152 Disbanded soldiers 



recent taste of profits. If a large section of the farmer class seemed 

 in danger of extinction through the absorption of their farms in * 

 great estates, legislation to prevent it was not likely to have the warm 

 support of these capitalists. That financial interests were immensely 

 powerful in the later Roman Republic is universally admitted, but I 

 do not think sufficient allowance is made for their influence in the 

 time of exhaustion at the very beginning of the second century BC. 

 The story of the trientabula, discussed above, is alone enough to shew ! 

 how this influence was at work ; and it was surely no isolated phe- 

 nomenon. We have therefore reason to believe that many of the 

 farmers dispossessed by the war never returned to their former homes, 

 and we naturally ask what became of them. Some no doubt were 

 unsettled and unfitted for the monotonous toil of rustic life by the 

 habits contracted in campaigning. Such men would find urban idle- 

 ness, or further military service with loot in prospect, more to their 

 taste : some of these would try both experiences in turn. We trace 

 their presence in the growth of a city mob, and in the enlistment of 

 veterans to give tone and steadiness to somewhat lukewarm armies in 

 new wars. But it is not to be assumed that this element constituted \/ 

 the whole, or even the greater part, of those who did not go back to 

 their old farms. The years 200-180 saw the foundation of 19 new 

 coloniae, and it is reasonable to suppose that the coloni included 

 number of the men unsettled by the great war. The group founded 

 in 194-2 were designed to secure the coast of southern Italy against 

 attack by an Eastern power controlling large fleets. Those of 189-1 

 were in the North, the main object being to strengthen the Roman 

 grip of Cisalpine Gaul. But already in 198-5 it had been found 

 necessary to support the colonies on the Po (Placentia and Cremona) 

 against attacks of the Gauls, and in 190 they were reinforced with 

 contingents of fresh colonists. For the firm occupation of northern 

 Italy was a policy steadily kept in view, and only interrupted for a 

 time by the strain of Eastern wars. 



In trying to form a notion of the condition of agriculture in the 

 second century BC, and particularly of the labour question, we must 

 never lose sight of the fact that military service was still obligatory 1 

 on the Roman citizen, and that this was a period of many wars. The 

 farmer-soldier, liable to be called up at any time until his forty-sixth 

 year, might have to break off important work which could not without 

 risk of loss be left in other hands. At the worst, a sudden call might 



1 That is, on those possessed of a certain minimum of property, which was lowered in 

 course of time. Originally reckoned on land only, thus reckoning only those settled on farms 

 (adsidui). See Mommsen Staatsrecht index. The rise in the census numbers between 131 

 and 125 BC is explained by Greenidge History p 150 as due to the increase of adsidui 

 through effect of Gracchan legislation. 



