1 74 possessiones 



XXIV. AGRICULTURE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY 



PERIOD. 



From the death of Cato in 149 BC to the date of Varro's book de 

 re rustica (about 37 BC) is a space of more than a century. The one 

 great fact of this momentous period in relation to agriculture is the 

 ^publjc recognition of the decay of the small farmers over a large parfj 

 of Italy, and theTvain attempt to revive a class well known to have 

 been the backbone of Roman strength. But the absorption of small 

 holdings in large estates had already gone so far in the affected districts 

 that there was practically only one direction in which land-reformers 

 could moveATo confiscate private property was forbidden by Roman 

 respect for fegal rights: it appears in Roman history only after the 

 failure of the Gracchan movement, and as a phenomenon of civil war. 

 There were however great areas of land of which the state was still in 

 law proprietor, held by individuals (often in very large blocks) under I 

 a system of recognized occupation known as possessio. Tradition 

 alleged that in Rome's early days this ager publicus had been a cause 

 of quarrels between the needy Commons who hungered for land and 

 the rich nobles who strove to monopolize the land annexed by war and 

 now state-property. It was known that one of the effects produced by 

 the political equalization of the Orders in the fourth century BC had 

 been legislation to restrain land-monopoly. But the Licinian laws of 

 367 BC had not made an end of the evil. Soon evaded, they had become 

 in course of time wholly inoperative. The new Patricio-Plebeian 

 nobility quieted the claims of the poor by colonial foundations and 

 allotments of land in newly-conquered districts, while they continued 

 to enrich themselves by 'possession' of the public land. Undisturbed 

 possession gradually obscured the distinction between such holdings 

 and the estates held in full ownership as ager privatus. Boundaries 

 were confused: mixed estates changed hands by inheritance or sale 

 without recognition of a legal difference in the tenure of different portions: 

 where improvements had been carried out, they applied indistinguish- 

 ably to lands owned or possessed. The greater part of these possession^ 

 was probably not arable but pasture, grazed by numerous flocks and 

 herds in charge of slave herdsmen. Now in Cato's time the imports 

 of foreign corn were already rendering the growth of cereal crops for 

 the market an unremunerative enterprise in the most accessible parts 

 of Italy. Grazing paid better. It required fewer hands, but considerable 

 capital and wide areas of pasturage. It could be combined with the 

 culture of the vine and olive; for the live-stock, brought down to the 

 farmstead in the winter months, supplied plentiful manure. Moreover, 

 the wholesale employment of slaves enabled a landlord to rely on a 



