Land and state-creditors 143 



able to raise in the critical period of the great war. In the year 210, 

 when the financial strain was extreme, a very large contribution of the 

 kind took place. In 204 the Senate arranged a scheme 1 for repay- 

 ment in three instalments. In 200 the lenders, apparently alarmed by 

 the delay in paying the second instalment, became clamorous. The 

 Punic war was at an end, and war with Philip of Macedon just de- 

 clared: they wanted to get their money back. We are told 2 that the 

 state was not able to find the cash, and that the cry of many creditors 

 was ' there are plenty of farms for sale, and we want to buy.' The 

 Senate devised a middle way of satisfying them. They were to be 

 offered the chance of acquiring the state domain-land within fifty 

 miles of Rome at a valuation fixed by the consuls. This seems to 

 mean, up to the amount of the instalment then in question. But they 

 were not thereby to receive the land in full private 3 property. A quit- 

 rent of one as was to be set on each iugerum, in evidence that the 

 property still belonged to the state. Thus, when the state finances 

 should admit, they might get back their ready money if they preferred 

 it and give back the land to the state. The offer was gladly accepted, 

 and the land taken over on these terms was called ' third-part land ' 

 (trientabulum) as representing \ of the money lent. The final instal- 

 ment appears to have been paid in cash 4 in the year 196. 



That these patriotic creditors were men with a keen eye for a 

 bargain, and that they made a good one in the above arrangement, is 

 pretty clear. This is the only occasion on which we hear of the trien- 

 tabula plan of settling a money claim by what was in effect a perpetual 

 lease at a nominal rent terminable by reconversion into a money claim 

 at the pleasure of the lessee. No doubt the valuation was so made as 

 to give the creditor a good margin of security over and above the sum 

 secured. There was therefore no temptation to call for the cash and 

 surrender the land. From the reference 6 to trientabula in the agrarian \ 

 law of in BC it would seem that some at least of these beneficial 

 tenancies were still in existence after the lapse of nearly 90 years. 

 They would pass by inheritance or sale as the ordinary possessiones of 

 state domains did, and eventually become merged in the private pro- 

 perties tfrat were the final result of the land-legislation of the revolu- 

 tionary age. For the capitalists, already powerful in 200 BC, became 

 more and more powerful as time went on. And this use Of public land 

 to discharge public debts was undoubtedly a step tending to promote 

 the formation of the great estates (latifundia) which were the ruin of 



1 Liv xxix 16 1-3. 2 Liv xxxi 13. 



3 See Rudorff gromatische Institutionen pp 287-8. 



4 Liv xxxni 42 3. 



5 lex agraria.) line 31, in Bruns'y0fcr or Wordsworth's Specimens. 



