Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 | Page 5

of the
Tarquins, proposed a division of a portion of the public land among the
poor commons, he did no more than had often been done by the Roman
kings, with good effect, and with strict legality. Much of the public
land was occupied by wealthy men, as tenants of the state; and some of
these his law would have ousted from profitable spots, while the rest
were to be forced to pay their rents, which they had done very
irregularly or not at all. The operation of all Agrarian laws like that of
Cassius was, undoubtedly, a matter well to be considered; for, after a
man has long occupied a piece of land, he regards it as an act of
injustice to be peremptorily removed therefrom, and he ought to have,
at least, the privilege of buying it, if its possession be necessary to his
support. This feeling must have been the stronger in the bosom of the
Roman occupant in proportion to his poverty, but to legal possession he
could make no claim. The position he held was that of tenant at will to
the state, and he could be legally ejected at any moment. But it was not
from poor occupants of the public domain, whose number was
necessarily small, that opposition was experienced. It came from the
rich, who had all but monopolized the use of that domain; and, in the
time of Spurius Cassius, it was complicated with that quarrel of caste
which we denominate the contest between the Patricians and the
Plebeians. Property and political power were both involved in the
dispute. The Patricians knew that the success of Cassius would make
against them in two ways:--it would strengthen the Plebeians, by lifting
them out of the degradation consequent on poverty, and so render them
more dangerous antagonists in political warfare; and it would render
the Patricians less able to contend with aspiring foes, by taking from
them one of the sources of their wealth. Cassius failed, and was
executed, having been tried and condemned by the Patricians, who then
alone constituted the Roman people.
More than a century after the failure of Cassius, the Agrarian question
was again brought before the Roman nation, on a large scale. This was
the time when the famous Licinian rogations, by the adoption of which
a civil revolution was effected in Rome, were brought forward. They
provided for the passage of an Agrarian law, for an equitable settlement
of debts, and that thereafter one of the two Consuls should always be a
Plebeian. It is something to be especially noted, that C. Licinius Stolo,

the man from whom these laws take their name, was not a needy
political adventurer, but a very wealthy man, his possessions being
mainly in land; and that he belonged to a gens (the Licinii) who were
noted in after days for their immense wealth, among them being that
Crassus whose avarice became proverbial, and whose surname was
_Dives_, or the Rich. The Licinian Agrarian law provided, that no one
should possess more than five hundred jugers of the public land, (_ager
publicus_,) that the state should resume lands that had been illegally
seized by individuals, that a rent should be paid by the occupants of the
public domain, that only freemen should be employed on that domain,
and that every Plebeian should receive seven jugers of the public land
in absolute property, to be taken from those lands which the state was
to resume from Patricians who possessed (that is to say, who occupied)
more than five hundred jugers. Such were the main provisions of the
law, which did not touch private property of any kind. The state was
merely to assert its undisputed legal right over the public domain, and
the Plebeians became landholders, which was the best thing that could
happen to the republic, and which was what was aimed at in every
community of antiquity. Even the partial observance of this law was the
cause of the supremacy of Rome being established over the finest
portions of the ancient world. Had Licinius failed, Rome would have
gone down in her contest with the Samnites, and the latter people
would have become masters of Italy. As it was, his success created the
Roman people; and from the time of that success must be dated the
formation of the Roman constitution as it was recognized and acted on
during the best period of the Republic. True, the Agrarian law was but
one of three measures which he carried through in the face of all the
opposition the Patricians could make; but the other laws were of a
kindred character, and they all worked together for good. It was the
triumph of the Plebeians for the benefit of all. The revolution then
effected