60 



AGRARIAN LAWS. 



were occasioned by the opposition of persons who liiul 

 settled <' these lands without lui\ ill"' acquired any 

 title to them. These laws of (lie Romans \\-eie so 

 intimately connected with their system of establish- 

 ing colonies in tho different parts of their territories, 

 that, to attain a proper understanding c.f them, it is 

 necessary to bestow a momc m's C-OMM,!. ration on that 

 system. According to Dionysius of Halicariiassus, 

 their plan of sending out colonists, or settlers, began 

 as early as the time of Romulus, who generally 

 placed colonists from the city of Rome on the lands 

 taken in \vnr. The same policy was pursued by the 

 kings who succeeded him ; and, when the kings were 

 expelled, it was adopted by the senate and the 

 people, and then by the dictators. There were se- 

 veral reasons inducing the Roman government to 

 pursue this policy, which was continued for a long 

 period without any intermission ; first, to have a 

 check upon the conquered people ; secondly, to 

 have a protection against the incursions of an enemy ; 

 thirdly, to augment their population ; fourthly, to 

 free the city of Rome from an excess of inhabitants ; 

 fifthly, to quiet seditions ; and, sixthly, to reward 

 their veteran soldiers. These reasons abundantly 

 appear in all the best ancient authorities. In the 

 later periods of the republic, a principal motive for 

 establishing colonies was to have the means of dis- 

 posing of soldiers, and rewarding them with dona- 

 tions of lands ; and such colonies were, on this ac- 

 count, denominated military colonies. Now, for 

 whichever of these causes a colony was to be estab- 

 iNhed, it was necessary that some law respecting it 

 should be passed, either by the senate or people ; 

 which law, in either case, was called lex aeraria, 

 an agrarian law, which will now be explained. An 

 agrarian law contained various provisions ; it de- 

 scribed the hind which was to be divided, and the 

 classes of people among whom, and their numbers, 

 and by whom, and in wliat manner, and by what 

 bounds, the territory was to be parcelled out. The 

 mode of dividing the lands, as far as we now under- 

 stand it, was twofold ; either a Roman population 

 was distributed over the particular territory, without 

 any formal erection of a colony, or general grants of 

 lands were made to such citizens as were willing to 

 form a colony there. The lands which were thus 

 distributed were of different descriptions; which we 

 must keep in mind, in order to have a just concep- 

 tion of the operation of the agrarian laws. They 

 were either lands taken from an enemy, and not ac- 

 tually treated by the government as public property, 

 or lands which were regarded and occupied by the 

 Roman people as public property ; or public lands 

 which Iiad been artfully and clandestinely taken 

 possession of by rich and powerful individuals ; or, 

 lastly, lands which were bought with money from the 

 public treasury, for the purpose of being distributed. 

 Now, all such agrarian laws as comprehended either 

 lands of the enemy, or those which were treated and 

 occupied as public property, or those which had been 

 bought with the public money, were carried into 

 effect without any public commotions ; but those 

 which operated to disturb the opulent and pewerful 

 citizens in the possession of the lands which they un- 

 justly occupied, and to place colonists (or settlers) 

 on them, were never promulgated without creat- 

 ing great disturbances. The first law of this kind 

 tras proposed by Spurius Cassius ; and the same 

 measure was afterwards attempted by the tribunes of 

 the people almost every year, but was as constantly 

 defeated by various artifices of the nobles ; it was, 

 however, at length passed. It appears, both from 

 Dionysius and Varro (de Re Rustica, lib. 1), that, at 

 first, Romulus allotted two jugera (about one and a 

 fourth acre) of the public lands to each man ; then 



Nuuia divided the hinds which Romulus had taken 

 in war, and also a portion of the other public lands; 

 afterwards Tullus divided those lands which Ro- 

 mulus and Numa had appropriated to the private 

 expenses of the real establishment; then Servius 

 distributed among those who had recently become 

 citizens, certain hinds which had been taken from 

 the Veientes, the Oerites, and Tarquinii ; and, 

 upon the expulsion of the kings, il appears that 

 the lands of Tarquin the Proud, with the excep- 

 tion of the Campus Martins, were, by a decree of 

 the senate, granted to the people. After this pe- 

 riod, as the republic, by means of ils continual wars, 

 received continual accessions of conquered lands, 

 those lands were either occupied by colonists or re- 

 mained public property, until the period when Spu- 

 rius Cassius, twenty-four years after the expulsion 

 of the kings, proposed a law (already mentioned), by 

 which one part of the land taken from the Ilernici 

 was allotted to the Latins, and the other part to the 

 Roman people ; but, as this law comprehended cer- 

 tain lands which he accused private persons of having 

 taken from the public, and as the senate aKo opposed 

 him, he could not accomplish the passage of it. This, 

 according to Livy, was the first proposal of an agra- 

 rian law; of which he adds, no one was ever pro- 

 posed, down to the period of his remembrance, with- 

 out very great public commotions. Dionysius informs 

 us, further, that this public land, by the negligence 

 of tile magistrates, had been suffered to fall into the 

 possession of rich men ; but that, notwithstanding 

 this, a division of the lands would have taken place 

 under this law, if Cassius had not included among 

 the receivers of the bounty the Latins and Hernici, 

 whom he had but a little while before made citizens. 

 After much debate in the senate upon this subject, a 

 decree was passed to the following effect : that com- 

 missioners, called decemvirs, appointed from among 

 the persons of consular rank, should mark out, by 

 boundaries^ the public lands, and should designate 

 how much should be let out, and how much should 

 be distributed among the common people; that, if 

 any land had been acquired by joint services in war, 

 it should be divided, according to treaty, with those 

 allies who had been admitted to citizenship ; and 

 that the choice of the commissioners, the apportion- 

 ment of the lands, and all other things relating to 

 this subject, should be committed to the care of the 

 succeeding consuls. Seventeen years after this, there 

 was a vehement contest about the division, which the 

 tribunes proposed to make of lands then unjustly oc- 

 cupied by the rich men ; and, three years after that, 

 a similar attempt on the part of the tribunes would, 

 according to Livy, have produced a ferocious con- 

 troversy, had it not been for the address of Quintus 

 Fabius. Some years after this, the tribunes pro- 

 posed another law of the same kind, by which the 

 estates of a great part of the nobles would have been 

 seized to the public use ; but it was stopped in iis 

 progress. Appian says, tliat the nobles and rich 

 men, partly by getting possession of the public lands, 

 partly by buying out the shares of indigent owners, 

 had made themselves owners of all the lands in Italy, 

 and had thus, by degrees, accomplished the removal 

 of the common people from their possessions. This 

 abuse stimulated Tiberius Gracchus to revive the 

 Licinian law, which prohibited any individual from 

 holding more than 500 jngera, or about 350 acres, 

 of land ; and would, consequently, compel the owners 

 to relinquish all the surplus to the use of the public ; 

 but Gracchus proposed that the owners should be 

 paid the value of the lands relinquished. The law, 

 however, did not operate to any great extent, and, 

 after having cost the Gracchi their lives, was by de- 

 grees rendered wholly inoperative. After this period, 



