Gracchi Marius and Sulla | Page 5

recruiting field for the army. Gangs of slaves became more
numerous, and were treated with increased brutality; and as men who
do not work for their own money are more profuse in spending it than
those who do, the extravagance of the Roman possessors helped to
swell the tide of luxury, which rose steadily with foreign conquest, and
to create in the capital a class free in name indeed, but more degraded,
if less miserable, than the very slaves, who were treated like beasts
through Italy. It is not certain whether anyone except a patrician could
claim 'occupation' as a right; but, as the possessors could in any case
sell the land to plebeians, it fell into the hands of rich men, to
whichever class they belonged, both at Rome, and in the Roman
colonies, and the Municipia; and as it was never really their
property--'dominium'--but the property of the State, it was a constant
source of envy and discontent among the poor.
[Sidenote: Why complaints about the Public Land became louder at the
close of the second century B.C.] As long as fresh assignations of land
and the plantations of colonies went on, this discontent could be kept
within bounds. But for a quarter of a century preceding our period
scarcely any fresh acquisitions of land had been made in Italy, and,
with no hope of new allotments from the territory of their neighbours,
the people began to clamour for the restitution of their own. [Sidenote:
Previous agrarian legislation. Spurius Cassius.] The first attempt to
wrest public land from possessors had been made long before this by
Spurius Cassius; and he had paid for his daring with his life. [Sidenote:
The Licinian Law.] More than a century later the Licinian law forbade
anyone to hold above 500 'jugera' of public land, for which, moreover,
a tenth of the arable and a fifth of the grazing produce was to be paid to
the State. The framers of the law are said to have hoped that possessors
of more than this amount would shrink from making on oath a false
return of the land which they occupied, and that, as they would be
liable to penalties for exceeding the prescribed maximum, all land
beyond the maximum would be sold at a nominal price (if this
interpretation of the [Greek: kat' oligon] of Appian may be hazarded) to
the poor. It is probable that they did not quite know what they were
aiming at, and certain that they did not foresee the effects of their

measure. In a confused way the law may have been meant to comprise
sumptuary, political, and agrarian objects. It forbade anyone to keep
more than a hundred large or five hundred small beasts on the common
pasture-land, and stipulated for the employment of a certain proportion
of free labour. The free labourers were to give information of the crops
produced, so that the fifths and tenths might be duly paid; and it may
have been the breakdown of such an impossible institution which led to
the establishment of the 'publicani.' [Sidenote: Composite nature of the
Licinian law.] Nothing, indeed, is more likely than that Licinius and
Sextius should have attempted to remedy by one measure the specific
grievance of the poor plebeians, the political disabilities of the rich
plebeians and the general deterioration of public morals; but, though
their motives may have been patriotic, such a measure could no more
cure the body politic than a man who has a broken limb, is blind, and in
a consumption can be made sound at every point by the heal-all of a
quack. Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its political
provisions, a dead letter. Licinius was the first man prosecuted for its
violation, and the economical desire of the nation became intensified.
[Sidenote: The Flaminian law.] In 232 B.C. Flaminius carried a law for
the distribution of land taken from the Senones among the plebs.
Though the law turned out no possessors, it was opposed by the Senate
and nobles. Nor is this surprising, for any law distributing land was
both actually and as a precedent a blow to the interests of the class
which practised occupation. What is at first sight surprising is that
small parcels of land, such as must have been assigned in these
distributions, should have been so coveted. [Sidenote: Why small
portions of land were so coveted.] The explanation is probably fourfold.
Those who clamoured for them were wretched enough to clutch at any
change; or did not realise to themselves the dangers and drawbacks of
what they desired; or intended at once to sell their land to some richer
neighbour; or, lastly, longed to keep a slave or two, just as the primary
object of the 'mean white' in America used