juris Civ. Bom., Bk. I, ch. 2,

331] . Landed Property. 11

The result of all these facts was that the Roman territory
was made the object of a division or a primitive distribution
either among the three races of the first population, or a little
later among the citizens or inhabitants. This very same
principle has been frequently observed in recent times in
regard to confiscated ^ territories and conquered j)eoples.

Now what was the allotment of the first distribution of
land ?

Upon this topic the ancient authorities are blind and
confusing to such an extent as to be wholly inadequate
for the solution of the difficulty. Among the more recent
authorities, two opposing systems have been sustained, the
one represented by Montesquieu, and the other by Nie-
buhr. (1) According to Montesquieu, the kings of Rome
divided the land into perfectly equal lots for all the citi-
zens and the title of the law of the Twelve Tables rela-
tive to successions was for no other object than to establish
this ancient equality of the division of lands.^ (2) Nie-
buhr,^ on the contrary, claimed that territorial property was
primitively the attribute of the patriciate and everyone
who was not a member of this noble race was incapable of
possessing any part of the territory. From this theory the
author deduced numerous consequences which are important
both to law and history. Neither of these systems is free
from errors. Montesquieu seems to have made no difference
between patrician and plebeian in using the term citizen, while
it is no longer disputed that the plebeian was not a burgess
and consequently had no civic rights save those granted to
him by the ruling class. His idea of goods must have, at
least, become chimerical at a very early date, as this equality
was so little suspected by the ancients that Plutarch,* after

' Hume's Hist, of Eng., I, ch. 4 : IV, ch. 61.

' Esprit des lois, Liv. 27, c. I.

^ Roman Hist, II, 164 ; III, 175 and 211.

* Lycurgus and Numa, II ; Cicero, De Repub., II, 9.

12 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [332

having spoken of the efforts of Lycurgus to overturn the
inequality of wealth among the Spartans, accuses Numa of
having neglected a necessity so important. It is moreover
difficult to see how Montesquieu could think that testa-
mentary disposition tended to maintain equality when the
privilege was accorded to every citizen of disposing of his
entire patrimony by will even to the prejudice of his chil-
dren.^ Again, the law of debts was hardly favorable^ to
equality.

Niebuhr clearly ^ denied the existence of the plebs until
Ancus incorporated the Latins and bestowed upon them
peculiar privileges thus forming a new and third class dis-
tinct from both patricians and clients. Had Niebuhr succeeded
in establishing this view, the right to landed property would
appear to be wholly vested in the patricians, for a client, from
the very nature of his position, could hold nothing independent
of his master. But this theory has fallen to the ground and no
writer of the present day pretends to uphold it. The plebeians
existed from the very first and some of them held land in full
private ownership very little different from the quiritarian
ownership of the patricians. Cicero, who in his Republic has
occupied himself with the ancient constitution of Rome and
has spoken in detail of the division of the lands, always
speaks of the distribution among the citizens without regard
to quality of patrician or plebeian, divisit viritim civibus. He
has nowhere written that territorial riches were the exclusive
appanage of the patriciate. It must be confessed, however,
that it is doubtful whether he intended to embrace the plebeians
in his civibus. For more than two centuries before the time
of Cicero the plebeians had enjoyed the full rights of Roman
citizenship, but for more than that length of time property

' Muirhead, Roman Laiv, 46 and note — " uti legasset suae rei ita jus esto."

* Muirhead, 92-96. ^ Niebuhr, I.

* Momm., 1, 126 ; Ihne, I ; Nitzsch, Oeschichte der romischen RepvAlik, 52 ;
Lange, RiJmische Geschickle, I, 18,

333] Quiritarian Ownership. 13

had been concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy. This
result was the consequence of the Roman constitution ^ and the
establishment of a populous city in the midst of a narrow
surrounding country. Roman policy had never been con-
ducive to this concentration, and it will hereafter appear that
the nobility who had the chief direction and administration of
public affairs had little by little usurped the property which
formed the domain of the state, i. e. Ager Publicus, and swal-
lowed up the revenues due the treasury.

Sec. 2. — Quiritarian Ownership.

Citizenship was the first requisite to the right of property
in Roman territory. This rule, although invariable and
inherent in the Roman state, bent under the influence of
international politics or the philosophy of law, yet its severity
affords us a notable characteristic of the law of ancient Rome.
Cicero and Gains have preserved to us an important monu-
ment of this law in a frae^raent of the Twelve Tables which
proclaims the solemn principle, adversus hostem aeterna aucto-
ritas esto} Hostis in the old Latin language was synonymous
with stranger, petngrinus} This Roman name was moreover
applied to a pei'^on who had forfeited the protection of the
law by reason of a criminal condemnation, and who was
therefore designated peregrinus.*

Audoritas also had in old Latin a different signification
from what it has in later Latin. It expressed the idea of the
right to claim and defend in equity. It was very nearly
equivalent to the right of property.^ The sense of the Roman

' Dureau de la Malle, Mem. sur les pop. de I'ltcUie, 500 et seq.

*De Officiis, I, 12; Gaius, Frag., 234: Digest, 50, 16.

^Varro, De L. L. V. 14; Plautus, Trinuvimus, Act I, Scene 2, V. 75;
Harper's Latiii Dictionary; Cicero, De Off., I, 12: "Hostis enim apud
majores nostros is dicibatur, quern nunc peregrinum dicimus."

*Cic., loc. ciL; Gaius, Frag., 234.

*Forcellini, Lexic; Harper's Latin Lex.

14 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [3&4

law was, then, that the peregrinus could not bar or proceed
against a Roman, a disposition somewhat similar to the old
law of England.^ And as it was necessary to be a citizen in
order to acquire by the civil and solemn means which domi-
nated the law of property in Rome, it followed that the pere-
grini were excluded from all right to property in land by
these laws. This exclusive legislation for a long time gov-
erned Europe and did not disappear even from the Code
Napoleon of 1819."

We have a forcible example of the severity of the old
Roman law in this regard in the text of Gaius, — Aut enim ex
jure quiritium unusquisque dominus erat, aid non intelligebatur
dominus.^

Dominium was therefore inseparable from Jus Quiritium,
the law of the Roman city, the optimum jus civium Romano-
rum. The peregi'inus was excluded from landed property
both Roman and private ; he could neither inherit nor trans-
mit ; claim nor defend in equity. Moreover the name pei'e-
grinus was not confined to the stranger proper but was also
bestowed upon subjects of Rome* who, being deprived of
their property and also of political liberty by right of con-
quest, had not received the right of citizenship which was for
a long time confined within very narrow limits. It would thus
appear conclusive from the law quoted that the client and ple-
beian could not at first hold land optimo ex jure quiritium.

Thus the tenure of the patricians was three-fold : first, they
had full property in the land ; second, they had a seigniorial
right, jus in re, in the land of their clients and the plebeians
whose property belonged to the populus, i. e. the generality of
the patricians ; in the third place, in their own hands, they

' i. e. The descendents of a person escheated could bring no action for the
recovery of the property.

^ Giraud, Mecherches aur le Droit de Propriete, p. 210.

3 Gaius, Bk. II, 40.

*Ulpian, Frag., Title XIX, 4; Giraud, 216.

335] Ager Publicus. 16

held lands which were portions of the domain and which were
held by a very precarious tenure called possessio.

According to Ihne, all lands in Rome were held by the
above mentioned tenure until the enactment of tiie Icilian law
de Aventino puhlicando which involved a change of tenure by
converting the former dependent and incumbered tenure of the
plebeians into full property.

Sec. 3. — Ager Publicus.

In her early history Rome was continually making fresh
conquests, and in this way adding to her territory.^ She
steadfastly pursued a course of destruction to her neighbors in
order that she might thereby grow rich and powerful. In
this way large tracts of territory became Roman land, the
property of the state or Ager Publicus?

This public land extended in proportion to the success of
the Roman arms, since the confiscation of the territory of the
vanquished was, in the absence of more favorable terms, a
part of the law of war. All conquered lands before being
granted or sold to private individuals were Ager Publicus,^ a
term which with few exceptions came to embrace the whole
Roman world.

This Ager Publicus was farther increased by towns * volun-
tarily surrendering themselves to Rome without aw^aiting the
iron hand of war. These were commonly mulcted of one-
third of their land.^ "The soil of the country is not the
product of labor any more than is water or air. Individual
citizens caimot therefore lay any claim to lawful property in
land as to anything ^ produced by their own hands." The
state in this case, as the representative of the rights and

* Long, Decline of the Roman Rep., I, ch. 11.
' Muirhead, Roman Law, 92.

* Ortolan, Histoire de la legislation Romaine, p. 21.

* Mommsen, I, 131 ; Arnold, I, 157.

"Dionysius, IV, 11, Livy. «Ihne, I, 175.

16 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [336

interests of society, decides how the land shall be divided
among the members of the community, and the rules laid
down by the state to regulate this matter are of the first and
highest importance in determining the civil condition of the
country and the prosperity of the people. Whenever but one
class among the people is privileged to have property in land
a most exclusive oligarchy is formed.^ When the land is
held in small portions by a great number and nobody is
legally or practically excluded from acquiring land, there
we find provided the elements of democracy.

According to the strictest right of conquest in antiquity the
defeated lost not only their personal freedom, their moveable
and landed " property, but even life itself All was at the
mercy of the conquerors. In practice a modification of this
right took place and in Rome extreme severity was applied
only in extreme cases, generally as a punishment for treason.^

This magnanimity was not rare and it even went so far as
to restore the whole of the territory to the people subdued.*
But let us not suppose that this humanity toward a conquered
people sprang from any pity inspired by their forlorn con-
dition. It was due merely to the interest of the conquerors
themselves. The conquered lands must still be cultivated and
the depleted population restored. For this reason the con-
quered had generally not only life and freedom left them but
also the means of livelihood, i. e. some portion of their land.
This portion they held subject to no restrictions or services
save those levied upon quiritarian ])roperty. It was private
property to the full legal extent of the expression, thus being
in the unlimited disposition of the individual,^ These people
formed the nucleus of the plebeians, the freemen who were

1 Ihne, r, 175.

* Livy, Bk. I, c. 38, with note by Drachenborch ; Livy, Bk. VII, c. 31.

^ Siculus Flaccus, De Conditione Agrorwn, 2, 3 : " Ut vero Romani omnium
gentium potiti sunt, agros alios ex hoste captos in viclorem poi)ulum partiti
sunt, alios verro agros vendiderunt, ut Sabinorum ager qui dicitur quaes-
torius." * Cicero, in Verrem, II, Bk. 3, § 6.

* Giraud, Droit de propriele chez les romains, 160.

337] Ager Publicus. 17

members of the Roman state ' without actually having any
political rights.

The Ager Publicus was the property of the state and as
such could be alienated only by the state.^ This alienation
could be accomplished in two ways :

(a). By public sale ;

(6). By gratuftous distribution.

(a). The public sale was merely an auction to the highest
bidder and in the later days of the monarchy and early part
of the republic, rich plebeians must have become possessed of
large tracts of land in this way ; the privilege of acquiring
property in land having been extended to them some time
before the Servian reform.^

(6). The gratuitous distribution of land was accomplished
by means of Agrarian Laws or royal grant and had for its
object the establishment of colonies for purposes of defence,
the rewarding of veterans or meritorious soldiers/ or in later
times, the providing for impoverished plebeians.

But even in the earliest times a portion of the domain
lands was excluded from sale or private appropriation,^ in
order to serve as a resource for the needs of the state.

This was the general usage of ancient republics and this
maxim of reserved lands was recommended ^ by Aristotle as
the first principle of political economy.

Such reserved ager publicus was leased either in periods
of five years (quinquennial leaseholds) or perpetually, i. e.,
by emphyteutic lease or copyhold. From these lands ^ the
treasury received an income of from one-tenth to one-fifth of
the annual crops.

Besides these legal methods mentioned there was another
very common one which was seemingly never established by
any law and therefore existed merely by title of tolerance. I

1 Ihne, I, 175. « Muirhead, 92; Giraud, 165.

'Higin., De Limit. Const, apud Goes. Rei Agr. Script., pp. 159-160.
* Giraud, 164. ^ Dionysius, II, 7.

Aristotle, Polit., Z. Ke<p. 0. 7: AvayKaihv toIvw els Svo fj-fpt) Striprj(r0ai t^;'
X^pav Kal T^y ixfv tli/ai koii/tiv, rriu S( roiv iStoiruu. ^Giraud, 163.

18 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [338

speak of the indefinite possessio which was nothing but an
occupation on the part of the patricians ^ of the land belonging
to the state and was in nature quite similar to the so-called
"squatting" commonly practiced in some of our western
states and territories. The title to the enjoyment of the
public lands was at first clearly vested in the patricians nor
was this right extended to the plebeians until after they had
been admitted to full citizenship. With regard to the state
the possesso?-^ was merely a tenant at will and could be
removed whenever desired ; but as regarded other persons
he was like the owner of the soil and could alienate the
land which he occupied either for a term of years, or forever,
as if he were the real proprietor.^ The public land thus
occupied was looked to as a resource upon the admission
of new citizens. They customarily received a small free-
hold accordiiTg to the general, notion of antiquity that a
burgess must be a landowner. This land could only be
found by a divison of that which belonged to the public,
and a consequent ejectment of the tenants at will. In the
Greek states every large accession to the number of citizens
was followed by a call for a division of the public lands and,
as this division involved the sacrifice of many existing inter-
ests, it was regarded with aversion by the old burgesses as an
act of revolution.

A great part of the wealth of the Romans consisted in
domains of this kind, and the question will occur to the
thoughtful mind how the government was able to keep the
most distinguished part of her citizens in a legal position so
uncertain and alarming. English law is very different from
the Roman in this respect and would decide in favor of the

^Festus, p. 209, Lindemann; Cicero, ad Att. II, 15; Philipp. V, 7 ; De
Leg. Agr. I, 2, III, 3; De Off. II, 22; Livy, II, 61, IV, 51, 53, VI, 4, 15 ;
Suet. Julius Caesar, 38; Octavius, 13, 32; Caesar, De Bell. Civ., I, 17;
Orosius, V, 18.

^ Aggenus Urbicus, p. 69, ed. Goes.

'Giraud, 185-187 ; Mommsen, 1, 110 ; Ortolan, 227 ; Hunter, Roman Law,
367.

339] Roman Colonies. 19

tenant and against the state. It is fiirly possible that this
uncertainty of tenure tended to render the government more
stable and less liable to sudden revolutionary movements, thus
having the same effect upon the Roman government which
funded debts have upon the nations of to-day.

Sec. 4. — Roman Colonies.

Probably in no other way does the Roman government so
clearly reveal its nature and strength as in its method of
colonization. No other nation, ancient or modern, has ever so
completely controlled her colonies as did the Roman. Her
civil law, indeed, reflected itself in both political and inter-
national relations. In Greece, as soon ^ as a boy had attained
a certain age his name was inscribed upon the tribal rolls and
henceforth he was free from the potestas of his father and
owed him only the marks of respect which nature demanded.
So too, at a certain age, the colonies separated themselves
from their mother city without losing their remembrance of
a common origin. This was not so in Rome. The children"
were always under the potestas of their parents. By analogy
therefore, the colonies ought to remain subject to their mother
city. Greek colonies went forth into a strange land which
had never been conquered by Hellenic arms or hitherto trod
by Grecian foot. Roman ^ colonies were established by gov-
ernment upon land which had been previously conquered and
which therefore belonged to the Roman domain. The Greek
was fired with an ambition to obtain wealth and personal dis-
tinction, being wholly free to bend his efforts to personal ends.
Not so the Roman. He sacrificed self for the good of the
state. Instead of the allurements of wealth he received some
six jugera of land, free from taxation it is true, but barely

^ Bouchaud, M. A., Dmerialion sur les colonies romaines, pp. 114-222, en
Memoires de I'institut Sciences, Morals et Politique, III.

^ Muirhead's Article on Eonian Law in Ency. Brit.; Ihne, I, 235.
^ Momni., I, 145.

20 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [340

enough to reward the hardest labor with scanty subsistence.
Instead of the hope of personal distinction, he in most cases
sacrificed the most valuable of his rights, jus suffragii et jus ^
honorum and suffered what was called capitis diminutio. He
devoted himself, together with wife and family, to a life-long
military service. In fact the Romans used colonization as a
means to strengthen their hold upon^ their conquests in Italy
and to extend their dominion from one centre over a large
extent of country. Roman colonies were not commercial. In
this respect they difiPered from those of the Phoenicians and
Greeks. Their object was essentially military^ and from this
point of view they differed from the colonies of both the
ancients and moderns. Their object was the establishment of
Roman power. The colonists marched out as a garrison into
a conquered town and were exposed to dangers on all sides.
Every colony acted as a fortress to protect the boundary and
keep subjects to their allegiance to Rome. This establishment
was not a matter of individual choice nor was it left to any
freak of chance. A decree of the senate decided when and
where a colony should be sent out, and the people in their
assemblies elected individual members for colonization.

From another point of view Roman colonies were similar
to those of Greece, since their result was to remove from the
centre to distant places the superabundant population, the
dangerous,* unquiet, and turbulent.

But the difference in the location of the colonies wsts easy
to distinguish. In general the Phoenicians and the Greeks
as well as modern people founded their colonies in unoccupied
localities. Here they raised up new towns which were located
in places favorable to maritime and commercial relations.
The Romans, on the contrary, avoided establishing colonies in

^ Momm., loc. cit.

* Brutus (A[)p. B. C, II, 1 40) callsthe colonists, ^v\aKas rwv ■)reno\€/j.7iK6Toiv.
3 Iline, I, 236.

* Cicero, Ad Att., I, 19 : "Sentinam urhis exhaurire, et Italiae solitudinem
frequentori [msse arbitrator."

341] Roman Colonies. 21

new places. When they had taken possession of a city, they
expelled from it a part of the inhabitants, whether to transfer
them to Rome as at first, or a little later, when it became
necessary to disconrage the increase of Roman population, to
more distant places. The population thus expelled was
replaced with Roman and Latin citizens.^ Thus a permanent
garrison was located which assured the submission of the
neighboring countries and arrested in its incipiency every
attempt at revolt. In every respect these colonies remained
under surveillance and in a de})endence the most complete and
absolute upon the mother city, Rome. Colonies never became
the means of providing for the impoverished and degraded
until the time of Gaius Gracchus. When new territory was
conquered, there went the citizen soldier. Thus these colonies
mark the growth of Roman dominion as the circumscribed
rings mark the annual growth of a tree. These colonies were
of two kinds, Latin and Roman.

1. Latin colonies were those ^ which were composed of
Latini and Hernici, or Romans enjoying the same rights
as these, i. e. possessed of the Latin right rather than the
Roman franchise. They were established inland as road
fortresses and being located in the vicinity of mountain passes
or main thoroughfares acted as a guard to Rome, and held the
enemy in check.

2. Roman, or Burgess, colonies^ were those composed wholly
of Roman citizens who kept their political rights and con-
sequent close union with their native city. In some cases
Latini were given the full franchise and permitted to join
these colonies. In position as well as rights, these colonies
were distinguished from the Latin, being with few exceptions
situated upon the coast and thus acting as guards against
foreign invasion.

^ Momm., I, 145.

* Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 35-51 ; Momm., History of Rome, I, 108, 539;
Madvigi Opuscula Academica, I, 208-305.

* Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 35-51 ; Ihne, vols. I-V ; Momm., vols. I-V ;
Madvigi Opus., loc. ci(.

Pablic Lands of the Roman Republic.

[342

Table of Latin Colonies in Italy.

COLONIES.

LOCATION.

B. c.

AUTHORITIES.

Signia.

Latium.

Livy, 1,56; Dionys., 4,63.

Cerceii.

Id.

Suessa Pometia.

Livy, 2, 16.

Cora.

((

Livy, 2, 16.

Velitrae.

494

Livy, 2, 30, 31; Dionys., 6,
42, 43.

Norba.

.'(

492

Livy, 2, 34; Dionys., 7, 13.

Antium.

467

" 3, 1 ; " 9, 59.

Ardea.

442

" 4, 11; Diodor., 12, 34.

Satricum.

385

" 6, 14.

Sutrum.

Etruria.

383

Veil., 1, 14.

Nepete.

383

Livy, 6, 21 ; Veil.

vSetia.

Latium.

382

Veil., 1, 14; Livy, 6, 30.

Cales.

Campauia.

334

" 1,14; " 8,16.

Fregellae.

Latium.

328

Livy, 8, 22.

Luceria.

Apulia.

314

" Epit., 60.

Suessa.

313

" 9, 28.

Pontiae.

Isle of Latium.

313

" 9, 28.

Saticula.

Samnium.

313

" 9,22;Vell.,l,14; Fes-
tus, p. 340.

Interamna Lirinas.

Latium.

312

Livy, 9, 28; Veil., 1, 14;
Diodor., 19, 105.

Sora.

303

Livy, 10, 1 ; Veil., 1, 14.

Alba.

303

" 10,1; " 1,14.

Narnia.

Umbria.

299

" 10, 10.

Carseola.

Latium.

298

" 10, 13.

Venusia.

Apulia.

291

Veil., 1, 14; Dionvs. Ex.,
2335.

Hatria.

Picenum.

289

Livy, Epit., 11.

Cosa.

Campania.

273

" 14; Veil., 1, 14.

Paestum.

Lucania.

273

Id. Id.

Ariminum.

268

Veil., 1, 14; L. Epit., 15;
Eutrop., 2, 16.

Beneventura.

Samnium.

268

Veil., 1, 14; L. Epit., 15;
Eutrop., 2, 16.

Firmum.

Picenum.

264

Veil., 1, 14.

Aesernia.

Samnium.

263

" 1, 14; L. Epit., 16.

Brundisium.

Calabria.

244

" 1, 14; " 19.

Spoletium.

Umbria.

241

" 1,14; " 20.

Cremona.

Gallia Cis.

218

Tacitus, HisL, 3, 35.

Placentia.

II (1

218

L. Epit., 20; Polyb., 3, 40;
V. 1, 14, 8.

Copia.

Lucania.

193

Livy, 34, 53.

Valentia.

Bruttii.

192

" 34, 40 ; 35, 40.

Bononia.

Gallia Cis.

189

" 37,57; Veil., 1, 15.

Aquileia.

Gallia Trans.

181

" 40,34; "

343]

Roman Colonies.

Table of Civic Colonies in Italy.

COLONIES.

LOCATION.

B. C.

418

AUTHORITY.

Ostea.

Latium.

Livv, 1, 33; Dionys., 3, 44;

Polvb.,6,29;Cic.deR.R.,

2, 18, 33.

Labici.

418

Livv, 4, 47, 7,

Antium.

338

"" 8, 14.

Auxur.

329

" 8, 21 ; 27, 38 ; Veil., 1,
14.

Minturnae.

Campania.

296

Livv, 10, 21.

Sinuessa.

({

296

"■ 10, 21 ; 27, 38.

Sena Gallica.

Umbria.

283

" Epit., 11; Veil., 1,14,

8.
Livy, Epit., 11; Veil., 1,14,

8.
Veil., 1, 14, 8.

Castrum Novum.

Picenum.

283

Aesium.

Umbria.

247

Alsium.

Etruria.

247

" 1, 14,8; L. Epit., 19;
L., 36, 3.

Fregena.

245

Li%'y, 36, 3.

Pyrgi.

191

<<" ((

Puteoli.

Campania.

194

" 34, 45.

Volturnum.

194

Id.

Liturnum.

194

Id.

Salernum.

((

194

Id.

Buxentum.

Lucania.

194

Livy, 34, 45.

Sipontnm.

Apulia.

194

Id.

Tempsa.

Bruttii.

194

Id.

Croton.

((

194

Id.

Potentia.

Picenum.

184

Livy, 39, 44.

Pisaurum.

Umbria.

184

" " "

Parma.

Gallia Cis.

188

" " 55.

Mutina.

Gallia Cis.

183

Livy, 39, 55.

Saturnia.

Etruria.

183

11 i( ((

Graviscae.

((

181

" 40,39.

Luna.

180

" 41, 13.

Auximum.

Picenum.

157

Veil., 1, 15, 3.

Fabrateria.

Latium.

124

" 1, 15, 4.

Minervia.

Bruttii.

122

" 1,15,4; Appian B. C,
2, 23.

Neptunia.

lapygia.

122

Id.

Dertona.

Liguria.

100

Veil., 1, 15, 5.

Eporedia.

Gallia Trans.

100

(1 K «

Narbo Martius.

" Narbo.

118

Mommsen.

CHAPTER II.

Sec. 5. — Lex Cassia.

Every year added to the difference between the patrician
and plebeian, the rich and the poor ; a difference which had
now grown so great as to threaten seriously the very existence
of the state. The most sagacious of all the plans which had
been proposed to stop this evil, was that set forth by Spurius
Cassius, a noble patrician now acting as consul for the third '
time. In the year 268, he submitted to the burgesses^ a pro-
posal to have the public land surveyed, that portion belong-
ing to the populus set aside and the remainder divided among
the plebeians or leased for the benefit ^ of the public treasury.

He thus attempted to wrest from the senate the control of
the public land and, with the aid of the Latini and the
plebeians, to put an end to the system of occupation.* The
lands which he proposed to divide were solely those which
the state had acquired through conquest since the general
assignment by king Servius, and which it still retained.* This
was the first measure by which it was proposed to disturb the
possessors in their peaceful occupation of the state lands, and,
according to Livy, such a measure had never been proposed
from then to the time in which he was writing, under Augustus,
without exciting the greatest disturbance.^ Cassius might well

' Dionysius, VIII, 68; "Ot' Se napa tovtuv riju virareiav ■n-apaKafi6i'r7js v6ir\ios
Ovfpyii/tos Kal ^irSptos Kdffffios, rh rpirov rSre anoSftx^f^^ vrroros, K. t. A.."

* Dionysius, VIII, 09 ; Livy, II, 41, seq. * Dionysius, VIII, 81.

* Dionysius, VIII, 69; Moramsen, I, 363. ^Niebuhr, II, 166.
"Livy, II, 41; "Turn primum lex agraria promulgata est nunquam

deinde usque ad banc menioriam sine raaximus motibus rerum agitata."

345] Lex Cassia. 25

suppose tliat his personal distinction and tlie equity and wisdom
of the measure would carry it through, even amidst the storm
of opposition to which it was subjected. Like many other
reformers equally well meaning, he was mistaken.

The citizens who occupied this land had grown rich by
reason of its possessions. Some of them received it as an
inheritance, and doubtless looked U[)on it as their |)roperty as
much as the Ager Ronuirms. These to a man opposed the
bill. The patricians arose en masse. The rich plebeians, the
aristocracy of wealth, took part with them. Even the com-
mons were dissatisfied because Spurius Cassius proposed in
accordance with federal rights and equity to bestow a portion
of the land upon the Latini and Hernici, their confederates
and allies.^ The bill proposed by Cassius, together with such
provisions as were necessary, became a law, according to
Niebuiir,^ because the tribunes had no power to bring forward
a law of any kind before the plebeian tribes obtained a voice
in the legislature by the enactment of the Publilian law in
472 B. c. ; so that when they afterwards made use of the
agrarian law to excite the public passions it must have been
one previously enacted but dishonestly set aside and, in
Dionysius' account, this is the form which the commotion
occasioned by it takes.^ Though this is doubtless true, yet
the law, by reason of the combined opposition, became a dead
letter and the people who would have been most benefited by
its enforcement joined with Cassius' enemies at the expiration
of his term of office to condemn him to death. In this
way does ignorance commonly reward its benefactors. This
agitation aroused by Cassius, stirred the Roman Common-
wealth, now more than twenty years old, to its very foundations,
but it had no immediate eft'ect upon the ager publicus. The
rich patrician together with the few plebeians who had wealth

1 Livy, II, 41 ; Dionysius, VIII, 69. 'Niebuhr, II.

'Dionysius, VIII, 81: " iKKK-fjffial n ffweyfiS virh rwv t6t( STi/xd.px'»y
iylvovTo Kal a,iratTTi(reis rr/s inroffx^fffciis." See also VIII, 87, line 25 et seq.

26 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [346

enough to farm this land, still held undisputed possession.
The poor plebeian still continued to shed his blood on the
battle field to add to Roman territory, but no foot of it did he
obtain. Wealth centralized. Pauperism increased.

Sec. 6. — Agrarian Movements between 486 and 367.

Modern historians who have written upon the Roman
Republic have, so far as I know, passed immediately from
the consideration of the Lex Cassia to the law of Licinius
Stolo. Meanwhile more than a century had passed away.
Cassius died in 485, Licinius Stolo proposed his law in 376.
During this century which had beheld the organization of
the republic and the growth, by tardy processes, of the great
plebeian body many agrarian laws were proposed and numer-
ous divisions of the public land took place. Both Dionysius
and Livy mention them. The poor success of the proposition
of Cassius and the evil consequences to himself in no way
checked the zeal of the tribunes. Propositions of agrarian
laws followed one another with wonderful rapidity. Livy
enumerates these propositions, but almost wholly without
detail and without comments upon their tendencies or points
of diiference from one another or from the law of Cassius.
As this law failed of its object by being disregarded, we may
safely conclude that the most of these propositions were but a
reproduction of the law of Cassius.

In 484, and again in 483, the tribune proposed agrarian
laws but what their nature was, Livy, who records them,
does not tell us. From some vague assertions which he
makes we may conclude that the point of the law was well
known, and was but a repetition of that of Cassius.^ The
consul Caeso Fabius, in 484, and his brother Marcus in the

* " Solicitati, eo anno, sunt dulcedine agrariae legis animi plebis,
vana lex vanique legis auctores." Livy, II, 42.

347] Agrarian Movements between 4^6 and 367. 27

following year, secured the opposition of the senate and suc-
ceeded in defeating their laws.

Livy (II, 42,) mentions very briefly a new proposition
brought forward by Spnrius Licinius in 482. Here we are
able to complete his account by reference to Dionysius,' who
says that, in 483, a tribune named Caius Maenius had pro-
posed an agrarian law and declared that he would oppose
every levy of troops until the senate should execute the
law ordaining the creation of decemvirs to determine the
boundaries of the domain land and, in fine, forbid the en-
rolment of citizens. The senate was able through the con-
suls, Marcus Fabius and Valerius, the ancient colleague
of Cassius, to invent a means of avoiding this difficulty.
The authority of the tribunes by the old Roman law,^ did
not reach without the walls of the city, while that of the con-
suls was everywhere equal and only bounded by the limits of
the Roman world. They moved their curule chairs and other
insignia of their authority without the city walls and proceeded
with the enrolments. All who refused to enroll were treated
as enemies ^ of the republic. Those who were proprietors had
their property confiscated, their trees cut down, and their
houses burned. Those who were merely farmers saw them-
selves bereft of their farm-implements, their oxen and all
things necessary for the cultivation of the soil. The resist-
ance of the tribunes was powerless against this systematic
oppression on the part of the patricians ; the agrarian * law
failed and the enrolment progressed.

There is some difficulty in determining the facts of the
law proposed by Spurius Licinius^ of which Livy speaks.
Dionysius calls this tribune, not Licinius but 'S,7rvpio<i St/ciXto?.
The Latin translation of Dionysius has the name Icilius and
this has been the name adopted by Sigonius and other his-

^ Dionysius, VIII, 606, 607. * Livy, loc. cit. : Dionysius, loc, cit.

•Dionys., VIII, 554. "Dionys., VIII, 555.

' Val. Max., Fg. of Bk. X : " Spurii, patre incerto geniti."

28 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [348

torians. Livy tells us that the Icilian family was at all times
hostile to the patricians and mentions many tribunes by this
name who were staunch defenders of the commons. In
accepting this correction, therefore, it is not necessary to
confound this Icilius with the one who proposed the parti-
tion of the Aventine among the plebeians. Icilius, according
tp both Livy and Dionysius/ made the same demand as the
previous tribunes, i. e., that the decemvirs should be nomi-
nated for the survey and distribution of the domain lands,
according to previous enactment. He further declared that he
would oppose every decree of the senate either for war or the
administration of the interior until the adoption and execution
of his measures. Again the senate avoided the difficulty and
escaped, by a trick, the execution of the law. Appius Claudius,
according to Dionysius,^ advised the senate to search within the
tribunate for a remedy against itself, and to bribe a number of
the colleagues of Icilius to oppose his measure. This political
perfidy was adopted by the senate with the desired effect.
Icilius persisted in his proposition and declared he would
rather see the Etruscans masters of Rome than to suffer for a
longer time the usurpation of the domain lands on the part
of the possessors.^

This somewhat circumstantial account has revealed to us
that at this time it took a majority of the tribunes to veto an
act of their colleague. At the time of the Gracchi the veto
of a single tribune was sufficient to hinder the passage of a
law, and Tiberius was for a long time thus checked by his
colleague, Octavius. Then the tribunician college consisted
of ten members, and it would be no very difficult thing to
detach one of the number either by corruption or jealousy.
But it is evident that, at the time we are considering, it took
a majority of the tribunes to veto an act of a colleague ;

' Livy, loc. cil. ; Dionys., loc. cit. * Dionys., IX, 558 ; Livy, II, 43.

•^ Dionys., IX, 559-560: "rovs Kareyovros rrjv x'^P""' "^Vf Sefxoariav.'^ . .
" Kol ^LKiKios ovSevhs «Tt Kvpios fiv."

349] Agranan Movements between 4-^6 and 367. 29

moreover, the college consisted of five members. This latter
fact is seen in the statement of Livy/ when he mentions the
opposition which four of the tribunes offered to their colleague,
Pontificiiis, in 480. In this same case he attributes to Appius
Claudius the conduct which Dionysius attributed to him in
the previous year. But he causes Appius to state, in his
speech favoring the corruption of certain tribunes, " that the
veto of one tribune would be sufficient to defeat all the
others." ^ This is contrary to the statement of Dionysius '
and would seem improbable, for, if the opposition of one
tribune was sufficient, the patricians would not have deemed
it necessary to purchase four. That would be contrary to
political methods.

Of the two propositions of the tribunes, Icilius, in 482,
and Pontificius, in 480, the results were the same. The
opposition of their colleagues defeated them. But this
persistent opposition rather than crushing seemed to stir
up renewed attacks. We have seen the tribunes, Menius,
Icilius, and Pontificius, successively fail. The next move-
ment was led by a member of the aristocracy, Fabius
Caeso,^ consul for the third time in 477. He undertook to
remove from the hands of the tribunes the terrible arm of
agrarian agitation which they wielded constantly against the
patricians, by causing the patricians themselves to distribute
the domain lands equally among the plebeians, saying : " that
those ^ persons ought to have the lands by whose blood and
sweat they had been gained." His proposition was rejected
with scorn by the patricians, and this attempt at reconcilia-
tion failed as all the attempts of the tribunes had. The war

' Livy, loc. cit.

^ Livy, II, 44 : " Et unum vel adversus omnes satis esse . . . quatuorque
tribiinoruiu adversus unum."

' Dionys., IX, 562. ■• Livy, loc. cit. ; Dionys., loc. cit.

* Livy, II, 48 : "Captivura agruiu plebi, (luam maxime aequaliter darent.
Verum esse habere eos quorum sanguine ac sudore partus sit. Aspernati
Patres sunt."

30 PvhliG Lands of the Roman Republic. [350

with Vaii which, according to Livy, now took place hindered
for a while any agrarian movements ; but, in 474, the tribunes
Gaius Considius and Titus Genucius made a fruitless attempt
at distribution, and, in 472, Dionysius speaks of a bill brought
forward by Cn. Genucius which is probably the same bill.

In 468, the two consuls, Valerius and Aemilius, faithfully
supported the tribunes in their demand ^ for an agrarian law.
The latter seems to have supported the tribunes because he
was angry that the senate had refused to his father the honor
of a triumph ; Valerius, because he wished to conciliate the
people for having taken part in the condemnation of Cassius.

Dionysius, according to his custom, takes advantage of the
occasion to write several long speeches here, and one of them
is valuable to us. He causes the father of Aemilius to set
forth in a formal speech the true character of the agrarian
laws and the right of the state to again assume the lands
which had been taken possession of. He further says : "that
it is a wise policy ^ to proceed to the division of the lands in
order to diminish the constantly increasing number of the
poor, to insure a far greater number of citizens for the defense
of the country, to encourage marriages, and, in consequence,
to increase the number of children and defenders of the repub-
lic." We see in this speech the real purpose, the germ, of all
the ideas which Licinius Stolo, the Gracchi, and even Caesar,
strove to carry out. But the Roman aristocracy was too blind
to comprehend these words of wisdom. All these propositions
were either defeated or eluded.

Lex leilia. In the year 454,^ Lucius Icilius, one of the tri-
bunes for that year, brought forward a bill that the Aventine
hill should be conveyed to the plebeians as their personal and

'Livy, 11,61, 63,64.
* Dionys., IX, 606, 607 ; Livy, III, 1.

The authorities are somewhat conflicting at this point, and I have fol-
lowed tlie account of Dionysius.

^Schwegler, Riimische Geschichle, II, 484; Dionys., X, 31, p. 657, 43.

351] Agrarian Movements between JiS6 and 367. 31

especial property/ This hill had been the earliest home of
the plebeians, yet they had been surrounded by the lots and
fields of the patricians. That part of the hill which was still
in their possession was now demanded for the plebeians. It
was a small thing for the higher order to yield this much, as
the Aventine stood beyond the Pomoerium/ the hallowed
boundary of the city, and, at best, could not have had an area
of more than one-fourth of a square mile, and this chiefly wood-
land. The consuls, accordingly, made no hesitation about
presenting the bill to the senate before whom Icilius was
admitted to speak in its behalf. The bill was accepted by
the senate and afterwards confirmed by the Centuries.^ The
law provided, — "that all the ground which has been justly
acquired by any persons shall continue in the possession of
the owners, but that such part of it as may have been usurped
by force or fraud by any persons and built upon, shall be
given to the people ; those persons being repaid the expenses
of such buildings by the estimation of umpires to be appointed
for that purpose, and that all the rest of the ground belonging
to the public, be divided among the people, they paying no
consideration for the same." * When this was done the ple-
beians took possession of the hill with solemn ceremonies.
This hill did not furnish homes for all the plebeians, as some
have held ; nor, indeed, did they wish to leave their present
settlements in town or country to remove to the Aventine.
Plebeians were already established in almost all parts of the
city and held, as vassals of the patricians, considerable por-
tions of Roman territory. This little hill could never have
furnished ^ homes of any sort to the whole plebeian popula-

^Dionys., X, 31, 1. 13; Ihne, Hist, of Rome, I, 191, note; Lange, Bom.
Allei:, I, 619. Also see art. in Smith's Diet, of Antiquities.

' /. e. outside of the 'quadrata' l)iit ifxTrepiex^/j-evos rfj iriXeis, Dionys., X, 31,
1. 18: " pontificale pomoerium, qui ausi)ic:ito oliru quidem omnem urbem
amhiebat praeter Aventinum." Paul, ex Fest., p. 24S, Miill.

3 Dionys., X, 32. « Dionys., X, 32. = Momm., I, 355.

32 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [352

tion. What it did do was to furnish to the plebeians a try st-
ing place in time of strife with their patrician neighbors,
where they could meet, apart and secure from interruption, to
devise means for resisting the encroachments of the patricians
and to further establish their rights as Roman citizens. Thus
a step toward their complete emancipation was taken. For
a moment the people were soothed and satisfied by their
success, but soon they began to clamor for more complete,
more radical, more general laws. An attempt seems to have
been made in 453 to extend the application of the lex Icilia
to the ager publicus,^ in general, but nothing came of it.
In 440, the tribune, Petilius, proposed an agrarian law.
What its conditions were Livy has not informed us, but has
contented himself with saying that " Petilius made a useless
attempt to bring before the senate a law for the division of
the domain lands." ^ The consuls strenuously opposed him
and his eifort came to naught.

In our review of the agrarian agitation we must mention
the forceless and insignificant attempt made by the son of
Spurius Melius, in 434. Again, in 422, we find that other
attempts were made which availed nothing. Yet the tribunes
who attempted thus to gain the good will of the people set
forth clearly the object which they had in view in bringing
forward an agrarian bill. Says Livy ; " They held out the
hope to the people of a division of the public land, the estab-
lishment of colonies, the levying of a vectigal upon the posses-
sors, which vectigal was to be used ^ in paying the soldiers."

In the year 419, and again in 418, unavailing attempts
were made for the division of lands among the plebeians.

1 Dionys., X, 34.

* Livy, IV, 12 : Neqiie ut <le agris dividendis plebi referrent consules ad
senatum pervincere potuit. . . . Ludibrioque erant minae tribuni.

^ " Agri public! dividendi, c()loniarnnK|iie deducendaruni ostentatae spes,
et vectigali possessoribu.s iriiposito, in stipendiiim niilitnin erogandi aeris."
Livy, IV, 36.

353] Agrarian Movements between, JiS6 and 367. 33

Spurius Maecilius and Spiirins Metilius, the tribunes' for the
year 412, proposed to give to the people, in equal lots, the
conquered lands. The patricians ridiculed this law, stating
that Rome itself was founded upon conquered soil and did
not possess a single acre of land that had not been taken by
force of arms, and that the people held nothing save that
which had been assigned by the republic. The object, then,
of the tribunes was to distribute tiie fortunes of the entire
state. Such vapid foolishness as this failed not of the effect
which the patricians aimed at. Appius Claudius counselled
the adoption of the excellent means invented by his grand-
father. Six tribunes were bought over by the caresses, flat-
teries, and money of the patricians and opposed their vetoes
to their colleagues who were thus compelled to retire.^

In the following year, 411, Lucius Sextius, in no way
discouraged by the ill success of his predecessors, proposed
the establishment of a colony at Bolae, a town in the coun-
try of the Volscians, which had been recently conquered.
The patricians^ opposed this by the same method which
they had adopted in the preceding case, the veto by tribunes.
Livy criticises the impolitic opposition of the patricians in
these words : " This was a most seasonable time, after the
punishment of the mutiny, that the division of the territory
of Bolae should be presented as a soother to their minds ; by
which proceeding they would have diminished their eagerness
for an agrarian law, which tended to expel the patricians from
the public land unjustly possessed by them. Then this very
indignity exasperated their minds, that the nobility persisted
not only in retaining the public lands, which they got posses-
sion of by force, but would not even grant to the commons the
unoccupied land lately taken from the enemy, and which would,
like the rest,* soon become the prey of the few."

'Livy, loc. cil. *Livy, IV, 48.

'Livy, IV, 49. *Livy, IV, 51.

34 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [354

In 409, Icilius, without doubt a member of that plebeian
family which had furnished so many stout defenders of the
liberties of the people, was elected tribune of the people
and brought forward an agrarian bill, but a plague broke
out and hindered any further action. In 407, the tribune,
Menius, introduced an agrarian bill and declared that he
would oppose the levies until the persons who unjustly
held the public domains consented to a division. A war
broke out and agrarian legislation was drowned amid the din
of arms. Some years now elapsed without the mention of
any agrarian laws. The siege of Veil commenced in 406
and lasted for six years, during which time military law
was established, giving occupation and some sort of satisfac-
tion to the plebeians. In 397, an agrarian movement was set
on foot, but the plebeians were partially satisfied by being
allowed to elect one of their number as tribunus consular is for
the following year, thus obtaining a little honor but no land.
After the conquest of Veii, there was a movement on the
part of the plebeians to remove from Rome and settle upon
the confiscated territory of the Veians ; this was only staid
by concessions on the part of the patricians. A decree of the
senate was passed, — "that seven jugera, a man, of Vientian
territory, should be distributed to the commons and not only
to the fathers of families, but also that all persons in their
house in the state of freedom should be considered, and that
they might be willing to rear up children^ with that prospect."
In 384, six years after the conquest of Rome by the Gauls,
the tribunes of the year proposed a law for the division of the
Pomptlne territory (Pomptinus Ager) among the plebeians.
The time was not a favorable one for the agitation of the
people, as they were busy with the reconstruction of their
houses laid waste by the Gauls, and the movement came to
nothing. . The tribune, Lucius Licinius, in 383, revived this
movement but it was not successfully carried till the year 379,

» Livy, VI, 5.

355] Agrarian Movements beiiceen 1^86 and 367. 35

when the senate, well disposed towards the commons by reason
of the conquest of the Volscians, decreed the nomination of
five commissioners to divide the Pomptine territory^ among
the plebs. Tiiis was a new victory for the people and must
have inspired them with the hope of one day obtaining in full
their rights in the public domains.

We have now jiassed in review the agrarian laws proposed
and, in some cases, enacted between the years 485 and 376, i. e.
between the lex Cassia and the lex Licinia, which the greater
part of the historians have neglected. We have now come
to the propositions of that illustrious plebeian whose laws,
whose character, and whose object have been so diversely
appreciated by all those persons who have studied in any
way the constitutional history of Rome. We wish to enter
into a detailed examination of the lex Lieinia, but before so
doing have deemed it expedient to thus pass in review the
agrarian agitations. The result of this work has, we trust,
been a better understanding of the real tendency, the true
purpose, of the law which is now to absorb our attention. It
was no innovation, as some writers of the day assert, but in
reality confined itself to the well beaten track of its prede-
cessors, striving only to make their attainments more general,
more substantial and more complete.

Extension of Territory by Conquest uj) to the Year 367 B. C.

1. Coreoli, captured in 442.

2. Bolae, captured in 414.

3. Labicum, captured in 418.

4. Fidenae, captufed in 426 and all the territory confiscated.

5. Veii, captured in 396. This was the chief town of the
Etruscans, equal to Rome in size, with a large tributary
country ; territory confiscated.

Approximate amount of land added to the Roman domain,
150 square miles.

^ Quinque viros Pomptino agro dividendo. Livy, VI, 21.

Public Lands of the Roman Republic.

[356

Colonies Founded between 454 and 367.
Civic Colonies.

COLONIES.

PLACE.

DATE.

NO. OF
COLO-
NISTS.

NO. OF

JUG.

TO EACH.

TOTAL NO.
OF JUG.

ACRES.

Labici.

Latiura.

418

1500

3000

1875

Latin Colonies.

Ardea.

Latium.

442

300

600

375

Satricum.

385

300

600

375

Sutrium.

Etruria.

383

300

600

375

Nepete.

383

300

1200

750

Setia.

Latium.

382

300

1200

750

Total

7200

4500

Sec. 7. — Lex Licinia.

Party lines were, at the time of the enactment of the
Licinian Law, strongly marked in Rome. One of the
tribunes chosen after the return of the plebeians from Mons
Sacer was a Licinius. The first military tribune with con-
sular power elected from the plebeians was another Licinius
Calvus. The third great man of this distinguished family
was Cains Licinius Calvus Stolo, who, in the prime of life
and popularity, was chosen among the tribunes of the plebs
for the seventh year follo\vlng the death of Manlius the
Patrician. Another plebeian, Lucius Sextius by name, was
chosen tribune at the same time. If not already, he soon
became the tried friend of Licinius. Sextius was the younger
but not the less earnest of the two. Both belonged to tiuit
portion of the plebeians supposed to have been latterly con-
nected with the liberal patricians. The more influential and
l)y far the more reputable members of the lower estate were
numbered in this party. Opposed to it were two other

357] Lex Licinia. 37

parties of plebeians. One consisted of the few who, rising
to wealth or rank, cast off the bonds uniting them to the
lower estate. They preferred to be upstarts among patricians
rather than leaders among plebeians. As a matter of course,
they became the parasites of the illiberal patricians. To the
same body was attached another plebeian party. This was
formed of the inferior classes belonging to the lower estate.
These inferior plebeians were generally disregarded by the
higher classes of their own estate as well as by the patricians
of both the liberal and illiberal parties. They were the later
comers, or the poor and degraded among all. As such they
had no other resource but to depend on the largesses or the
commissions of the most lordly of the patricians. This
division of the plebeians is a point to be distinctly marked.
While there were but two parties, that is the liberal and the
illiberal among the patricians, there were no less than three
among the plebeians. Only one of the three could be called a
plebeian party. That was the party containing the nerve and
sinew of the order, which united only with the liberal j)atri-
cians, and with them only on comparatively independent terms.
The other two parties were nothing but servile retainers of
the illiberal patricians.

It was to the real plebeian party that Licinius belonged, as
also did his colleague Sextius,^ by birth. A tradition of no
value represented the patrician and the plebeian as being
combined to support the same cause in consequence of a
whim of the wife and daughter through whom they were
connected. Some revolutions, it is true, are the effect of an
instant's passion or an hour's weakness. Nor can they then
make use of subsequent achievements to conceal the caprices
or the excitements in which they originated. But a change,
attempted by Licinius with the help of his father-in-law, his
colleague, and a few friends reached back one hundred years
and more (b. c. 486) to the law of the martyred Cassius, and

• Livy, VI, 34.

38 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [358

forward to the end of the Commonwealth. It opened n«w
honors as well as fresh resources to the plebeians.

Probably the tribune was raised to his office because he had
shown the determination to use its powers for the good of his
order and of his country. Licinius and Sextius together
brought forward the three bills bearing the name of Licinius
as their author. One, says the historian, ran concerning debts.
It provided that, the interest already ^ paid being deducted from
the principal, the remainder should be discharged in equal
installments within three years. The statutes against exces-
sive rates of interest, as well as those against arbitrary measures
of exacting the principal of a debt, had utterly failed. It was
plain, therefore, to any one who thought upon the matter, —
in which effort of thought the power of all reformers begins,
— that the step to prevent the sacrifice of the debtor to the
creditor was still to be taken. Many of the creditors them-
selves would have acknowledged that this was desirable.
The next bill of the three related to the public lands. It
prohibited any one from occupying more than five hundred
jugera, about 300 acres ; at the same time it reclaimed all
above that limit from the present occupiers, with the object
of making suitable apportionments among the people^ at
large. Two further clauses followed, one ordering that a
certain number of freemen should be employed on every
estate ; another forbidding any single citizen ^ to send out
more than a hundred of the larger, or five hundred of the
smaller cattle to graze upon the public pastures. These latter
details are important, not so much in relation to the bill itself

' Livy, VI, 35 : " unam de aere alieno, ut dedaco eo de capite, quod usuris
pernumeratuna esset, id, (juod superesset, triennio aequis portionibus per-
solveretur."

* Livy, VI, 35 ; Niebuhr, III, p. 16 ; Varro, De E. R., 1 : " Nam Stolonis
ilia lex, quae vetat plus D jugera habere civem Romanorum." Livy, VI,
35: "alteram de modo agrorum, ne quis plus quingenta jugera agri posld-
eret." Marquardt u. Momm., Rom, Alterthiimer, IV, S. 102.

'Appian, De Hello Civile, I, 8.

359] Lex Licinia. 39

as to the simultaneous increase of wealth and slavery which
they plainly signify. As the first bill undertook to prohibit
the bondage springing from too much poverty, so the second
aimed at preventing the oppression springing from too great
opulence. A third bill declared the office of military tribune
with consular power to be at an end. In its place the con-
sulate was restored with full ^ provision that one of the two
consuls should be taken from the plebeians. The argument
produced in favor of this bill appears to have been the urgent
want of the plebeians to possess a greater share in the govern-
ment than was vested in their tribunes, aediles, and quaestors.
Otherwise, said Licinius and his colleague, there will be no
security that our debts will be settled or that our lands will
be obtained.^ It would be difficult to frame three bills, even
in our time, reaching to a further, or fulfilling a larger reform.
'* Everything was pointed against the power of the patricians^
in order to provide for the comfort of the plebeians." This to
a certain degree was true. It was chiefly from the patrician
that the bill concerning debts detracted the usurious gains
which had been counted upon. It was chiefly from him that
the lands indicated in the second bill were to be withdrawn.
It was altogether from him that the honors of the consulship
were to be derogated. On the other hand the plebeians, save
the few proprietors and creditors among them, gained by every
measure that had been proposed. The poor man saw himself
snatched from bondage and endowed with an estate. He who
was above the reach of debt saw himself in the highest office
of the state. Plebeians with reason exulted. Licinius evidently
designed reuniting the divided members of the plebeian body.
Not one of them, whether rich or poor, but seems called back
by these bills to stand with his own order from that time on.

' Livy, VI, 35; See Momm., I, 382; Diiruy, Hist, des Romains, II, 78.
*Livy, VI, 37.

'Livy, VI, 35: " creatique tribuni Caius Licinius et Lucius Sextins pro-
mulgavere leges adversus opes patriciorum et. pro commodis plebis."

40 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [360

If this supposition was true, then Licinius was the greatest
leader whom the plebeians ever had up to the time of Caesar.
But' from the first he was disappointed. The plebeians who
most wanted relief cared so little for having the consulship
opened to the richer men of their estate that they would
readily have dropped the bill concerning it, lest a demand
should endanger their own desires. In the same temper the
more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors
of the poor and the tenants of the domain, would have quashed
the proceedings of the tribunes respecting the discharge of
debt and the distribution of land, so that they carried the third
bill only, which would make them consuls without disturbing
their possessions. While the plebeians continued severed from
one another, the patricians drew together in resistance to the
bills. Licinius stood forth demanding, at once, all that it had
cost his predecessors their utmost energy to demand, singly
and at long intervals, from the patricians. Nothing was to
be done but to unite in overwhelming him and his supporters.
" Great things were those that he claimed and not to be secured
without the greatest contention." ^ The very comprehensive-
ness of his measures proved the safeguard of Licinius. Had he
preferred but one of these demands, he would have been
unhesitatingly opposed by the great majority of the patricians.
On the other hand he would have had comparatively doubtful
support from the plebs. If the interests of the poorer })lebeians
alone had been consulted, they would not have been much more
active or able in backing their tribunes, while the richer men
would have gone over in a body to the other side with the
public tenants and the private creditors among the patricians.
Or, supposing the case reversed and the bill relating to the
consulship brought forward alone, the debtors and tiie home-
less citizens would have given the bill too little help with

' Ihne, I, 314.

* Livy, VI, 35 : " Cuncta ingentiu, et quae sine certamine obtineri non
possent."

361] Lex lAcinia. 41

bauds or hearts to secure its passage as a law. The great
encouragement therefore to Licinius and Scxtius must have
been their conviction that they had devised tlieir reform on a
sufficiently expanded scale. As soon as the bills were brought
forward every one of their eight colleagues vetoed their read-
ing. Nothing could be done by the two tribunes except
to be resolute and watch for an opportunity for retaliation.
At the election of the military tribunes during that year,
Licinius and Sextius interposed ^ their vetoes and prevented a
vote being taken. No magistrates could remain in office after
their terms expired, whether there were any successors elected
or not to come after them. The commonwealth remained
without any military tribunes or consuls at its head, although
the vacant places were finally filled by one interrex after
another, appointed by the senate to keep up the name of gov-
ernment and to hold the elections the moment the tribunes
withdrew their vetoes, or left their office. At the close of the
year Licinius and Sextius were both re-elected but with col-
leagues on the side of their antagonists. Some time afterwards
it became necessary to let the other elections proceed. War
was threatening,' and in order to go to the assistance of their
allies Licinius and Sextius withdrew their vetoes and ceased
their opposition for a time. Six military tribunes were chosen,
three from the liberal and three from the illiberal patricians.
The liberals doubtless received all the votes of the plebeians
as they had no candidates. They had in all probability
abstained from running for an office, bills for the abolition of
which were held in abeyance. They showed increasing incli-
nation to sustain Licinius and his colleague, both by re-elect-
ing them year after year and by at length choosing three other
tribunes ^vith them in favor of the bills. The prospects of
the measure were further brightened by the election of Fabius
Ambustus, the father-in-law of Licinius and his zealous sup-

' Livy, VI, 35. " Livy, VI, 36.

42 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [362

porter, to the military ^ tribunate. This seems to have been the
seventh year following the proposal of the bills. This can not
be definitely determined, however. During this long period of
struggle, Licinius had learned something. It was constantly
repeated ^ in his hearing that not a plebeian in the whole estate
was fit to take the part in the auspices and the religious cere-
monies incumbent upon the consuls. The same objections had
overborne the exertions of Cains Canuleius three-quarters of a
century before. Licinius saw that the only way to defeat this
argument was by opening to the plebeians the honorable office
of duumvirs, whose duty and privilege it was' to consult the
Sibyline books for the instruction of the people in every season
of doubt and peril. They were, moreover, the presiding officers
of the festival of Apollo, to whose inspirations the holy books
of the Sibyl were ascribed, and were looked up to with honor
and respect. This he did by setting forth an additional bill,
proposing the election of decemvirs.^ The passage of this bill
would forever put to rest one question at least. Could he be
a decemvir, he could also be a consul. This bill was joined
to the other three which were biding their time. The strife
went on. The opposing tribunes interposed their vetoes.
Finally it seems that all the offices of tribune were filled with
partisans of Licinius, and the bills were likely to pass when
Camillus, the dictator, swelling with wrath against bills, tribes
and tribunes,' came forward into the forum. He commanded
the tribunes to see to it that the tribes cast no more votes.
But on the contrary they ordered the people to continue as
they had begun. Camillus ordered his lictors to break up the
assembly and proclaim that if a man lingered in the forum,
the dictator would call out every man fit for service and march

' Livy, VI, 36. Fabiiis quoque tribunis militum, Stolonis socer, quarura
legiim auctor fuerat, earum sua.

* Livy, loc. cit. ^ Appian, De Bell, dv., I, 9.

* Momm., I, 240: "decemviri sacris faciundis." Lange, loc. cit.
^ Livy, VI, 38; Moniin., loc. cit.

363] Lex Licinia. 43

from Rome, ^riie tribunes ordered resistance and declared that
if the dictator did not instantly recall his lictors and retract his
proclamation, they, the tribunes, would, according to their
right, subject him to a fine five times larger than the highest
rate of the census, as soon as his dictatorship exi)ired. This
was no idle threat, and Camillus retreated so fairly beaten as
to abdicate immediately under the pretense of faulty auspices.^
The plebeians adjourned satisfied with their day's victory. But
before they could be again convened some influence was brought
to bear upon them so that when the four bills were presented
only the two concerning land and debts were accepted. This
was nothing less than a fine piece of engineering on the
part of the patricians to defeat the whole movement and
could have resulted in nothing less. Licinius was disappointed
but not confounded. With a sneer at the selfishness as well
as the blindness of those who had voted only for what they
themselves most wanted he bade them take heed that they
could not eat if they would not drink. ^ He refused to
separate the bills. The consent to their division would have
been equivalent to consenting to the division of the plebeians.
His resolution carried the day. The liberal patricians as
well as the plebeians rallied to his support. A moderate
patrician, a relation of Licinius, was appointed dictator, and
a member of the same house was chosen master of the horse.
These events prove that the liberal patricians were in the
majority. Licinius and Sextius were re-elected for the tenth
time, A. c. 366, thus proving that the plebeians had decided
to eat and drink. ^

The fourth bill, concerning the decemvirs was almost
instantly laid before the tribes and carried through them.
It was accepted by the higher assemblies and thus became a
law. It is not evident why this bill was separated from the

' Livy, VI, 38 ; Momm., loc. cit.

^ Dion Cassius, Fragment, XXXIII, with Reimer's note.

'Livy, VI, 42.

44 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [364

others, especially when Licinius had declared that they should
not be separated. Possibly it was to smooth the way for the
other three more weighty ones, especially the bill concerning
the consulship.^ There seems to have been an interruption here
caused by an invasion of the Gauls.^ As soon as this was over
the struggle began again. The tribes assembled. "Will you
have our bills ? " asked Licinius and Sextius for the last time.
" We will," was the reply. It was amid more violent conflicts,
however, than had yet arisen that the bills became laws ^ at last.
It takes all the subsequent history of Rome to measure
the consequences of the Revolution achieved by Licinius and
Sextius ; but the immediate working of their laws could have
been nothing but a disappointment to their originators and
upholders. We can tell little or nothing about the regard
paid to the decemvirs. The priestly robes must have seemed
an unprecedented honor to the plebeian. For some ten years
the law regarding the consulship was observed, after which
time it was occasionally ^ violated, but can still be called
a success. The laws^ of relief, as may be supposed of all
such sumjituary enactments, were violated from the first.
No general recovery of the public land from those occupying
more than five hundred ® jugera ever took place. Conse-
quently there was no general division of land among the
lackland class. Conflicting claims and jealousy on the part
of the poor must have done much to embarrass and prevent

^Livy, VI, 42: et comitia consulum adversa nobilitate habita, quibus
Lucius Sextius de plebe primus consul factus.
^ Livy, loc. cit.
'Livy, VI, 42; Ovid, Faustus, I, 641, seq. :

" Furius antiquam populi superator Hetrusci
Voverat et voti solverat ante fidem
Causa quod a patribus suintis secesserat annis
Vulgus ; et ipsa suas Roma timebat opes."

* Momm.,.I, 389. ^ Momm., I, 384.

* Arnold, Roman History, II, 35; Ihne, Essay on the Roman Constitution,
p. 72. Ihne, Roman Hist., I, 332-334. Long, I, ch. XI. Lange, loc. cit.

365] Lex Licinia. 45

the execution of the law. Xo system of land survey to dis-
tinguish between ager publicus and ager privatus existed.
Licinius Stolo himself was afterwards convicted of violating
his own law.^ The law respecting debts met with much the
same obstacles. The causes of embarrassment and poverty
being much the same and undisturbed, soon reproduced the
effects which no reduction of interest or installment of prin-
cipal could effectually remove. It is not our intention, how-
ever, to express any doubt that the enactments of Licinius,
such as they were, might and did benefit the small farmer
and the day laborer.^ Many were benefited. In the period
immediately following the passing of the law, the authorities
watched with some interest and strictness over the observance
of its rules and frequently condemned the possessors of large
herds and occupiers of public domain to heavy fines.^ But
in the main the rich still grew richer and the poor and mean,
poorer and more contemptible. Such was ever the liberty of
the Roman. For the mean and the poor there was no means
of retrieving their poverty and degradation.

These laws, then, had little or no effect upon the domain
question or the re-distribution of land. They did not fulfil
the evident expectation of their author in uniting the plebeians
into one political body. This was impossible. "What they
did do was to break up and practically abolish the patriciate.*
Henceforth were the Roman people divided into rich and
poor only.

' Livy, VII, 16: " Eodeni anno Cains Licinius Stolo a Marco Popillio
Laenate sua legi decern milibus aeris est dainnatus, quod mille jijgerum
agri cum filio possideret, emancipandoque filium fraudem legi fecisset."

Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 8 ; " ttj^ yrjv is rovs oiKeiovs eirl WoKpicni Stfvffiov."

*Momni., I, 389.

« Momm., I, 389, 390. ■• Momm., I, 389, 390.

46 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [366

Sec. VIII. — Agrarian Movements between
367 AND 133.

The first agrarian movement after the enactment of lex
Licinia took place in the year 338, after the battle of Veseris
in which the Latini and their allies were completely conquered.
According to Livy/ the several peoples engaged in this rebel-
lion were mulcted of a part of their land which was divided
among the plebeians. Each plebeian receiving an allotment
in the territory of the Latini had 2 jugera assigned him,
while those in Privernum received 2f , and those in Falernian
territory received 3 jugera each (p. 252). This distribution
of domain lands seems to have been spontaneous on the part
of the senate. But it led to grave consequences as the Latini,
indignant at their being despoiled of their lands, resorted again
to arms. The plebeians, moreover, were roused to the verge of
rebellion by the consul Aemilius who had been alienated from
the patricians by their refusing him a triumph, and now strove
to ingratiate himself with the commons by making them dis-
satisfied with their meagre allotments. The law, however,
was carried into execution, and thus showed that the senate
acquiesced in and even initiated laws when they did not in
any way interfere with their possession, but referred only to
territory which had just been conquered.

Agrarian Law of Curius. Beyond the distribution of the ager
jmblicus which formed the basis of the numerous colonies of
this period and which will be considered in their proper place,
the next agrarian movement was that of Curius Dentatus.
At the close of the third Samnite War the people were in
great distress, as agricultural ])ursuits had been greatly inter-
rupted by continued warfare. Now there seemed to be a
chance of remedying this. Large tracts of land had been
taken from the Samnites and Sabines, and it was now at the

1 Livy, VIII, 11, 12.

367] Agrarian Movements between 367 and 133. 47

disposal of the Roman ^ state for })urposes of colonization and
division among tiie impoverished citizens. In the year 287,'
a bill was introduced by Manius Curius Dentatus, the ple-
beian consul for tliis year, and hero of the third Samnite
War. He proposed giving to the citizens assignments of land
in the Sabine country of seven jugera'^ each. It is certain
that this bill met with great opposition but we have not been
informed as to the causes.^ It is safe to conclude, however,
that the question was whether assignments of land with full
right of property sliould be made in districts which the great
land-owners wished to keep open for occupation in order that
they might pasture herds thereon. The senate and the nobility
so bitterly opposed the plan that the plebeians despairing of
success, withdrew to the Janiculum and only on account of
threatening war did they consent to the proposals of Quintus
Hortensius.^ By this move the lex Hortensia^ was passed and,
doubtless, the agraria lex was enacted at the same time although

1 Ihne, I, 447.

'■^ I hiive followed Ihne and Arnold in giving this date, but there is reason
for placing it later as Valerius Maximus says, IV, 3, 5: " Manius Curius cum
Italia Pyrrhuin regeni exegisset .... decretis a senatu septenis jugeribus
agri populo."

* " Manii Curii nota conscio est, perniciosuni intellegi civem cui septem
jugera non essent satis." Pliny, Hist. Sat., XVIII. ; Aurelius Victor, De
Viris Illus.: Septenis "jugeribus viritim dividendis, quibus qui contentus non
esset, eum perniciosuni intellegi civem, nota et praeclare concione Manius
Curius dictitabat." The same author speaks of four jugera being given by
Curius, " Quaterna dono agri jugera viritim jiopulo dividit " .Juvenal
implies a distril)Ution of two jugera; Sat. XIV, V, 1G1-1G4:

" Mox etiam fructis aetate, ac Punica passis
Proelia vel Pyrrhum immanem glaeosque Molossos,
Tandem pro multis vix jugera bina dabantur
Vulneribus Merces ea sanguinis atque lal)ores."

* Appian, III, 5 : Zonarius, VIII, 2.
Mhne, I, 447.

^ GelHus, XV, 27 : " Postea lex Ilortensia late, qua cautum est, ut
plebisipa universum populum tenereut." Marquardt u. Momni., Eom.
Alter., IV, 102.

48 Public Lands of the Roman Hepublic. [368

nothing definite is known concerning this point. The people
must have been pacified by some other means than the mere
granting of more political power. Nothing less than a share
of the conquered territory would have satisfied them or induced
them to return and again take up the burden of war.

Lex Flaminia. Fifty four years after the enactment of the
law of Curius Dentatus, in the year 232, the tribune Caius
Flaminius/ the man who afterwards was consul and fell in
the bloody battle of lake Trasimenus, brought forward and
carried a law for the distribution of the Gallicus Ager^ among
the plebeians. This territory ^ had been taken from the Galli
Sem nones fifty-one years before and was now occupied as
pasture land by some large Roman families. This territory lay
north of Picenum and extended as far as Ariminum ^ (Rimini.)
This was an excellent opportunity for awarding lands to
Roman veterans for military service, and thus to establish a
large number of small farms, rather than to leave the land in
the possession of the rich who resided in Rome and, conse-
quently, formed no frontier protection against the inroads of
barbarians from the north. By alloting the land, the Latin
race and Latin tongue would help to Romanize territory
already conquered by Roman arms. The only thing opposed
to this was the possession of the land by the aristocracy.
But they had no legal claim to the land and could be dispos-
sessed without any indemnification. The senate opposed this
measure to the utmost of their ability and, after all other
means had failed, threatened to send an army against the
tribune if he urged his bill through the tribes. They further
induced his father to make use of his potestas in restraining
his son.^ AVhen Flaminius was bringing up the bill for
decision he was arrested by his father. " Come down, I bid
thee," said the father. And the son humbled " by private

' Polyb., II, 21, 8. 2 varro, De R. R., I, 2 ; De L. L., VI, 5.

' Ihne, IV, 26. See Long, I, 157, who disputes this statement.

" Varro, De R. R., I, 2. ; De L. L., VI, o. & Val. Max., V, 4, 5.

369] Agrarian Movements between 367 and 133. 49

authority," ^ obeyed. It finally became necessary for the
plebeians to take their stand on the formal constitntional
law and to cause the agraria lex to be passed by a vote of
the assembly of the tribes without a previous resolution or sub-
sequent approbation of the senate.^ Poly bins dates a change
for the worse in the Roman constitution from this time.^ The
relief of the plebeians was further promoted by the founda-
tion ^ of new colonies.

In the year 200, after Scipio returned as conqueror of
Carthage, the senate decreed that he should be assigned some
lands for his soldiers, but Livy does not tell us where they
were to be assigned ; whether they were to be a part of the
ancient ager publicus or of the territory of Carthage, Sicily, or
Campania, i. e. the new conquests of Rome. He merely says
that for each year of service in Spain or Africa the soldiers
were to receive two jugera each, and that* the distributions
should be made by the decemvirs. In spite of the insuffi-
ciency of these details the passage reveals to us two impor-
tant facts :

1. Decemvirs as well as triumvirs were at times appointed
to make distributions of domain lands in accordance with the
provisions of an agrarian law.

2. It reveals the profound modifications which Roman
customs had passed through. The riches which began at
this time to Aqw into Rome by reason of the many successful
wars revolutionized the economic conditions of the city. It
is not necessary to see only a proof of corruption in this
tendency of all classes to grasp for riches and to desire
luxury and ease. AVe must also consider that comfort was

* Val. Max., Y, 4, 5; Cicero, De Juventute, II, 17.

*Ihne, IV, 26; Cicero, De Senedute, 4.

=> Polybius, II, 21. " Livy, Epit., XX, 19.

^" De agris milituin ejus decretum, ut quod quisque eorum annos in His-
pania aut in Africa niilitasset, in singulos annos bina jugera acciperet, earn
agrum decemviri assignarent."

Livy, XXXI, 49.

50 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [370

more accessible and that the price of everything, especially of
the necessaries of life, had increased. In consequence of this
it was difficult for soldiers to support themselves with their
pay. The presents of a few sesterces given them as prize
money in no way made sufficient recompense for all the
miseries and privations which they had passed through dur-
ing their long absence. Grants of land were the only means
of recompensing their military services. This is the first
example that we have found of soldiers being thus rewarded,
and it consequently initiated a custom which became most
frequent especially in the time of the empire. Upon the
conquest of Italy which followed the expedition of Pyr-
rhus, the Romans found themselves led into a long series of
foreign wars ; Sicily furnished the stepping-stone to Africa ;
Africa to Spain ; all these countries becoming Roman provinces.
As soon as the second Punic war closed, Hannibal formed an
alliance with the king of Macedonia. A war-cloud rose^ in
the east. The ^tolians asked aid from Rome, and statesmen
could foretell that it would be impossible for Roman armies
not to interfere between Greece and Macedonia. But these
countries had been from ancient times most intimately connected
with the orient, i. e., Asia, where the Seleucidae still ruled, so
that a war with Greece, which was inevitable, could not fail to
bring on a war with the successors of Alexander, and, these
hostilities once engaged in, who could say where these acci-
dents of war would cease, or when Roman arms could be laid
aside? In this critical condition it was prudent to attach the
soldiers to the republic by bonds and interests the most inti-
mate, to make them j)roprietors and to assure subsistence to
their families during; their long absence. These wars did
not much resemble those of the early republic which had for
a theatre of war the country in the immediate vicinity of
Rome.

' Momm., II, 230-241.

371] Agrarian 3Iovements between 367 and 133. 51

The senate continued to take the initiative in agrarian
movements. In 172, after the close of the wars against the
liigiirians and Gauls, we again see the senate spontaneously
decreeing a new division of the lands. A part of the territory
of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul was confiscated and a senatus
consultum ordered a distribution of this land to the commons.
The praetor of the city A. Atilius, was authorized to ap])oint
decemvirs, whose names Livy gives, to assign ten jugera to
Roman citizens and three jugera to Latin ^ allies. Thus the
senate, with a newly-born sagacity, rendered useless the
demands of the tribune and recognized the justice and the
utility of the agrarian laws against which it had so long
protested. Indeed, it justified the propositions of the first
author of an agrarian law by admitting to a share in the
conquered lands the I^atin allies who had so often contributed
to their growth. This is the last agrarian law which Livy
mentions. The Persian war broke out in this year, and an
account of it fills the remainino; books of this author which
have come down to us. However, ])rior to the proposition
of Tiberius Gracchus, we find in Varro"' the mention of a
new assignment of land of seven jugera viritim, made by a
tribune named Licinius in the year 144 ; but the author has
given such a meagre mention of it that we are unable to
determine where these lands were located. If we join to these
facts the cession of public territories to the creditors of the
state, in 200, we shall have mentioned all agrarian laws and
distributions of territory which took place before the lex Se^n-
2:)ronia Tibei-iana in 133.

Condition of the Country at the time of the Gracchan Roga-
tions. During the period between 367 and 133 we find no

'Livy, XLII, 4: " Eodem anno, qiumi agri Ligustini et Gallici, quod
bello captum erat, aliquantum vacaret, senatus-consultum factum ut is
ager viritim ex senatus consulto creavit A. Atilius praetor urbanus. . . .
Diverserunt dena jugera in singulos. sociis nominis Latini terna.

« Ihne, IV, 370."

52 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [372

record of serious disputes between the patricians and commons.
Indeed, the senate usually took the lead in popular measures ;
lands were assigned without any demand on the part of the
plebeians. We must not be deceived by this seeming har-
mony. In the midst of this apparent calm a radical change
was taking place in Roman society. It is necessary for
us to understand this new condition of affairs in the republic
before it will be possible to comprehend the rogations of
the Gracchi.

One of the greatest dangers to the republic at this time
reveals itself hi the claims^ of the Italians. These people
had poured out their blood for Rome ; they had contributed
more than the Romans themselves to the accomplishing of
those rapid conquests which, after the subjugation of Italy,
quickly extended the power of Rome. In what way had
they been rewarded? After the terrible devastations which
afflicted Italy in the Hannibalic war had ceased, the Italian
allies found themselves ruined. Whilst Latium, which con-
tained the principal part of the old tribes of citizens, had
suffered comparatively little, a large portion of Samnium,
Apulia, Campania, and more particularly of Lucania and
Bruttium, was almost depopulated ; and the Romans in pun-
ishing the unfaithful "allies" had acted with ruthless cruelty.^
When at length peace was concluded, large districts were
uncultivated and uninhabited. This territory, being either
confiscated from the allies for taking part M-ith Hannibal, or
deserted by the colonists, swelled the ager publicus of Rome,
and was either given to veterans^ or occupied by Roman capi-
talists, thus increasing the revenues of a few nobles.

If a nation is in a liealthful condition politically and
economically so that the restorative vigor of nature is not
impeded by bad restrictive laws, the devastations of land and
losses of human life are quickly repaired. We might the

' Livy, XXXI, 4, 1 ; Ihne, IV, 370-372. ^Livy, loc. cii.

373] Agrarian Movemmts beticeen 367 and 133. 53

more especially have expected this in a climate so genial and on
a soil so fertile as that of Italy. But Roman laws so restricted
the right of buying and selling land that in every Italian
community none but members of that community, or Roman
citizens, could * buy or inherit. This restriction upon free
competition, by giving the advantage to Roman citizens, was
in itself sufficient to ruin the prosperity of every Italian
town. This law operated continually and unobservedly and
resulted in placing,-^ year by year, a still larger quantity of
the soil of Italy in the hands of the Roman aristocracy. In
order to palliate the evils of conquest or at least to hide
their conditions of servitude, the Romans had accorded to a
part of the Italians the title of allies, and to others the privi-
leges of municipia} These privileges were combined in a
very skillful manner in the interest of Rome, but this skill
did not hinder the people from perceiving that they depended
upon the mere wish of the conquerors and consequently were
not rights, but merely favors to be revoked at will. The
Latini, who had been the first people conquered by Rome
and who had almost always remained faithful, enjoyed under
the name of jus Latii considerable privileges. They held in
great ^ part the civil and political rights of Roman citizens.
They were able by special services individually to become
Roman citizens and thus to obtain the full jus Romanum.
There were other peoples who, although strangers to Latium,
had been admitted, by reason of their services* to Rome, to
participate in the benefits of the jus Latii. The other peoples,
admitted merely to the jus Italicum, did not enjoy any of the
civ^il or political rights of Roman citizens, nor any of the
privileges of I^atin " allies ; at best they kept some souvenirs

1 Ihne, IV, 148. *Ihne, IV, 371.

»Ihne, IV, 354; Momm., Ill, 277.

*Moium., I, 151-162; Iline, IV, 179. Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 26-
27, 63. 5 Livy, IX, 43, 23 ; Ihne, IV, ISl.

« Ihne, IV, 185-186. Marquardt u. Momm., 46, 60.

54 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [374

of their departed independeuce in tlieir interior administra-
tion, but otherwise were considered as subjects of Rome.
And yet it was for the aggrandizement of this city that they
shed their blood upon all the fields of battle which it pleased
Rome to choose ; it was for the glory and extension of the
Roman power that they gained these conquests in which they
had no share. Some who had attempted to regain their inde-
pendence were not even accorded the humble privileges of the
other people of Italy, but were reduced to the state of pre-
fectures. These were treated as provinces and governed by
prefects or proconsuls sent ^ out from Rome. Such were .
Capua, Bruttium, Lucania, the greater part of Samnium, and
.^^^^...Cisalpine Gaul, which country, indeed, was not even con-
sidered as a part of Italy. Those who had submitted without
resistance to the domination of the Romans, and had rendered
some services to them, had bestowed upon them the title of
municipia.^ These municipia governed themselves and were
divided into two classes :

(1 ,) Municipia sine suffragio, for example, Caere and Etruria,
had only interior privileges ; their inhabitants could not vote
at Rome and, consequently, could not ^ participate in the exer-
cise of sovereignty.

(2.) Municipia cum suffragio had, outside of their political
and civil rights, the important right of voting'' at Rome.
These citizens of villages had then, as Cicero said of the
citizens of Arpinum, two countries, one ex natura, the other ex
jure. Lastly, there were some cities in the south of Italy, i. e.
in Magna Graecia, that had received ^ the name of federated
cities. They did not appear to be subject to Rome ; their
contingents of men and money were looked upon as volun-
tary^ gifts ; but, in reality, they were under the domination of
Rome, and had, at Rome, defenders or patrons chosen because

1 Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 41-43. ^ Ibid, IV, 26.

•' Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 27-34. * Ibid.

* Manjuardt u. Momm., IV, 44. * Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 45-46.

375] Agrarian Movements between 367 and 133. 55

of their influence with the Roman citizens and charged with
maintaining their interests. Such was the system adopted by
Rome. It would have been easy for a person in the compass
of a few miles to find villages having the /ws Latii, others with
simply the jits Italicum, colonies, prefectures, municipia cum
et sine sufragio. The object of the Romans was evident.
They planned to govern. Cities alike in interests and patriotic
motives were separated by this diversity of rights and the
jealousies and hatreds which resulted from it. C(»ncord, which
was necessary to any united and general insurrection, was ren-
dered impossible between towns, some of which were objects of
envy, others, of pity. Their condition, moreover, was such
that all, even the most fortunate, had something to gain by
showing themselves faithful ; and all, even the most wretched,
had something to fear if they did not prove tractable. These
Italians, with all the varied privileges and burdens enume-
rated above, far outnumbered the Roman citizens.^ A com-
parison of the numbers of the census of 115 and that of 70
shows that the numbers of Italians and Romans were ^ as three
to two. All these Italians aspired to Roman citizenship,
to enjoy the right to vote to which some of their number
had been admitted, and the struggle which was sometime to
end in their complete emancipation had already commenced.
During the first centuries of Roman history, Rome was
divided into two classes, patricians and plebeians. The
plebeians by heroic efforts had broken down the barriers that
separated them from the patricians. The privilege of inter-
marriage, the possibility of obtaining the highest offices oi
the state, the substitution of the comitia tributa for the other
two assemblies, had not made of Rome "an unbridled democ-
racy," but all these benefits obtained by tribunician agitation,
all the far-reaching advances gained by force of laws and not

1 Momm., Rom. Ge., II, 225. ' I line, IV, 370.

66 Public Lands of the Boman Repuhlic. [376

of arms, had constituted at Rome a single people and created
a true Roman nation. There were now at Rome only rich
and poor, nobles and proletariat. With intelligence and
ability a plebeian could aspire to the magistracies and thence
to the senate. Why should not the Italians be allowed the
same privilege? It was neither just nor equitable nor even
prudent to exclude them from an equality of rights and the
common exercise of civil ^ and political liberty. The Gracchi
were the first to comprehend the changed state of affairs and
the result of Roman conquest and administration in Italy.
Their demands in favor of the Italians were profoundly
politic. The Italians would have demanded, with arms in
their hands, that which the Gracchi asked for them, had not this
attempt been made. They failed; Fulvius^ Flaccus, Marius,^
and Livius Drusus * failed in the same attempt, being opposed
both by the nobility and the plebs.

The agrarian laws, as we have seen, had been proposed by
the senate, in the period which we are considering. How was
it then that the Gracchi had been compelled to take the initia-
tive and that the senate had opposed them ? This contradic-
tion is more apparent than real. It explains itself in great
part by the following considerations. Upon the breaking
down of the aristocracy of birth, the patriciate, the senate
was made accessible to the plebeians who had filled the
curule magistracies and were possessed of 800,000 sesterces.
Knights were also eligible to the senate to fill vacancies, and
it was this fact which caused the equestrian order to be called
seminarlum senatus. For some time the new nobles, in order
to strengthen their victory and make it permanent, had formed
an alliance with the plebeians. For this reason were made
the concessions and distributions of land which the old sena-
tors were unable to hinder. These concessions were the work

' Momui., Lange, Ihne, Long — as given. ^ Momm., Ill, 132.

3 Momm., Ill, 252, 422. * Momm., Ill, 281.

377j Agrarian Movements between S67 and 133. 57

of the plebeians who had been admitted to the senate. But
when their position was assured and it ^vas no longer neces-
sary for them to make concessions to the commons in order
to sustain themselves, they manifested the same passions that
the patricians had shown before them. Livy has expressed
the situation very clearly : " These noble plebeians had been
initiated into the same mysteries, and despised the people
as soon as they themselves ceased to be despised by the
patricians." ' Thus, then, the unity and fusion which had
been established by the tribunician laws disai)peared and
there again existed two peoples, the rich and the poor.

If we examine into the elements of these two distinct popu-
lations, separated by the pride of wealth and the misery and
degradation of poverty, we shall understand this. The new
nobility was made up partially of the descendants of the
ancient patrician gentes who had adapted themselves to the
modifications and transformations in society. Of these per-
sons, some had adopted the ideas of reform ; they had flattered
the lower classes in order to obtain power ; they profited by
their consulships and their prefectures to increase or at least
conserve their fortunes. Others having business capacity
gave themselves up to gathering riches ; to usurious specula-
tions which at this time held chief place among the Romans.
Even Cato was a usurer and recommended usury as a means
of acquiring wealth. Or they engaged in vast speculations
in land, commerce, and slaves, as Crassus did a little later.
The first mentioned class was the least numerous. To those
nobles who gave their attention to money-getting must be
added those plebeians who elevated themselves from the
masses by means'- of the curule magistracies. These were
insolent and purse-proud, and greedy to increase their wealth
by any means in their power. Next to these two divisions
of the nobility came those whom the patricians had been

1 Livy, XXII, 34. » Ihne, IV, 354-356.

58 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [378

wont to despise and to relegate to the very lowest rank under
the name of aerarii ; merchants/ manufacturers, bankers, and
farmers of the revenues. These men were powerful by reason
of their union and community of interests, and money which
they commanded. They formed a third order and even
became so powerful as to control the senate and, at times,
the whole republic'. In the time of the Punic wars the
senate had been obliged to let go unpunished the crimes
committed by the publican Posthumius and the means which
he had employed in order to enrich himself at the expense of
the republic, because it was imprudent to oifend^ the order of
publicans. Thus constituted an order or guild, they held it
in their hands at will to advance or to withhold the money
for carrying on wars or sustaining the public credit. In this
way they were the masters of the state. They also grasped
the public lands, as they were able to command such wealth
that no individual could compete with them. They thus
became the only farmers of the domain lands, and they did
not hesitate to cease paying all tax on these. Who was able
to demand these rents from them ? The senate ? But they
either composed the senate or controlled it. The magis-
trates ? There was no magistracy but that of wealth. The
tribunes and the people ? These they had disarmed by fre-
quent grants of land of two to seven jugera each, and by the
establishment of numerous colonies. This was beyond doubt
the real reason for their frequent distributions. They had
all been made from land recently conquered. The ancient
ager had not been touched, and little by little the Licinian
law had fallen into disuetude.

' Ihne, IV, 354-356.

* Livy, XX V^, 3 : " Patres ordinem publicanonmi in tali tempore offen-
sum nolebant."

379] Agrarian Movements between 367 and 133. 59

Extension of Territory by Conquest between 367 and 133.

1. Caere submitted in 353, yielding all southern Etruria
to Rome.

2. Volcian territory and all Latium fell to Rome at the
close of the Latin war in 339.

3. Capua, taken in 337.

4. Cales, taken in 334, In this struggle all Campania
became Roman territory.

5. Sabine territory submitted in 290.

6. Tarentum, captured in 272.

7. Rhegium, captured in 270.

8. The Galli Senones were destroyed in 283 and their
whole territory (Umbria) was confiscated.

9. In 293, Liguria and Transpadana Gallia were added to
the Roman confederation.

10. In 222, Italy was extended to its natural boundary,
the Alps, by the subjugation of the Gauls north of the Po.
Of the entire territory of Italy, 93,640 square miles, fully
one-third belonged to Rome. Thus, in the 287 years of the
Republic, Roman territory had expanded from 115, to 31,200
square^ miles.

At the close of the war with Hannibal, Rome further added
to her territory by the confiscation of the greater part of the
Gallic territory, Campania, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and
Bruttii.

^ I have not here added Roman conquests outside of the peninsula of Italy,
as these conquests were not treated as Roman territory until nearly a cen-
tury later.

60 Public Lands of the Roman Republic.

[380

Colonies Founded between 367 and 133.
(a). Civic Colonies.

NO.

SIZE OF

COLONIES.

PLACE.

DATES.

OF C.

ALLOT.

JUGERA.

ACRES.

Antiuin.

Latium.

338

300

600

375

Anxur.

329

300

600

375

Minturnae.

Campania.

296

300

600

375

Sinuessa.

((

296

300

600

375

Sena Gallica.

Umbria.

283

300

1,800

1,125

Castrum Novum.

Picenum.

283

300

1,800

1,125

Aesium.

Umbria.

247

300

1,800

1,125

Alsium.

Etruria.

247

300

1,800

1,125

Fregenae.

((

245

300

1,800

1,125

Pjrgi.

191

300

1,800

1,125

Puteoli.

Campania.

194

300

1,800

1,125

Yolturnum.

194

300

1,800

1,125

Liternum.

194

300

1,800

1,125

Buxentum.

Lucania.

194

300

1,800

1,125

Salernum.

Campania.

194

300

1,800

1,125

Sipontum.

194

300

1,800

],125

Tempsa.

Bruttii.

194

300

1,200

750

Croton.

194

300

1,2C0

750

Potentia.

Picenum.

184

300

1,800

1,125

Pisaurum.

Umbria.

184

300

1,800

1,125

Parma.

Gall. Cisalp.

183

1,000

6,000

3,750

Mutina.

<i «

183

1,000

6,000

3,750

Saturnia.

Etruria.

183

300

1,800

1,125

Graviscae.

((

181

300

1,500

687

Luna.

173

300

1,800

1,125

Auximum.

Picenum.

157

300

1,800

1,125

Total..

38,900

30,312

381] Agrarian Movetnents between 367 and 133.

(6). Latin Colonies.

Calles.

Fregellae.

Luceria.

Suessa.

Pontiae.

Saticula.

Sora.

Alba.

Narnia.

Carseoli.

Venusia.

Hatria.

Cosa.

Paestum.

Ariminura.

Beneventum.

Firmiim.

Aesernia.

Bnindisium.

Spoletium.

Cremona.

Placentia.

Copiae.

Bononia.

Aquileia.

Campania.

Latium.

Apulia.

Latium.

Isle of Latium.

Samnium.

Latium.

((

Umbria.

Sabini.

Apulia.

Picenum.

Campania.

Lucania.

Agr. Gallicus.

Samnium.

Piceniun.

Samnium.

Calabria.

Umbria.

Gaul.

Lucania.
Gaul.

NO.

OF C.

334

300

328

300

314

300

313

300

313

300

313

300

312

4,000

303

6,000

299

300

298

4,000

291

300

289

300

273

1,000

273

300

268

300

268

300

264

300

263

300

244

300

241

300

218

6,000

218

6,000

193

300

192

3,000

181

4,500

Total

Civic Colonies

Grand Total...,

SIZE OP
ALLOT.

JUGERA.

1,200

4
4
4

1,200
1,200
1,200

1,200

6
6
6

36,000

1,800

24,000

6
6

1,800
1,800

6,000

6
6

1,800
1,800

1,800

6
6
6
6

1,800

36.000

6
6

36,000
1,800

18,000

27,000

211,200
38,900

250,100

750

22,500

1,125

1.5,000

1,125

3,750

1,125

22,500

1,125

11,250

16,875

132,000
30,312

162,312

253.61

Sq. Mi.

62 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [382

Sec. 9. — Latifundia.

"After having pillaged the world as praetors or consuls
during time of war, the nobles again pillaged their subjects
as governors in time of peace ; ^ and upon their return to
Rome with immense riches they employed them in changing
the modest heritage of their fathers into domains vast as
provinces. In villas, which they were wont to surround
with forests, lakes and mountains . . . where formerly a
hundred families lived at ease, a single one found itself
restrained. In order to increase his park, the noble bought at
a small price the farm of an old wounded soldier or peasant
burdened with debt, who hastened to squander, in the taverns
of Rome, the modicum of gold ^vhich he had received.
Often he took the land without paying anything.^ An
ancient M'riter tells us of an unfortunate involved in a law
suit with a rich man because the latter, discommoded by the
bees of the poor man, his neighbor, had destroyed them.
The poor man protested that he wished to depart and estab-
lish his swarms elsewhere, but that nowhere was he able to
find a small field where he would not again have a rich man
for a neighbor. The nabobs of the age, says Columella, had
properties which they were unable to journey round on horse-
back in a day, and an inscription recently found at Viterba,
shows that an aqueduct ten miles long did not traverse the
lands of any new proprietors. . . . The small estate gradually
disappeared from the soil of Italy, and with it the sturdy
population of laborers. . . . Spurius Ligustinus, a ceu-
turian, after twenty-two campaigns, at the age of more than

' Cicero says these exactions were common and tliat the provinces were
even restrained from complaining. Verres apologized for his exactions
by saying that he simply followed the common example. In Verrem,
II, 1-3, 17.

* " Parentes aut parvi liberi militum, ut quisqne potentiori confinis erat,
sedihus pellebantur." Sail., Jugertha, 41. Horace, Ode II, 18.

383] Latifundia. 63

fifty years, did not have for liimself, his wife, and eight chil-
dren more than a jngerum of land and a cabin." '

To this masterly sketch quoted from Duruy, we can but
add a few facts. Pliny affirms that under Nero only six
men possessed the half of Africa.- Seneca, who himself
possessed an immense fortune, says, concerning the rich men
of his time, that they did not content themselves with pos-
sessing the lands that formerly had supported an entire
people ; they were wont to tarn the course of rivers in
order to conduct them through their possessions. They^
desired even to embrace seas within their vast domains. We
must here, it is true, make some allowance for rhetoric. So,
too, in the writings of Petronius, some allowance for satire
must be made, where he represents the clerk of Trimalchio
making a report of that which has taken place in a single
day upon one of the latter's farms near Cumae. Here on
the 7th of the calends * of July, were born 30 boys and 40
girls ; 500,000 bushels of wheat were harvested and 500 oxen
were yoked. The clerk goes on to say that a fire had recently
broken out in the Gardena of Pompey, when he is inter^'upted
by Trimalchio asking when the Gardens of Ponipey had been
purchased for him, and is informed that they had been in his
possession for a year.^ So it appears that Trimalchio, in
whom Petronius has personified the pride, the greed, and the
vices of the rich men of his time, did not know that he was
the possessor of a magnificent domain. In another ])lace

' Duruy, Hist, dea Romains, II, 46-47.

■■"'Sex domini semissem Africae possidebant." Hisl. Nat., XVIIl, 7.

^Seneca, Epist., 89.

* Petronius, Sat., 48 : VII. calendas sextilis in praedio C'umano, (juod est
Trinialchionis. nati sunt pueri, xxx, puellae, XL ; sublata in horreum,
ex area, tritici millia modiuni quingenta; hoves domiti quingenti . . .
eodem die incendium factum est in horlis Ponipeianis, ortuni ex aedibus
nastae, villici.

*Quid? inquit Trimalchio: quando milii Pompeiani horti emti sunt?
Anno priore, inquit actuarius. {Ibid. 53.)

64 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [384

Petronius causes Trimalchio to say that everything which
could appeal to the appetite of his companions is raised upon
one of his farms which he has not yet visited and which is
situated in the neighborhood of Terracina and Tarentum,
towns ^ which are separated by a distance of 300 miles.
Finally, led on by his immoderate desire to augment his
riches and increase his possessions, the hero of Petronius
asks but one thing before he dies, i. e., to add Apulia^ to
his domains ; he, however, admits that he would not take it
amiss to join Sicily to some lands which he owned in that
locality or to be able, should envy not check him, to pass
into Africa^ without departing from his own possessions.
All this has a basis of fact. Trimalchio would never have
been created, had not the favorite freedmen of Nero crushed
the people by their luxury, debauches, and scandals.

But the condition of society pictured by Seneca and
Petronius is that of the first century of the Christian era
and might not be taken to represent the condition of affairs
in the second century b. c, had we not some data which go
to prave the concentration of property, the disparity between
classes, and the depopulation of Italy within the same century
as the Gracchi. Cicero was not considered one of the richest
men in Rome, yet he possessed many villas, and he has him-
self told us that one of them cost him 3,500,000 sesterces,
about SI 47,000.* Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, had
a country residence in the vicinity of Micenum which cost*

' Vinum, inquit, si non placet, niutabo ; vos illud, oponet facialis.
Deoriim beneficio non enio, sed nunc, quidquid ad salivam facit, in subiir-
bano nascitur eo quod ego adhuc non navi. Dicitur confine esse Tarra-
cinensibus et Tarentinis.

^Quod si contigerit Apuliae fundos jungere, satis vivus pervenero,
(Ibid. 77.)

^Nunc conjungere agellis Sicilian! volo, ut quuni Africani libuerit ire,
per meos fines navigeiii. Sat., 48.

■•Ad Fam., V, 6: "quod de Crasso domum emissem emi earn ipsam
domuin PI. S., XXXV."

* Plutarch, Life of Marias.

385] Laiifundia. 65

75,000 drachmae ($14,000); Lucullus some years afterwards
bought it for 500,200 dracliniae ($100,040). According to
Cicero,^ Crassus had a fortune of 100,000,000 sesterces
($4,200,000). This does not astonish us when we see upon
the via Appia, near the ruins of the circus of Caracalla and
but a short distance from the Catacombs of St. Sebastian
and the fountain of Aegeria, the still important remains of
the tomb of Caecilia Metella, daughter of Metellus Creticus
and wife of the tribune Crassus, as the inscription testifies.
It is a vast " funereal fortress " constructed of precious
marble, and which gives us the first example of the luxury
afterwards so common among the Romans. Then, too, we
remember that Crassus was wont to say that no one was rich
who was not able to support an army with his revenues,
to raise six legions and a great number of auxiliaries, both
infantry and cavalry.^

Pliny confirms this statement concerning Crassus, but adds
that Sulla was even richer.^ Plutarch gives us fuller details
and also explains the origin of the colossal fortune of Crassus.
According to him Crassus had 300 talents ($345,000), with
which to commence. Upon his departure for the Parthian war
in which he lost his life, he made an inventory of his property
and found that he was possessed of 7,100 talents, $8,165,000,
double what Cicero attributes to him. How did Crassus increase
his fortune so enormously? Plutarch says that he bought the
property confiscated by Sulla at a very low figure. Then, he
had a great number of slaves distinguished for their talents;
lecturers, writers, bankers, business men, physicians, and hotel-
keepers, who turned over to him the benefits which they real-
ized in their diverse industries. Moreover, he had among his
slaves 500 masons and architects. Rome was built almost

' De Repub., Ill, 7 : Cur autem, si pecuniae modus statuemlus fuit
feminis, P. Crassi filia posset habere, si unica patri asset, aeris niillies,
salva lege?

^ Cicero, Paradozia, VI. ^ Pliny, Hint. Nat., XXXI II, 10.

66 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [386

entirely of wood and the houses were very high, consequently
fires were frequent and destructive. As soon as a fire broke
out, Crassus hastened to the place with his throng of slaves,
bought the now burning buildings — as well as those threat-
ened — at a song, and then set his slaves to work extinguish-
ing the fires. By this means he had become possessed of a
large ^ part of Rome.

Some other facts confirm that which Plutarch tells us of
Crassus. Athenaeus^ says that it was not rare to find Roman
citizens possessed of 20,000 slaves. At the commencement
of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the future dicta-
tor found opposed to him, in Picenum, Domitius^ Ahenobar-
bus at the head of thirty cohorts. Domitius seeing his troops
wavering, promised to each of them four jugera out of his
own possessions, and a proportionate part to the centurians
and veterans. What must have been the fortune of a man
who was able to distribute out of his own lands, and surely
without bankrupting himself, about 100,000 jugera ?

Sec. 10. — The Influence of Slaveey.

The last of the evils which we wish to mention as bringing
about the deplorable condition of the plebeians at the time of
the Gracchi, and which brought more degradation and ruin in
its train than all the others, is slavery. Licinius Stolo had
attempted in vain to combat it. Twenty-four centuries of
fruitless legislation since his death has scarcely yet taught
the most enlightened nations that it is a waste of energy to
regulate by law the greatest crime against humanity, so long
as the conditions which produced it remain the same. The
Roman legions, sturdy plebeians, marched on to the conquest
of the world. For what ? To bring home vast throngs of
captives who were destined, as slaves, to eat the bread, to sap

' Plutarch, Ci-assus, c. 1 and 2.

^Athenaeus, Deif.nosophislae, VJ, 104. ^ Csesar, Bell. Civ., I, 17.

387] The Injiuenee of Slavery. 67

the life blood, of their conquerors. The substitution of slaves
for freemen in the labors of the city and country, in the
manual arts and industries, grew in proportion to the number
of captives sold in the markets of Rome. All the rich men
followed more or less the example of Crassus ; they had
among their slaves, weavers, carvers, embroiderers, painters,
architects, physicians, and teachers. Suetonius tells us that
Augustus wore no clothing save that manufactured by slaves
in his own house. Atticus hired his slaves to the public in
the capacity of copyists. Cicero used slaves as amanuenses.
The government employed slaves in the subordinate posts
in administration ; the police, the guard of monuments and
arsenals, the manufacture of arms and munitions of war, the
building of navies, etc. The priests of the temples and the
colleges of pontiffs had their familiae of slaves.

Thus in the city, ]>lebeians found no employment. Com-
petition was impossible between fathers of families and slaves
who labored en masse in the vast work-shops of their masters,
with no return save the scantiest subsistence, no families,
no cares, and most of all no army service. In the country it
was still Avorse. It would ajipear that none but slaves were
employed in the cultivation of the land. Doubtless the num-
ber of slaves in Italy has been greatly exaggerated, but it is
certain that the substitution of slave labor for free, was an old
fact when Licinius^ attempted by the formal disposition of
his law to cheek the evil. In the first centuries of Rome,
slaves must have been scarce. They were still dear in the
time of Cato, and even Plutarch mentions as a proof of the
avarice of the illustrious" censor, that he never })aid more than
15,000 drachmae for a slave. After the great conquests of the
Romans, in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Greece, and the Orient,
the market went down bv reason of the multitude of human

' M. Dureau de la Malle, Ec. polii. des Eoinahis, ch. 15, p. 143; ch. 2, p.
231.

' Plutarch, Cato the Censor, G and 7.

68 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [388

beings thrown upon it. An able-bodied, unlettered man could
be bought for the price of an ox. Such were the men of
Spain, Thrace, and Sardinia. Educated slaves from Greece
and the East brought a higher price. We learn from Horace,
that his slave Davus whom he has rendered so celebrated,
cost him 500 drachmae.^ Diodorns of Siculus says that the
rich caused their slaves to live by their own exertions.
According to him the knights employed great bands of
slaves in Sicily, both for agricultural purposes and for
herding stock, but they furnished them with so little food
that they must either starve or live by brigandage. The
governors of the island did not dare to punish these slaves
for fear of the powerful order which owned them." Slave
labor was thus adopted for economic reasons, and, for the
same reasons, agriculture in Italy was abandoned for stock
raising.

Says Varro : ^ " Fathers of families rather delight in circuses
and theatres than in farming and grape culture. Therefore,
we pay that wheat necessary for our subsistence be imported
from Africa and Sardinia ; we pick our grapes in the isles of
Cos and Chios. In this land where our fathers who founded
Rome instructed their children in agriculture, we see the
descendants of those skillful cultivators, by reason of avarice
and in contempt of laws, transferring arable lands into pasture
fields, perhaps ignorant of the fact that agriculture and father-
land were one."

Fewer men were needed for the care of these pasture lands ;
but the evil did not stop here. Little by little these pasture
lands were transformed into mere pleasure grounds attached
to villas. This had already begun to take place as early as
the second Punic war, when the plains of Slnuessa^ and

'Horace, Sat. II, 7; v. 42-43: "Quid? si me stultior ipso quingentis
empto drachmis, deprehenderis."

« Dio<loriis, Siculus, Fg. of Bit. XXXIV.

3 Varro, De R. R. Proem. 3, 4. * Livy, XXII, 15.

389] Lex Sempronia Tibenana. 69

Falernia were cultivated rather for pleasure than the necessa-
ries of life ; so that the army of Fabius could find nothing
upon which to sustain itself. Under these influences the ple-
beians, in 133, had become merely a turbulent, restless mass,
but full of the activity and the energy which had characterized
them in the early centuries of the republic. They were com-
posed chiefly of the descendants of the ancient plebeian families,
decimated by wars and by misery. They were the heirs of
those for whom Spurius Cassius, Terentillius Arsa, Virginius,
Licinius Stolo, Publilius Philo, and Hortensius had endured
so many conflicts and even shed their blood; but they had
become brutalized by poverty, debauchery, and crime. No
longer able to support themselves by labor, they had become
beggars and vagabonds.

Sec. 11. — Lex Sempeonia Tibeeiana.

In 133, more than two centuries after the enactment
of the law of Licinius Stolo, Tiberius Gracchus, tribune of
the people for that year, brought forward a bill which was in
fact little less than a renewal of the old law. It provided
that no one should occupy more than five hundred jugera of
the agei' puhlicus, with the proviso that any father could
reserve^ 250 jugera for each son.^ This law differed from
that of Licinius in that it guaranteed permanent possession

' App., I, 9 ; Livy, Epit., LVIII, XII : " possessores, qui filios in potestate
haberent, supra legitimum iiiodum ducena quinquagena jugera in singulos
retinerent."

* Mommsen states that this privilege was limited to 1000 jugera in all,
and Wordsworth follows him, making the same statement. Lange, Rom.
Alterthiimer, III, 9, agrees witli Mommsen and cites, App. B. C, I, 9, 11 ;
Veil., 2, 6; Livy, Ep., 58; Aurelius Victor, 6-4; Sic. Flacc, p. 13G, Lach.
I find no direct proof in the places mentioned of what Lange asserts while
App. (I, 11), says: "/col iraiffl, oJs elcrl iraTSes fKacrrcfi koI tovtojv to, ^^t'creo.''
Long says there is no proof of any limitation as to number of sons, while
Ihne, Duruy and Nitzsch are agreed in following the statement of Appian,
as I have here done. See Marquardt u. Momm., Bom. Alter, 106.

70 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [390

of this amount to the occupier and his heirs forever.^ Other
clauses were subjoined providing for the payment ^ of some
equivalent to the rich for the improvements and the buildings
upon the surrendered estates, and ordering the division of the
domain thus surrendered among the poorer citizens in lots
of 30 jugera each, on the condition that their portions should
be inalienable.^ They bound themselves to use the land for
agricultural purposes and to pay a moderate rent to the state.
It appears that the Italians were not excluded from the bene-
fit of this law.*

The design of this bill was to recruit the ranks of the
Romans by drafts of freeholders from among the Latins.
Such as had. been reduced to poverty were to be restored to
independence. Such as had been sunk beneath oppression
were to be lifted up to liberty.^ No more generous scheme
had ever been brought before the Romans. None ever met
with more determined opposition, and for this there was much
reason. There might have been some like the tribune's
friends ready to part with the lands bequeathed to them by
their fathers ; but where one was willing to confess, a hun-
dred stood ready to deny the claim upon them. Nor had
they any such demands to meet as those of the olden times.
Then the plebeians were a firm and compact body which

lApp., I, 11.

- Momm., Ill, 114; Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 9, 1. 9.

^-Vpp., I, 1. 3.

" App., I, 9: "T.ySe'pios rpdnxos . . . SrifiapxiHiv i<TeiJLUo\6y7iffe irepl rod
^IraKiKov ytfovs ws fviroKe/jLooTdrou re koI crvyytvovs, (pdeipofifuov 5e Kar
oKiyov is aiTopiav Kul oXiyaySpiav. Also App. B. C, I, 13; TpaKxas Se
fxeyaXauxovfifvos firl r^ v6fj.w . . . ola 5?'; ktio-ttjs ov fiias irSKfus ovS' evhs
yevovs aWa TrduTwv '6aa eV 'IraAia (Bv7), is rr^v oiKiav irapeirfiximo.

Ihne, IV, 385. Lange says (III, 10): " Das Gracchus die Latiner und
Bundesgenosen nicht beriicksichtigte, war bei der Gesinnung der romis-
chen Biirgerschaft gegen die Latiner ganz natiirlich." I can not see how
he harmonizes this statement with that of App., 'IraAiKoC yivovs and 'IraKia.
(dyrj. Momm., Rom. Ge., II, 88.

^ SaUust, Jugertha, XLII.

391] Lex Sempronia Tiber iana. 71

demanded a share of recent conquests that their own blood
and courage had gained. Now it was a loose and feeble
body of various nunnV)ers waiting for a share in land long
since conquered, while their patron rather than their leader
exerted himself for them.

Tiberius, like Licinius, met with violent opposition, but he
had not like him the patience and the fortitude to wait the
slower but safer process of legitimate agitation. He adopted
a course^ which is always dangerous and especially so in great
political movements. Satisfied with the justice of his bill and
stung by taunts and incensed by opposition, he resolved to carry
it by open violation of law. He caused his colleague, Octavius,
who had interposed his veto, to be removed from office by a
vote of the citizens — a thing unheard of and, according to the
Roman constitution, impossible — and in this way his bill for
the division of the public land was carried and became a law.
It I'equired the appointing of three commissioners to receive
and apportion the public domain." This collegium of three
persons,^ who were regarded as ordinary and standing magis-
trates of the state, and were annually elected by the assembly
of the people, was entrusted with the work of resumption and
distribution. The important and difficult task of legally set-
tling what was domain land and what was private property
was afterward added to these functions. Tiberius himself,
his brother Cains, then at Numantia, and his father-in-law,
Claudius, were nominated, according to the usual custom of
intrusting the execution of a law to its author and his chosen

' App., I, XII ; Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchiis, X-XII ; Julii Flori Epitoma,
II, (Biblioth. Teubner, p. 67) : "Sit nbi intercedentem legibus suis C. Octa-
vium vidit Gracchus, contra fas collegii, juris, potestas, is injecta luanu
depulit rostris, adeoque praesenti uietu mortis exterruit, ut abdicare se
magistratu cogeretur."

-Momm., Ill, 115.

3 App., I, 9; Livy, Epit., LVIII, 12; Plut., Tib. Gr., 8-14; Cic, De Leg.
Agr., II, 12, 13; Velleius, 2, 2; Aurelius Vic, De Vir. Illus., 64.

72 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [392

adherents.^ The distribution was designed to go on continu-
ally and to embrace the whole class that should be in need of
aid. The new features of this agraria lex of Sempronius, as
compared with the Licinio-Sextian, were, first, the clause in
favor of the hereditary possessors ; secondly, the payment of
quit-rent, and inalienable tenure proposed for the new allot-
ments ; thirdly, and especially, the permanent executive, the
want of which, under the older law, had been the chief reason
why it had remained without lasting practical application.^

The dissatisfaction of the supporters of the law concurred
with the resistance of its opponents in preventing its execu-
tion or at least greatly embarrassing the collegium. The
senate refused to grant the customary outfit to which the
commissioners^ were entitled. They proceeded without it.
Then the landowners denied that they occupied any of the
public land, or else asked such enormous indemnities as to
render the recovery impossible without violence. This roused
op]30sition. The ager publieus had never been surveyed, pri-
vate boundaries had in many cases been obliterated, and, except
where natural boundaries marked the limit of the domain land,
it was impossible to ascertain what was ager publieus and what
ager privatus. To avoid this difficulty the commission adopted
the just but hazardous expediency of throwing the burden of
proof upon the occupier. He was summoned before their tri-
bunal and, unless he could establish his boundaries or prove
that the land in question had never been a part of the domain

land, it was declared ager publieus and confiscated.*

\ On the other hand the newly made proprietors were con-

\ tending with one another, if not with the commissioners. The

^Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 13.

* Momin., Ill, 115. See Ihne's just condemnation of this clause ; IV, 387.

'Plutarch, Tib. Grac, XIII, In. 12; Duruy, Hist. Rom., vol. II, pp. 339-
420 of Translation.

" Long, I, 183; Ihne; IV, 387 ; Lange, III, 10-12; Nitzsch, Die Gracchen,
294 et seq.

393] Lex Sempronia Tibenana. 73

Italians were, in some cases, despoiled instead of relieved by
the law. The complaints of those turned out of their estates to
make room for the clamorous swarms from the city, drowned
the thanks of such as obtained a portion of the lands. Not
even with the wealth of Attains had Tiberius bought friends
enough to aid him at this time.^7Thesame spirit of lawless-
ness which he himself had inwjk«U in the passing of his law,
was in turn made use of by his enemies to crush him. Having
been absent from Rome,."<vhile performing hi^'duties as com-
missioner, he now returned as a candidate,/for-ji*e-election to
the tribunate, a thifigjn itself contrary-^o law, aiid in the
struggle which ai'ose ovfei;^ his re-election, was slain a little
more than six months after his appointment ^ to membership
in the collegium.
/ Uncertainty as to the Details of the Lex Sempronia. We
are very imperfectly informed upon many points in Tiberius'
agrarian law. In the first place, the question arises, were
those persons holding less than 500 jugera at the time of
its enactment given their lands as bona fide private property
with the privilege of making up the deficiency? If not, then
the law, instead of punishing, would seem to reward violation
of its tenets, and he who had with boldness appropriated the
greatest quantity of domain land would now be an object of
envy to iiis more honest but less fortunate neighbors.
r Secondly, what arrangement was made as to the buudings
and improvements already upon the land? Were these handed
over to the new owners without any payment on their part ?7
This would work great inequality in the value of allotment
made, and yet we cannot see where the poor man was to
obtain the money to pay for these. Then again, what was C
to become of the numerous slaves which had hitherto car- Ojvi^A'
ried on the agriculture now destined to be performed by

» Plutarch, Tib. Grac, 14; Florus, II.

* Cicero, De Amiciiia, 12. "Tiberius Gracchus regnum occupare conatua
est vel regnavit is quidem paucas menses."

74 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [394

small holders ? Their masters would have no further use for
them and \vould consequeutly swell the lists of freedmen in
order to avoid the expense of feeding them. This law was
passed in the midst of the Sicilian slave war and Tiberius
Gracchus would surely not have neglected to make some
provision to meet this exigency. The law as it stands in
its imperfect condition seems to be the work of an ignorant,
unprincipled political charlatan, but we are convinced Tiberius
was not that. Moreover, we know that he had the help of
one of Rome's most able lawyers, Publius Mucins Scaevola,
and the advice of his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, who
was something of a statesman. We are therefore convinced
that some conditions which were to meet these obstacles were
enacted. We must admit, however, that it is a little sur-
prising that no fragment of such conditions has ever reached
us in the literature of Rome.

Results of this Law. Although Tiberius was dead, yet his
law still lived, and, indeed, received added force from the
death of its author. The senate killed Gracchus but could
not annul his law. The party which was favorable to the
distribution of the domain land gained control of affairs.
Gains Gracchus, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, and Gains Papi-
rius Carbo, were the chief persons in carrying the law into
effect. Mommsen (vol. Ill, p. 128) says: 'JThe work
of resuming and distributing the occupied domani land was
prosecuted with zeal and energy ; and, in fact, })roofs to that
effect are not wanting^ As early as 622 the consul of that
year, Publius Popillius, the same who presided over the
prosecution of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded
on a public monument that he was ' the first who had turned
the shepherd out of the domains and installed farmers in their
stead ; ' and tradition otherwise affirms that the distribution
extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly existing
communities the number of farmers was everywhere aug-
mented — for it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian
law to elevate the former class, not by the founding of new

395] Lex Sempronia Tiberiana. 75

oomniuiiitief-, but by tlie strengthening of those already in
existence.

" The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distribu-
tions are attested by tlie numerous arrangements in tlie Roman
art of land-measuring referable to the Gracchan assignations of
land ; for instance, the due placing of boundary stones, so as
to obviate future mistakes,, appears to have been first suggested
by the Gracchan courts for defining boundaries and by the dis-
tribution of land.

" But the number on the burgess-rolls gives the clearest evi-
dence. The census, which was published in 623, and actually
took place probably in the beginning of 622, yielded not more
than 319,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms, whereas six
years aftei'wards (629), in place of the previous falling off (p.
108), the number rises to 395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase
beyond all doubt solely in consequence of what the allotment
commission did for Roman burgesses."

Ihne says, concerning this same commission (vol. IV, p.
409) : '' The triumvirs entered upon their duties under the
most unfavorable circumstances. . . . We may entertain
serious doubts whether they or their immediate successors
ever got beyond this first stage of their labors, and whether
they really accomplished the task of setting up any consider-
able number of independent freeholders." Ihne further says
(vol. IV, p. 408, n. 1), in answer to the statements made by
Mommsen, which we have quoted above : " There is an ob-
vious fallacy in this argument, for how could the assignment
of allotments to poor citizens increase the number of citizens?
There is nothing to justify the assumption that non-citizens
were to share in the benefit of the land-law, and that by
receiving allotments they were to be advanced to the rank of
citizens. If the statements respecting the census of 131 b. c.
and 125 b. c. are to be trusted, the great increase in the num-
ber of citizens must be explained in another way. It is possi-
ble . . . that after the revolt of Fregellae (125 b. c.) a portion
of the allies were admitted to the Roman franchise by several

76 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [396

plebiscites. We know nothing of such plebiscites ; but it is
not unlikely that the Roman senate in 125 b. c. acted on the
principle of making timely concessions to a portion of the
rebels, and thus preventing unanimous action among them.
This is what was done in 90 b. c. during the great Social
War. By such an admission of allies, the increase of citizens
between 131 and 125 might possibly be explained."

If we examine the objections which Ihne raises we shall not
find them so formidable as first appears. Mommsen does not
say that the number of citizens was increased. What he does
say is that the number of burgesses capable of bearing arras
was increased (vol. Ill, p. 128). In 570-184, the Servian
Military Constitution was so modified as to admit to service
in the burgess army, pei'sons possessed of but 4,000 asses
($85). In case of need ail those who were bound to serve
in the fleet, i. e. those rated between 4,000 and 1,500 asses
and all freedmen, together with the free-born rated between
1,500 asses (|30) and 375 asses ($7.50), were enrolled in the
burgess infantry.^ It is easy enough to see that the gift on
the part of the government of 30 jugera (24 acres) of land
to each poor citizen, would raise him from the ranks of the
proletariate and make him liable to military service.

This is sufficient to establish Momrasen's thesis ; ^ and it is
not necessary to consider the second point, viz., that non-citizens
were not to share in the benefit of the land law nor thereby to
be raised to the rank of citizens, although to us it would be no
more difficult to believe this than that 76,000 allies had been
admitted to the Roman franchise " by several plebiscites " no
trace or rumor of which had been preserved.

It can hardly be supposed that the Italian farmers were
multiplied at the same ratio as were the Romans ; but the
result must have been most beneficial even to them.

' Momm., II, p. 417.

' Professor Long thinks that the hiw of Tiberius soon became a dead
letter. Lange {Rom. Alter., Ill, 26-29), inclines to this view. Diiriiy
(II, 419-420), and most other modern writers agree with Mommsen.

397] Lex Senvpronia Gaiana. 77

In the aceoraplishing of this result, respectable interests
and existino- ri»;hts were no doubt violated. The commission
itself was composed of violent partisans who, being judges
unto themselves, did not scruple to carry out their plans
even at the cost of recklessness and tumult. Loud com-
plaints were made, but usually to no avail. If the domain
question was to be settled at all, the matt(!r could not be
carried through without some such rigor of action. Intelli-
gent Romans wished to see the plan thoroughly tested. But
this acquiescence had a limit. The Italian domain was not
all in the hands of Roman citizens. Allied communities held
the usufruct of large tracts of it by means of decrees of the
people or the senate, and other portions had been taken pos-
session of by Latin burgesses. These in turn were attacked
by the commissioners ; but to give fresh oifense to these Latini,
who were already overburdened with military service, without
share in the spoils, was a matter of doubtful policy.

The Latini appealed to Scipio in person, and by his influ-
ence a bill was passed by the people which withdrew from the
commission its jurisdiction and remitted to the consuls the
decision as to what were private and what domain lands.
This was a mild way of killing the law, and resulted in that.
It had, however, in great measure, fulfilled its object and left
little territory in the hands of the Roman state.

Sec. 12. — Lex Sempronia Gaiana.

Grains Gracchus really enacted no new agrarian law but
merely re-established the power of the commission which had
been appointed by his brother ten years before ; which power
they had lost by the law of Scipio.^ Gains' law was enacted
merely to preserve the principle, and the distribution of land,

' Scipio must have caused a plebiscitum to be enacted, for the repeal of
this clause, as an existing law could not be repealed by a senatus consultum.
See Ihne, IV, 414, note.

/,>•

78 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [398

if resumed at all, was on a very limited scale. This is made
known from the fact that the burgess-roll showed precisely
the same number capable of bearing arms in 124 and 114.
As has already been stated, the domain land had been ex-
hausted by the commission before losing its power, and, there-
fore, Gaius had none to distribute.^ The land held by the
Latini could only be taken into consideration with the diffi-
cult question of the Roman franchise. But when Gaius pro-
posed the establishment of colonies in Italy, at Tarentum and
Capua, whose territories had been hitherto reserved as a source
of revenue to the treasury,^ he went a step beyond his brother
and made this also liable to be parcelled out ; not, however,
according to the method of Tiberius, who did not contemplate
the establishment of new communities, but according to the
colonial system. There can be little doubt that Gaius designed
to aid in permanently establishing^ the revolution by means of
these new colonies in the most fertile part of all Italy. His
overthrow and death put a stop to the establishment of the
contemplated colonies and left this territory still tributary to
the treasury.

' Momm., Ill, 137.

* Cicero, De Leg. Agr., II, c. 29-32 ; Marquardt u. Momm., Rom. Alter.,
IV, 106: "ager publicus mit Ausnahme einiger dem Staate nnenbehrlicher
Domainen, wozu namentlich das Gebiet von Capua und das stellalische Feld
bei Cales gehorte."

3 Ihne, IV, 438-479. Plutarch, Gams Gracchus, 13.

CHAPTER III.
Sec. 13. — Lex Thoeia.'

According to Appian, during the years which followed the
death of Gains Gracchus up to the tribunate of Saturninus,
that is to say, between the years 120 and J 00, three agrarian
laws were proposed and adopted.

1. A law "That the holders of the land which was the
matter in dispute might legally sell ^ it." Appian, who is
the only authority for this period, does not give the date of
the law nor the name of the tribune who proposed it, but
Ihne^ makes the date 118, and Mommsen assigns the law to
Marcus * Drusus. This law was a repeal of all the restrictions
which the Gracchi had placed upon assignments of public land.
The object of this clause was to secure the success of their great
reforms, and to establish a number of small proprietors who
would cultivate their little farms, and breed citizens and sol-
diers. But forced cultivation is impossible, and sumptuary
laws have never yet succeeded in increasing^ population. Again
it is inconsistent to give land to a man and deprive him of
the power of sale, for this is an essential part of that domain
which we call property in land. If a man wishes to sell, he

^Rudorff, Ackergesetz des Spuriiis Thorius, Zeitschrift fiir geschichtliche
Eechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-158. Corpus Inscriptionuni Latinarum,
vol. V, pp. 75-86. Wordsworth, Specimens and Fragments of Early Latin,
440-459.

'^Appian, Bell. Gic, I, c. 27. ^Iline, Roman History, V, 9.

^Moium., Rom. Jlist., Ill, 165.

^Long, Decline of the Rom. Rep., I, 352. See Lange, Rom. Alter., Ill, 48.

80 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [400

will always have sufficient reasons for so doing, and a rich
man can afford to pay ^ the highest price, freedom of exchange
thus bringing ultimate good to both parties. It is easy to
comprehend the consequences of this law. It was the com-
mencement of a reaction entirely aristocratic in its nature.^
It was skillfully conducted with the ordinary spirit of the
Roman senate, the ruses, mental reservations, and dissim-
ulations under guise of public interest. The aristocracy
presented to the plebeian farmers, established by the lex
Sempronia, a means of promptly and easily satisfying their
passions. They had never earned their little farms, nor did
they appreciate the independence of the tiller of the soil.
Unaccustomed to farm labor,'' and the plodding unexciting
life of the Roman agricola, they made haste to abandon a
toilsome husbandry, the results of which seemed to them slow
and uncertain, and Math the pieces of silver which they received
as the price of their lands, returned to Rome to swell the idle
and vicious throng* which enjoyed the sweet privilege of an
existence sustained without labor.

Thus the nobles re-entered promptly and cheaply into the
possession of the lands of Mdiich Tiberius had but a short time
before deprived them, and, by means of a little sacrifice, sub-
stantially and legally converted their jjossessions into real
property, while the plebeians whom Tiberius had wished to
elevate by means of forcing ^ upon them the necessity of labor,
fell back into their accustomed poverty and brutality. But
the object for which the nobles were striving was not yet
completely gained. The present victory was theirs ; they
now strove to guarantee tlie future, and so render impossible
dangers similar to those already passed through.

2. A second law was thus enacted : " Spurius Borius, a
tribune, proposed a law to this effect; that there should be

^ Liong, loc. cit. ''Mornin., Ill, 161; Ihne, V, 10.

' Long, loc. dt. *Lange, III, 48-49; Marquardt ii. Momm., IV, 108.

"Long, loc. cil. Momm., Ill, 167-168; Ihne, V, 8-10.

401] Lex Thoria. 81

110 more distribution of the public land, but it should be left
to the possessors who should pay certain charges (vectigalia)
for it to the state (Br]/ji,(p) and that the money arising from
these payments should be distributed." '

It is easy to tiomprehend the effect of a law so conceived.
On the one hand it guaranteed to the possessors full property
in the public lands which they held. From this point of
view it was aristocratic. But on the other hand it aimed to
unite the interests of the common people with those of the
aristocracy, by placing a tax of one tenth of the produce upon
the holders of these lands,^ thus reestablishing the law which
had been annulled by Drusus. This took the place of distri-
butions of land, which had now been made impossible^ in
Italy. In reality this law was disastrous to the plebeians as it
established a tax * for their benefit, a congiarium, and placed
a premium upon laziness.

The narration of Appian presents some grave difficulties.
In all the manuscripts of Appian the name of the tribune
proposing the second law is Spurius Borius." Cicero men-
tions a tribune by the name of Spurius •" Thorius and Schweig-
hauser in his edition of Appian has changed ' Borius ' to
' Thorius.' But this does not lessen the difficulty, as the
law which Cicero attributes to Thorius is entirely different
from the second law of Appian which, according to him
was introduced by Spurius Borius. Cicero says that Spurius
Thorius "freed the public lands from the vectigal."^ Appian
says that Spurius Borius guaranteed the po.ssessio7is in the
public lands, levying a tax on them for the benefit of the
people. It is a sheer waste of time to attempt to harmonize
these two statements.'^ Granting that Spurius Borius and

' Appian, I, c. 27. ''Long, ], 353.

^Long, I, 354. Time, V, 10-11.

*Long, 1,353; Wordsworth, 440; Momm., Hi, 165, note; Ihne, V, 9;
Lange, III, 48; Appian, I, c. 27.
"Cicero, Brut, 36. ' Cicero, De Oral., II, 70.

^Marquardt u. Monini., Riim. Alter., IV, 108, n. 4; Wordswortli, 441.

82 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [402

Spurius Thorius are oue and the same person, the statements
still remain diametrically opposed according to a simple and
commonly accepted translation of Cicero's words : " Sp. Thorius
satis valuit in populari genere dicendi, is qui agrum publicum
vitiosa et inutile lege vectigali levavit." Mommsen makes
Cicero agree with Appian by changing " vectigali " into the
instrument, and rendering ^ " relieved the public land from a
vicious and useless law by imposing a vectigal." No other
writer agrees with Mommsen in making such a translation.

3. The third law is mentioned by Appian alone who says :
" Now. when the law of Gracchus had once been evaded by
these tricks, an excellent law and most useful to the state if
it could have been executed, another tribune not long after
{ovTToXv varepov) abolished even the vectigalia."^ This is
evidently the same law which Cicero mentions as that of
Spurius Thorius and as he also mentions him in another
place (De Or., II, 70, 284), we may possibly accept him as
the author.

There are still extant some fragments of a bronze tablet
which contains upon its smooth surface the Lex Repetun-
darura and has cut upon its rough ^ back an agrarian law.
These fragments were discovered in the 16th century among
the collections in the Museum of Cardinal * Bembo at Padua.
Sigonius attempted the reconstruction of this law and after
him Haubold and Klentze, but Rudorff has completed the
reconstruction as far as possible and made the law the sub-
ject of an interesting essay .^ Mommsen has a commentary
in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum'' upon this law.
From all these sources the date of this law has been estab-
lished almost beyond doubt as 111. Sigonius assigned it

'Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarura, vol. I, p. 74.

^Appian, I, c. 27.

=• liong, I, 355 ; Wordsworth, 440.

* Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440 ; See Rudorff, Ack. des Sp. Thor.

*Zeitschrift fiir geschichtliohe Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-194.

«C. I. L., I, pp. 75-86.

403] Lex Thoria. 83

to Spurius Thorius, and, as the name is immaterial and ^ liis
arguments moreover for this title are not easily set aside, we
can do no better than adopt it.

Argument of the Lex Thoria.'

The law evidently consists of three parts, although the
rubricae are absent.

I. De agro publico p. R. in Italia (1-43).
II. De agro publico p. R. in Africa (44-95).
III. De agro publico p. R. qui Oorinthorum fuit (96-105).

I. On the Ager Publicus in Italy.

This part may be divided roughly into three sections: (1)
Lines 1-24, defining ager privaius ; (2) 24-32, defining ager
publicus ; (3) 33-43, on disputed cases.

It thus embraces the first forty-three lines of the law, and
is concerned with the public land of Italy, from the Rubicon
southwards. It commences by referring to the condition of
this land in the year 133, when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune.
The law does not aifect to touch any thing which had been
enacted concerning this land prior to 133. It either confirms
or alters what had been done in 133, and since that time. All
the public land which was exempted from the operation of the
Sempronian laws, i. e., Ager Campanus and Ager Stellatis, was
also excluded from the operation of the lex Thoria.

(1) The first ten lines of the law relate to that part of the
ager publicus which was occupied before the time of the
Gracchi, if the amount of such land did not exceed the maxi-
mum fixed by the Sempronian laws ;

(2) Also, to the assignments made by lot (sortito) to Roman
citizens by the commissioners since the enactment of the Sem-

' Long, I, 356.

* Wordsworth, 447. See the text of this hiw in C. I. L., vol. I, pp. 79-80.

84 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [404

pronian laws', if such assignments were not made out of land
which had been guaranteed to the old possessors ;

(3) Also, to all lands taken from an old possessor, but on
his complaint restored to him by the commissioners ;

(4) Also, to all houses and lands, in Rome or in other parts
of Italy, which the commissioners had granted without lot,
so as such grants did not interfere with the guaranteed title
of older possessors ;

(5) Also, to all the public land which Gains Sempronius, or
the commissioners, in carrying out his law, had used in the
establishment of colonies or given to settlers, whether Roman
citizens, Latini, or Italian Socii, or wdiich they had caused to
be entered on the "fo7-mae " or " tabulae.'^

All the lauds comprised in the above are declared in lines
seven and eight to be private property, in these words : "Ager
locus omnis quel supra scriptus est, extra eum agrum locum,
quel ager locus ex lege plebeivescito, quod C. Sempronius Ti.
f. tr. pi. rogavit, exsceptum cavitumve est nei divideretur
.... privatus esto."

Lines 8-10 declare that the censors shall, from time to
time, enter this land upon their books like any other private
property ; and it is further declared that nothing shall be said
or done in the senate to disturb the peaceful enjoyment of this
land by those persons possessing it.

Of lines 11-13 (ch. II) nothing definite can be said, because
of the few words which have been preserved.^ Rudorff explains
them as referring to land granted to viasii vicani (dwellers in
villages along the roads), by the Sempronian commissioners ;
such lands to remain in their possession, but to be theoreti-
cally ager publicus.

Lines 13-14 refer to lands occupied since 133 agri colendi
causa. They allow to every Roman citizen the privilege of
occupying, for the purpose of cultivation, thirty jugera of
public land ; they further declare that he who shall possess or

> LonL', I, 35'j.

405] Lex Thoria. 85

have not more than thirty jugera of such land, shall possess
and have it as private property,' with the provision that land
so occupied shall be no part of the public land excepted from
appropriation, and further, that such occupation shall not
interfere with the guaranteed lands of a previous possessor.

Ijines 14-15 relate to holders of pasture land {ager compas-
cuns). This ager compascuus was land which had been left
undivided, and had not become the private propei-ty of any
individual, but was the common property of the owners of
the adjacent lands. These persons had the right to pasture
stock upon this land by paying pasture dues (sanplura or
veciigal) to the state. The Thoria lex freed these lands from
the veciigal or scriplura, and granted free pasturage to each
man for ten head of large beasts — cattle, asses, and horses — and
fifty head of smaller animals — sheep, goats, and swine. This
common pasture must be carefully distinguished from the
communal property which was granted to the settlers in a
Colonia and called " comjxiscua publica " with the additional
title ^ of the colony, as " JuUenses."

These rights of common resemble, in some respects, the
English common of pasture as described by Bracton.^ By
English customary law, every freeholder holding land within
a manor, had the right of common of pasturage on the lord's
wastes as an incident to his land.

Lines 15-16. The possession of land,- granted by the
commissioners in a colony since J 33, to be confirmed before
the Ides of March next.

Lines 16-17. The same rule applied to lands granted
otherwise by the same commissioners.

Line 18. Such occupants if forcibly ejected to be restored.

Lines 19-20. Land assigned by the Sempronian cora-

'"Quom quis ceivis Romanus agri colendi causa in eurn agrum agri
jugera non amplius xxx possidebit habebitue, is ager privatus esto."
' Long, loc. cit. ; Wordsworth, 446.
^ Digby, History of the Law of Real Property in England, p. 157.

86 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [406

mission, in compensation for land in a colony which had
been made public, to become private.

Lines 23-24. Confirmation of the title or restitution of
such land to be made before the Ides of March next.

Lines 24-2-5. Land besides this which remains public is
not to be occupied, but to be left free to the public for graz-
ing. A fine for occupation is imposed. The law allowed all
persons to feed their beasts great and small on this public
pasture, up to the number mentioned in lines 14-15 as the
limit to be pastured on the ager campascuus, free of all tax.
This, according to Rudorff, was done for the benefit of the
small holders. Those who sent more than this number of ani-
mals to the public pastures must pay a scriptnra, for each head.

Line 26. While the cattle or sheep were driven along
the ' calles/ or beast-tracks, and along the public roads to the
pasture grounds, no charge was made for what they consumed
along the road.

Line 27. Land given in compensation out of public land,
to be privatus utei quoi optuma lege.

Line 27. Land taken in this way from private ownership
to he publicus, as in 133.

Lines 27-28. Land given in compensation for ager patntus
to be itself pair itus.

Line 28. Public roads to remain as before.

Line 29. Whatever Latins and peregrini might do in 112,
and. whatever is not forbidden citizens to do by this law, they
may do henceforward.

Lines 29-30. Trial of a Latin to be the same as for a
Roman citizen.

Lines 31-32. Territory (1) of borough towns or colonies
(2), in trientabulis, to be, as before, public.

Lines 33-34. Cases of dispute about land made private
between 133 and 111, or by this law, to be judged by the
consul or praetor before next Ides of March.

Lines 35-36. Cases of dispute after this date to be tried by
consuls, praetors, or censors.

407] Lex Thoria. 87

Lines 36-39. Judgment on money owing to publicani to
be given by consuls, proconsuls, praetors or propraetors.

Line 40. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to swear to
laws contrary to this law.

Lines 41-42. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to
obey laws contrary to this law.

Lines 43-44. On the colony of Sipontum (?).

Thus we see that the lex Thoria had two main objects in
view: (1) The guaranteeing to possessors full property in the
land which they occupied. (2) The freeing from vectigal or
scriptura the property of every one.

In this way was the reaction of the aristocracy comj)leted.
It left nothing of the Sempronian law. Appian ' has fully
comprehended all this, and, in his enumeration of the three
laws, connection between which he indicates, we see clearly the
entire revolutionary system, conducted, we must admit, with
a rare address and a perfidy which rendered the effect certain.
The aristocracy did not rest. As soon as they had gained the
people by their new bait of money and food, soothed them
by tlieir apparent generosity, and familiarized them M'ith the
idea that the pos>^essions of the nobles were not only legally
acquired but inviolable, then they raised the mask, and by
a bold step swept away the vedigalj' thus leaving their prop-
erty free. The enactment of this law virtually closed the long
struggle between patrician and plebeian over the public lands
of Rome, and left them as full property in the hands of the
rich nobility. The results could hardly have been otherwise.
Sumptuary laws, false economic principles, had closed all
channels^ of trade and manufacture to the nobility, while
conquest had filled their hands with gold and placed at their
disposal vast numbers* of slaves. There was but one chan-
nel open for the investment of this gold, — the agrarian.^
Farming and cattle-raising were the only occupations in which

' Long, I, 357. * Appian, I, c. 27. ' Long, he. cit. ; lline, loc. cil.

* Ihne, loc. cit. ; Long, loc. cit. ' Momm., loc. cit.

88 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [408

slaves could be used with advantage and so, as a natural result
of Roman economics, the plebeian, with little or no money
and subject to the military call, was compelled to enter into a
one-sided contest with capital and slave labor. So long as
these conditions existed so long would all the laws of the
world fail to save him from abject poverty and its attendant
evils.

Sec. 14. — Agrarian Movements between 111 and 86.

In the year following the enactment of the lex Thoria, or, by
some other authorities, in 105, an agrarian law was proposed
by a tribune named Marcus Philippus. Cicero is the only
writer who mentions it, and he has given us no information
concerning its tendency and dispositions. We only know from
him that it was rejected.^ Probably the whole thing \\as
merely a political ruse in order to gain an election or to be
handsomely bought off by the nobility. It, however, pre-
sents one point of interest to us. The introduction of the bill
was preceded by a speech, in which the tribune, in justifying
his undertaking, affirmed that there were not two thousand
citizens who had wealth. Cicero has made no attempt to
refute this, and must, therefore, have judged it true. It
reveals the fact that Rome was in a deplorable condition.

In chronological order the first agrarian law after the vain
attempt of Philippus was that of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus.
In the year 100, he brought forward a bill for the distri-
bution of land in Africa^ to the soldiers of Marios. Each
soldier was to receive one hundred jugera of land. No dis-
tinction was to be made between Roman and Latin. This

^Cie.,DeOff., II, 21.

' Lucius Appuleius Saturniuus, tribunus plebis seditiosus ut gratiam Ma-
rianorum militum pararet, legem tulit ut veteranis centena agri jugera in
Africa dividerentur .... Siciliam, Achaiam, Macedoniam novis colonis
destinavit; et aurum, dolo an scelere, Caepionis partum, ad emtionem
agrorum convertit. Aurel. Victor. DeVir. Illus., 73.

409] Agrarian Movements between 111 and 86. 89

bill received the sanction of the assembly and became a law,
but force was the chief instrumentality in bringing this about.
This law, so far as can be ascertained, was never enforced, so
that when the same man, three years later, brought forward
another agrarian bill, he took the precaution to add a clause
binding every senator, under heavy penalty, to confirm the
law by the most solemn oath.' The first law was enacted in
order to provide the soldiers of Marius with suitable farms
when they returned from the campaign in Numidia. The
author doubtless acted with the aid and hearty cooperation of
Marius. When Saturninus brought forward his second bill,
Marius^ had returned from the north as the hero of Aquae
Sextiae and was present to help. The nobility as one man
opposed the scheme ; the town-people were the clients of the
rich. If Marius^ and Saturninus were to succeed, it must be
by the aid of the country burgess and the soldier. With the
legions that fought at Vercellae drawn up in the town, amid
riot and bloodshed, the assembly passed the bill. The senate,
together with Marius himself, for a time demurred from tak-
ing the oath. Finally,* at the instigation of " the man from
the ranks," who had come to the conclusion that it was best
to subscribe, all save one, Metellus, took the oath. The law
enacted that assignments of land in the country of the Gauls,
in Sicily, Achaia, and Macedonia, should be made; that colonies
should be established, and that Marius should be the head of
the commission entrusted with the establishment of all these
settlements.^ These colonies were to consist of Roman citi-
zens ; and, in order that Latini,^ their companions in arras,
might participate in the grants, Marius was invested with
power to bestow the franchise upon a certain number of these.
But no one of these colonies was ever founded. The only

' App., I, 29 ; Plutarch, Marius, 29.

* Plutarch, Marius, loc. cii. =* App., Bell. Cv\, I, 30-33.

* App., loc. cit. * Aurelius Victor, 73.
"Cicero, De Oral., II, c. 7, 1 ; -pro Balbo, XIV ; pro Kabirio, XI.

90 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [410

colony of the year 100 was Eporedia ^ (Ivrea), in the north-
western Alps, and it is not likely that this was established
in accordance with the provisions of the enactment. The
law was to take effect in 99, and a change of party took place
before that time which sent Marius into practical banishment
and rewarded his partisan, Satnrninus, with death. The
optimates who were now in office paid no attention to the law,
and the senators forgot their oath. Another injnry is added
to the many which the Latini had suffered.

In the year 99, i. e., in the year following the death of
Saturninus, an agrarian law was proposed by the tribune
Titius, but we know nothing of its conditions. Cicero is the
only writer who mentions it and even his text is doubtful.^
According to one of his statements Titius was banished
because he had preserved a portrait of Saturninus, and the
knights deemed him for this reason a seditious citizen.
Valerius Maximus, who without doubt borrowed his facts
from Cicero, states that " Titius had rendered himself dear
to the people by having^ brought forward an agrarian law."
Cicero mentions in another place, the lex Titia* upon the
same page as the lex Saturnina and implies that it had been
enacted. If so it was disregarded and thus rendered void.

In 91 an agrarian law was proposed by Livius Drusus,
the son of the adversary of Gaius Gracchus, and, with his new
judiciary, the measure was carried and became a law.^ The
Italians were embraced in this law and were to have equal
rights with Roman citizens, but Drusus died before he had
time to carry his law into execution, and his law died with him.

' Long, I. * Cicero, P7'0 liabirio, 9.

^ Val. Max., VIII, 1, ^ 2: "Sext. Titius . . . agraria lege lata gratiosus
apud populum."

* De Legibus, II, 6. De Oral., II, 11.

^Ihne, V, 176-186; App., I, 35; Val. Max., IX, 5, 2: Cicero, De Oral.,
Ill, 1 ; Livy, EpiL, 71.

411] Effect of the Sullan Revolution. 91

Sec, 15. — Effect of the Sullan Revolution.

As soon as Sulla found himself established, he caused a
bill to pass the Coniitia Centuriata l>y means of which he
was empowered to inflict punishment upon certain Italian
communities. For the accomplishment of this purpose com-
missioners were appointed to cooperate with the garrisons
established throughout all Italy. The less guilty were
required to pay fines, pull down their walls, and raze their
citadels.' Those that had been guilty of continued opposition,
as Samnium, Lucania, and Etruria, had their territory in
whole or in part confiscated, their municipal rights cancelled,
immunities taken from them, which had been granted by old
treaties, and the Roman franchise,^ which they had been
granted by the Cinnan government, annulled. Such persons
received, instead, the lowest Latin rights which did not even
imply membership in any community and rendered them
destitute of civic constitution and the right of making a
testament.^ This latter treatment applied only to those
whose land was confiscated. Thus Sulla vindicated the
majesty of the Republic and at the time avoided furnishing
his enemies with a nucleus in Italian communities. In
Campania, the democratic colony established at Capua by
Cinna * was done away with and the domain given back to
the state, thus becoming ager publious. The whole territory
of Praeneste and Norba in Latium, and Spoletium in Umbria
was confiscated. The town of Sulmo in Pelio-nium was
razed. But more direful than all this was the punishment
which fell upon Etruria ^ and Samnium. These people had
marched upon Rome and, with the avowed determination of

' App., Bell. Civ., I, 94-100; Livy, Epit., 89. PlutarcJi, Life of Sulla.

«Ihne, V, 39L

^Moium., Ill, 428, note. See article on Sulla, in Brittannica.

^Momoi., Ill, 401.

^Moram., Ill, 429; Ihne, V, 392; Long.

92 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [412

exterminating the Roman people, liad engaged in battle at
the Colline gate. They were utterly destroyed and their
country left desolate. The territory of Samnium was not
even opened up for settlement, but left as a lair for wild
beasts. Henceforth from the Rubicon to the Straits of Sicily
there were to be none but Romans; the laws and the lan-
guage of the whole peninsula were to be the laws ^ and the
language of Rome.

To accomplish such an object as this, it was not enough to
destroy and make desolate, it became necessary to repopulate
the waste places and rebuild that which had been torn down.
Roman citizens had to be sent as colonists into the desolate
regions. Sulla, accordingly, undertook to carry out his plans
of colonization, the grandest and most comprehensive which
Rome had ever seen, and which indeed have had no parallel in
history till the settlement of the north of Ireland by Cromwell
and William III. The arrangements as to the property of
the Italian soil placed at the disposal of Sulla ^ all the Roman
domain lands which had been placed in usufruct to the allied
communities, and which now reverted to the Roman govern-
ment. It also placed at his disposal all the confiscated territo-
ries of the communities incurring punishment. Upon these
territories he established military colonies, and thus obtained
a three-fold result.^ He remunerated his soldiers for the
faithful service rendered him in long years of toil and danger.
He repeopled the regions desolated by war (except Samnium).
He provided a military protection for himself and the new
constitution which he established.

Most of his new settlements were directed to Etruria, Faesu-
lae and Arretium being among the number; others, to Latium*
and Campania, where Praeneste and Pompeii became Sullan

' Momm., Ill, 429. ' Momrn., loc. cil. ; Ihne, V, 391-395.

^Momm., 111,429.

^Momm., Ill, 430; Marquaidt u. Momm., Rom. Alter., IV, 111, totam
Italiam suis praesidiis obsidere atque ocupare ; Cicero, De Leg. Ayr., 2, 28, 75.

413] Agrarian Movements between 86 and 59. 93

colonies. A great part of these colonies were, after the Grac-
chan manner, merely grafted upon town-communities already
existing. The comprehensiveness of these settlements may be
seen in this fact that 20,000 allotments were * made in different
parts of Italy. Notwithstanding this vast disposal of territory,
Sulla gave lands to the temple of Diana at Mt. Tifata, while
the territory of Volaterrae and Arretium remained undisturbed.
He also revived the old plan of occupation which had been
legally forbidden in the year 118. Many of Sulla's intimate
friends availed themselves of this method of becoming masters
of large estates.

Sec. 16. — Agrarian Movements between 86 and 59.

The first agrarian movement after the Sullan Revolution
was that inaugurated by the tribune Rullus. This has be-
come the most famous of all the agrarian laws because of the
speeches made against it by the great adversary of Rullus,
Cicero, who succeeded in defeating the measure by reason
of his brilliant rhetoric. Plutarch ^ has thus analyzed this
proposition. " The tribunes of the people proposed danger-
ous innovations ; they demanded the establishment of ten
magistrates with absolute power, who, while disposing, as
masters, of Italy, Syria, and the new conquests of Pompey,
should have the right to sell the public lands; to prosecute
those whom they wished; to banish; to establish colonies;
to draw upon the public treasury for whatever money they
had need ; to levy and maintain what troops they deemed
necessary. The concession of so widely extended power
gained for the support of the law the most powerful men in
Rome. The colleague of Cicero, Antonius, was one of the

' App., I, 100; Cicero, De Legibus Agrariis, II, 28, 78; Ihne, V, 394;
Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 111 ; Zunipt, Comm. Epigr., 242-246; Cicero, yid
Alt., 1, 19, 4 : " Volaterranos et Arretinos, quornm agrnm Sulla piiblicarat."

* Plutarch, acero, 16-17.

94 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [414

first to favor it, in the hope of being one of the decemvirs.
Cicero opposed the new law in the senate and his eloquence
so completely overpowered even the tribunes that they had
not one word to reply. But they returned to the charge and
having gained the support of the people, they brought the
matter before the tribes. Cicero was in no way alarmed ; he
left the senate, appeared on the rostrum before the people and
spoke with so great force that he not only caused the law to
be rejected but took from the tribunes all hope of being suc-
cessful in similar enterprises."

In 61 we find Cicero advocating a bill similar in nature to
the one he had so brilliantly combatted in 64. In the last
instance, however, the law was proposed by Pompey, and in
favor of Pompey 's soldiers and that made all diiference to a
man who ever curried favor with the great. Flavins, who
proposed this law, was but the creature of Pompey. Cicero
has made known to us, in one of his letters to Atticus, the
conditions of the law which Flavins proposed and the modi-
fications which he himself wished to apply to it. Flavins
proposed to distribute lands both to the soldiers of Pompey
and the people ; to establish colonies ; to use for the purchase
of the lands for colonization, the subsidies which should accrue
in five years, from the recently conquered territories.^ The
senate rejected this law entirely, in the same spirit of opposi-
tion which it had shown to all agrarian laws, probably think-
ing that Pompey would thereby obtain too great an increase
of power.^ This was the last attempt at agrarian legislation
until the year 59, when Julius Csesar enacted his famous
law.

'Cicero, Ad. Alt., I, 19.

' Ibid. : " Huic toti rationi agrariae senatus adversabatur, snspicans
Pompeio novam quaindam potentiam quaeri."

415] Lex Julia Agraria. 95

Sec. 17. — Lex Julia Agraria.

During the first consulship of Cains Julius Caesar, he
brought forward an agrarian^ bill at the instigation of his
confederates. The main object of this bill was to furnish
land to the Asiatic army ^ of Pompey. In fine, this bill
was little more than a renewal of a bill presented by
Pompey the previous year (58), but rejected. Appian gives
the following account of this bill : " As soon as Caesar and
Bibulus^ (his colleague) entered on the consulship, they
began to quarrel and to make preparation to support their
parties by force. But Caesar who possessed great powers of
dissimulation, addressed Bibulus in the senate and urged him
to unanimity on the ground that their disputes would damage
the public interests. Having in this way obtained credit for
peaceable intentions, he threw Bibulus oif his guard, who had
no suspicion of what was going on, while Caesar, meanwhile,
was marshalling a strong force, and introducing into the senate
laws for favoring the poor, under which he proposed to dis-
tribute land among them and the best land in Italy, that
about* Capua which at the present time was let on public
account.^ He proposed to distribute this land among heads
of families who had three children, by which measure he
could gain the good will of a large multitude, for the number
of those who had three children was 20,000. This proposal
met with opposition from many of the senators, and Caesar,
pretending to be nuich vexed at their unfair behavior, left the
house and never called the senate together again during the

1 Livy, Epit., 103. - Momm., IV, 244.

^App., 5e//. Oit)., II, c. 10.

* Compare Dio Cassius, Bk., XXXVI II, c. 1 : "Tt;;/ 5« x'^P°-^ '^V ^e koiv))v
aira(rav ttA^;* ttjs KafiTravlSos fVffie, TavTrjv yap iv rf Stjuoctici.' i^aiperov Sia ttjj/
aperriv <rvyf0ov\fv(rev efvai."

* Compare Suetonius' Ccesar, c. 20: "Campum Stellatem, majoribus conse-
cratum, agrumque Campanum, ad subsidea reipublicae vectigalem relictum."

96 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [416

remainder of his consulship, but addressed the people from
the rostra. He, in the presencie of the assembly, asked the
opinion of Pompeius and Crassus, both of them approving,
and the people came to vote on them (the bills), with con-
cealed daggers. Now as the senate^ was not convened, for
one consul could not summon the senate without the consent
of the other consul, the senators used to meet at the house of
Bibulus, but they could make no real opposition to Caesar's
power. . . . Now Caesar secured the enactment of the laws,
and bound the people by an oath to the perpetual observance
of them, and he required the same oath from the senate. As
many of the senators opposed him, and among them Cato,
Cfesar proposed death as a penalty for not taking the oath
and the assembly ratified this proposal. Upon this all took
the oath immediately because of fear, and the tribunes also
took it, for there was no longer any use in making opposition
after the proposal was ratified."

This agrarian law did not affect the existing rights of
property and heritable possession. It destined for distribu-
tion only the Italian domain land, that is to say, merely
the territory of Capua, as this was all that belonged to the
state.'^ If this was not enough to satisfy the demand, other
Italian lands were to be bought out of the revenue from the
eastern provinces at the taxable value rated in the censorial
rolls. The number of persons settled on the Campanus ager
is said ^ to have been 20,000 citizens who had each three
children or more. The land was not distributed by lot, but
at the pleasure of the commissioners, each one receiving some
30 jugera.'' If 20,000 heads of families with tiieir wives and
three children in each family were settled in Campania, the
whole number of settlers would be 100,000. This great
number could scarcely leave Rome at one time, and we find

' App., II, c. 11.

* App., II, c. 20, and Suetonius, Julius Casar, c. 20.

^Suetonius, loc. cil. * Lange, Rom. Alter., Ill, 273.

417] Lex Julia Agraria. 97

that as late as 51 the land was not all assigned.' While
the tenor of the law does not imply that it was the intention
to reward military service with grants of land, yet we may
be sure that the veterans of Pompey were not forgotten.^
There are no extant authorities which speak of the settlement
of the Campanian land that say any thing about the soldiers
settled there, unless it be Cicero. He speaks of the Cam-
panian territory being taken out of the class that con-
tributed a revenue to the state in order that it might be
given to soldiers,^ and he appearsvto refer to this time (59).
Mommsen says that " the old soldiers as well as the temporary
lessees to be ejected were simply recommended to the special
consideration of the land distributors." * These latter were a
commission of twenty appointed by the state. Caesar, at his
own request, was excused from serving, but Pompey and
Crassus were tlie ciiief ones, thus furnishing sufficient reason
for supposing that the soldier was provided for. The passage
of this bill amounted in substance to the reestablishment of
the democratic colony founded by Marius and Cinna and
afterwards abolished by Sulla.^ Capua now became a Roman
colony after having had no municipal constitution for one
hundred and fifty-two years, when the city with all its
dependencies was made a prefecture administered by a
prefect of Rome. The revenues from this district were
doubtless no longer needed, as those from Pontus and Syria ^
supplied all the needs of the government, but it is difficult to
see what benefit could be reaped from the ejection of the
thrifty farmers who, as tenants of the state, cultivated this
territory and paid their rents regularly into the state coffers.

• > Cicero, ad AtL, VIII, 4.

•Dion Cassius, 45, c. 12; Cicero, ad Alt., X, 8.

2 Cicero, Phil., II, 39: "agrum Campanum, qui cum de vectigalibus
exiuiebatur, ut militibus daretur." Marquardt u. Momin., Rom. Alter.
IV. 114.

*Momm., IV, 244.

» Momm., Ill, 392, 428. « Alomm., Ill, 392, 428.

98 Public Lands of the Romian Republic. [418

Wherever the new settlers were brought in, the old cultivators
were turned out. No ancient writer says anything about the
condition of these people. Cicero, in his second speech upon
the land bill of RuUus, when speaking of the consequences
that would follow its enactment, declared that if the Campa-
nian cultivators were ejected they would have no place to go,
and he truly says that such a measure would not be a settle-
ment of plebeians upon the land, but an ejection and expul-
sion of them from it.^

Did it pay to send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers ^
who, for two generations, had been fed at the public charge
from the corn-bins of Rome, simply in order that a like
number of honest peasants, who had been not only self-sup-
porting but had paid a large part of the Roman revenue,
should be compelled to sacrifice their goods in a glutted
market and become debauched and idle ?

Sec. 18. — Disteibution of Land after the Civil
War between C^sar and Pompey.

After Pompey had been vanquished at Pharsaiia, and the
republicans in Africa, Csesar proceeded to distribute lands
to his soldiers in accordance with his promise to give them
lands, " not by taking them from their proprietors as Sulla
did ; not by mixing colonists with citizens despoiled of their
goods and thus breeding perpetual strife, — but by dividing
both public land and his own private property,^ and, if this
were not sufficient, by buying wliat was needed." Appian
says that Casar did not succeed in carrying out these promises
in full, but that veterans were in some cases settled upon lands
legally belongiug to others.* However, his soldiers were not
Imddled together like those of Sulla, in military colonies of

' Cicero, RuL, II, c. 31. « Cicero, Phil., II, 17.

3App., 94. ••App, II, 120.

419] Disti'ibution of Land after the Civil War. 99

their own, but wlien they settled in Italy they were scattered '
as much as possible throughout the entire peninsula in order
to make them more easily amenable to the laws.^ In Cam-
pania, where Ciesar had lands at his disposal, the soldiers
were settled in colonies, and so, close together. According to
a letter of Cicero to Paetus, among the lands distributed were
those of Veii and Capena. Historians have estimated that
there were 100,000 soldiers who received lands in Italy by
this distribution.

Sec. 19. — Distributions from the Death of C^sar
TO THE Time of Augustus.

The death of Csesar in no way stopped the assignment of
lands, but rather rendered all possession of land in Italy
unsafe. A few weeks after his death two new laws were
promulgated, one by the tribune, Lucius Antonius,^ a lex
agraria, and the other the lex de eolonis in agros deducendis
by the consul Marcus Antonius. The first was enacted on
the 5th of June,* and ordered that all the ager jmhlicus still
at the disposal of the state, including the Pomptine marshes
which Cpesar had at one time planned to drain, but had not,
be divided among the veterans and citizens. It was abrogated
by a senatus consultum of the 4th of January, 43,^ but was
nevertheless carried into execution almost immediately with
great relentlessness towards the enemies^ of Antonius. The
second, the Lex Antonia, perished in April of 44, and had
as a result the establishment of a colony near Casilinum/ which
Csesar had alreadv colonized : tlie remainder of the domain

'Long; Momiu. -Suetonius, Julius Ccesar, 38.

^L. Langii, Conimentationis de Legibus Antoniis a Cicerone Phil., V, 4,
10 ; Commemoratis particula prior et posterior ; Lipsiae, 1882 ; Lange, Rom.
Alter., Ill, 499, 503, 526; Marquardt u. Momiu., Edm. Alter., IV, 116.

* Lange, Comm., II, 14. * Cicero, Phil., VI, 5, 14 ; XI, 6, 13.

« Phil., V, 7, 20. ' Langii, Comm., II, 14.

100 Public Lands of the Roman Republic. [420

lands, the ager Campanus and ager Leontinus, was converted
into a reward for the supporters of Antonius/ This was also
set aside by the new law of the consul C. Vibius Pansa, in
February, 43.'

Second Triumvirate. When Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius
were reconciled, thus forming the second triumvirate, the
treaty sanctioning this new state of affairs stipulated, in favor
of the soldiers, a new distribution of lands, i. e., a new agra-
rian law ; Appian says : — " In order to increase the zeal of
the army, the triumvirs promised to the soldiers, indepen-
dent^ of other results of victory and a gratuity of colonies,
18 Italian towns, important by means of their wealth and the
richness of their lands. These were divided among the sol-
diers with their lands and buildings, as conquered towns.
Anaong the number were Capua, Rhegiura, Vemisia, Bene-
ventum, Nuceria and Vibo. Thus the most beautiful part of
Italy became the prey of the soldiers."

Dion Cassius, Suetonius and Velleius Paterculus all men-
tion these assignments. After the battle of Philippi and the
defeat and death of Brutus and Cassius, 1 70,000 men were
provided for, in accordance with these promises, out of the
goods of the proscribed and the lands confiscated to the state.
The lands of the towns mentioned in Appian were taken
under the form of a forced sale, but the purchase money was
never paid owing to the bankrupt condition of the treasury.

If we examine into the nature of these agrarian laws since
the death of Julius Ciesar, we shall find that they differ in all
respects from previous enactments :

1. They were executed at the expense not only of public
domains but also of private property.

'Cic, Phil., II, 17, 43; II, 39, 101; III, 9, 22; VIII, 8, 26; Dio Cass.,
45, 30 ; 46, 8.

«Cic., Phil., V, 4, 10; V, 19, 53; X, 8, 17; VIII, 15, 31.

^ " A6(re<Ti rS)v 'IraXiKoov irdKeaiv oKTcuKalSfKa . . . wcrirfp avrots a.vr\ rrjs
TToKefjiias Sopi\rinTOi yivifxtvai. . . . Ovtu fxiv to. KaWicrra rfjs 'IraAias rtfi
(TTparif^ Sifypttpoy." App., l\, ?>.

421] DistHbulion of Land after the Civil War. 101

2. They were the work of one man and not of the
entire people.

3. The name of the people was never mentioned in these
laws; they were enacted wholly for the profit of the soldiery.
Before the distributions made by the triumvirate, the public
lands had been absorbed, or at least the fragments remaining
were in no way sufficient to recompense the service of the
veterans.

Upon the establishment of the empire, the public lands
became a vast manorial estate whose over-lord was the
emperor himself.

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