In the year following the enactment of thelex Thoria, or, by some other authorities, in 105, an agrarian law was proposed by a tribune named Marcus Philippus. Cicero is the only writer who mentions it, and he has given us no information concerning its tendency and dispositions. We only know from him that it was rejected.[1]Probably the whole thing was merely a political ruse in order to gain an election or to be handsomely bought off by the nobility. It, however, presents one point of interest to us. The introduction of the bill was preceded by a speech, in which the tribune, in justifying his undertaking, affirmed that there were not two thousand citizens who had wealth. Cicero has made no attempt to refute this, and must, therefore, have judged it true. It reveals the fact that Rome was in a deplorable condition.
In chronological order the first agrarian law after the vain attempt of Philippus was that of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. In the year 100, he brought forward a bill for the distribution of land in Africa[2]to the soldiers of Marius. Each soldier was to receive one hundred jugera of land. No distinction was to be made between Roman and Latin. This bill received the sanction of the assembly and became a law, but force was the chief instrumentality in bringing this about. This law, so far as can be ascertained, was never enforced, so that when the same man, three years later, brought forward another agrarian bill, he took the precaution to add a clause binding every senator, under heavy penalty, to confirm the law by the most solemn oath.[3]The first law was enacted in order to provide the soldiers of Marius with suitable farms when they returned from the campaign in Numidia. The author doubtless acted with the aid and hearty coöperation of Marius. When Saturninus brought forward his second bill, Marius[4]had returned from the north as the hero of Aquae Sextiae and was present to help. The nobility as one man opposed the scheme; the town-people were the clients of the rich. If Marius[5]and Saturninus were to succeed, it must be by the aid of the country burgess and the soldier. With the legions that fought at Vercellae drawn up in the town, amid riot and bloodshed, the assembly passed the bill. The senate, together with Marius himself, for a time demurred from taking the oath. Finally,[6]at the instigation of "the man from the ranks," who had come to the conclusion that it was best to subscribe, all save one, Metellus, took the oath. The law enacted that assignments of land in the country of the Gauls, in Sicily, Achaia, and Macedonia, should be made; that colonies should be established, and that Marius should be the head of the commission entrusted with the establishment of all these settlements.[7]These colonies were to consist of Roman citizens; and, in order that Latini,[8]their companions in arms, might participate in the grants, Marius was invested with power to bestow the franchise upon a certain number of these. But no one of these colonies was ever founded. The only colony of the year 100 was Eporedia[9](Ivrea), in the northwestern Alps, and it is not likely that this was established in accordance with the provisions of the enactment. The law was to take effect in 99, and a change of party took place before that time which sent Marius into practical banishment and rewarded his partisan, Saturninus, with death. The optimates who were now in office paid no attention to the law, and the senators forgot their oath. Another injury is added to the many which the Latini had suffered.
In the year 99,i.e., in the year following the death of Saturninus, an agrarian law was proposed by the tribune Titius, but we know nothing of its conditions. Cicero is the only writer who mentions it and even his text is doubtful.[10]According to one of his statements Titius was banished because he had preserved a portrait of Saturninus, and the knights deemed him for this reason a seditious citizen. Valerius Maximus, who without doubt borrowed his facts from Cicero, states that "Titius had rendered himself dear to the people by having[11]brought forward an agrarian law." Cicero mentions in another place, thelex Titia[12]upon the same page as thelex Saturninaand implies that it had been enacted. If so it was disregarded and thus rendered void.
In 91 an agrarian law was proposed by Livius Drusus, the son of the adversary of Gaius Gracchus, and, with his new judiciary, the measure was carried and became a law.[13]The Italians were embraced in this law and were to have equal rights with Roman citizens, but Drusus died before he had time to carry his law into execution, and his law died with him.
As soon as Sulla found himself established, he caused a bill to pass the Comitia Centuriata by means of which he was empowered to inflict punishment upon certain Italian communities. For the accomplishment of this purpose commissioners were appointed to coöperate with the garrisons established throughout all Italy. The less guilty were required to pay fines, pull down their walls, and raze their citadels.[1]Those that had been guilty of continued opposition, as Samnium, Lucania, and Etruria, had their territory in whole or in part confiscated, their municipal rights cancelled, immunities taken from them, which had been granted by old treaties, and the Roman franchise,[2]which they had been granted by the Cinnan government, annulled. Such persons received, instead, the lowest Latin rights which did not even imply membership in any community and rendered them destitute of civic constitution and the right of making a testament.[3]This latter treatment applied only to those whose land was confiscated. Thus Sulla vindicated the majesty of the Republic and at the time avoided furnishing his enemies with a nucleus in Italian communities. In Campania, the democratic colony established at Capua by Cinna[4]was done away with and the domain given back to the state, thus becomingager publicus. The whole territory of Praeneste and Norba in Latium, and Spoletium in Umbria was confiscated. The town of Sulmo in Pelignium was razed. But more direful than all this was the punishment which fell upon Etruria[5]and Samnium. These people had marched upon Rome and, with the avowed determination of exterminating the Roman people, had engaged in battle at the Colline gate. They were utterly destroyed and their country left desolate. The territory of Samnium was not even opened up for settlement, but left as a lair for wild beasts. Henceforth from the Rubicon to the Straits of Sicily there were to be none but Romans; the laws and the language of the whole peninsula were to be the laws[6]and the language of Rome.
To accomplish such an object as this, it was not enough to destroy and make desolate, it became necessary to repopulate the waste places and rebuild that which had been torn down. Roman citizens had to be sent as colonists into the desolate regions. Sulla, accordingly, undertook to carry out his plans of colonization, the grandest and most comprehensive which Rome had ever seen, and which indeed have had no parallel in history till the settlement of the north of Ireland by Cromwell and William III. The arrangements as to the property of the Italian soil placed at the disposal of Sulla[7]all the Roman domain lands which had been placed in usufruct to the allied communities, and which now reverted to the Roman government. It also placed at his disposal all the confiscated territories of the communities incurring punishment. Upon these territories he established military colonies, and thus obtained a three-fold result.[8]He remunerated his soldiers for the faithful service rendered him in long years of toil and danger. He repeopled the regions desolated by war (except Samnium). He provided a military protection for himself and the new constitution which he established.
Most of his new settlements were directed to Etruria, Faesulae and Arretium being among the number; others, to Latium[9]and Campania, where Praeneste and Pompeii became Sullan colonies. A great part of these colonies were, after the Gracchan manner, merely grafted upon town-communities already existing. The comprehensiveness of these settlements may be seen in this fact that 20,000 allotments were[10]made in different parts of Italy. Notwithstanding this vast disposal of territory, Sulla gave lands to the temple of Diana at Mt. Tifata, while the territory of Volaterrae and Arretium remained undisturbed. He also revived the old plan of occupation which had been legally forbidden in the year 118. Many of Sulla's intimate friends availed themselves of this method of becoming masters of large estates.
The first agrarian movement after the Sullan Revolution was that inaugurated by the tribune Rullus. This has become the most famous of all the agrarian laws because of the speeches made against it by the great adversary of Rullus, Cicero, who succeeded in defeating the measure by reason of his brilliant rhetoric. Plutarch[1]has thus analyzed this proposition. "The tribunes of the people proposed dangerous innovations; they demanded the establishment of ten magistrates with absolute power, who, while disposing, as masters, of Italy, Syria, and the new conquests of Pompey, should have the right to sell the public lands; to prosecute those whom they wished; to banish; to establish colonies; to draw upon the public treasury for whatever money they had need; to levy and maintain what troops they deemed necessary. The concession of so widely extended power gained for the support of the law the most powerful men in Rome. The colleague of Cicero, Antonius, was one of the first to favor it, in the hope of being one of the decemvirs. Cicero opposed the new law in the senate and his eloquence so completely overpowered even the tribunes that they had not one word to reply. But they returned to the charge and having gained the support of the people, they brought the matter before the tribes. Cicero was in no way alarmed; he left the senate, appeared on the rostrum before the people and spoke with so great force that he not only caused the law to be rejected but took from the tribunes all hope of being successful in similar enterprises."
In 61 we find Cicero advocating a bill similar in nature to the one he had so brilliantly combatted in 64. In the last instance, however, the law was proposed by Pompey, and in favor of Pompey's soldiers and that made all difference to a man who ever curried favor with the great. Flavius, who proposed this law, was but the creature of Pompey. Cicero has made known to us, in one of his letters to Atticus, the conditions of the law which Flavius proposed and the modifications which he himself wished to apply to it. Flavius proposed to distribute lands both to the soldiers of Pompey and the people; to establish colonies; to use for the purchase of the lands for colonization, the subsidies which should accrue in five years, from the recently conquered territories.[2]The senate rejected this law entirely, in the same spirit of opposition which it had shown to all agrarian laws, probably thinking that Pompey would thereby obtain too great an increase of power.[3]This was the last attempt at agrarian legislation until the year 59, when Julius Caesar enacted his famous law.
During the first consulship of Caius Julius Cæsar, he brought forward an agrarian[1]bill at the instigation of his confederates. The main object of this bill was to furnish land to the Asiatic army[2]of Pompey, In fine, this bill was little more than a renewal of a bill presented by Pompey the previous year (58), but rejected. Appian gives the following account of this bill: "As soon as Cæsar and Bibulus[3](his colleague) entered on the consulship, they began to quarrel and to make preparation to support their parties by force. But Cæsar who possessed great powers of dissimulation, addressed Bibulus in the senate and urged him to unanimity on the ground that their disputes would damage the public interests. Having in this way obtained credit for peaceable intentions, he threw Bibulus off his guard, who had no suspicion of what was going on, while Cæsar, meanwhile, was marshalling a strong force, and introducing into the senate laws for favoring the poor, under which he proposed to distribute land among them and the best land in Italy, that about[4]Capua which at the present time was let on public account.[5]He proposed to distribute this land among heads of families who had three children, by which measure he could gain the good will of a large multitude, for the number of those who had three children was 20,000. This proposal met with opposition from many of the senators, and Cæsar, pretending to be much vexed at their unfair behavior, left the house and never called the senate together again during the remainder of his consulship, but addressed the people from the rostra. He, in the presence of the assembly, asked the opinion of Pompeius and Crassus, both of them approving, and the people came to vote on them (the bills), with concealed daggers. Now as the[6]was not convened, for one consul could not summon the senate without the consent of the other consul, the senators used to meet at the house of Bibulus, but they could make no real opposition to Cæsar's power.... Now Cæsar secured the enactment of the laws, and bound the people by an oath to the perpetual observance of them, and he required the same oath from the senate. As many of the senators opposed him, and among them Cato, Cæsar proposed death as a penalty for not taking the oath and the assembly ratified this proposal. Upon this all took the oath immediately because of fear, and the tribunes also took it, for there was no longer any use in making opposition after the proposal was ratified."
This agrarian law did not affect the existing rights of property and heritable possession. It destined for distribution only the Italian domain land, that is to say, merely the territory of Capua, as this was all that belonged to the state.[7]If this was not enough to satisfy the demand, other Italian lands were to be bought out of the revenue from the eastern provinces at the taxable value rated in the censorial rolls. The number of persons settled on theCampanus ageris said[8]to have been 20,000 citizens who had each three children or more. The land was not distributed by lot, but at the pleasure of the commissioners, each one receiving some 30 jugera.[9]If 20,000 heads of families with their wives and three children in each family were settled in Campania, the whole number of settlers would be 100,000. This great number could scarcely leave Rome at one time, and we find that as late as 51 the land was not all assigned.[10]While the tenor of the law does not imply that it was the intention to reward military service with grants of land, yet we may be sure that the veterans of Pompey were not forgotten.[11]There are no extant authorities which speak of the settlement of the Campanian land that say any thing about the soldiers settled there, unless it be Cicero. He speaks of the Campanian territory being taken out of the class that contributed a revenue to the state in order that it might be given to soldiers,[12]and he appears to refer to this time (59). Mommsen says that "the old soldiers as well as the temporary lessees to be ejected were simply recommended to the special consideration of the land distributors."[13]These latter were a commission of twenty appointed by the state. Cæsar, at his own request, was excused from serving, but Pompey and Crassus were the chief ones, thus furnishing sufficient reason for supposing that the soldier was provided for. The passage of this bill amounted in substance to the reëstablishment of the democratic colony founded by Marius and Cinna and afterwards abolished by Sulla.[14]Capua now became a Roman colony after having had no municipal constitution for one hundred and fifty-two years, when the city with all its dependencies was made a prefecture administered by a prefect of Rome. The revenues from this district were doubtless no longer needed, as those from Pontus and Syria[15]supplied all the needs of the government, but it is difficult to see what benefit could be reaped from the ejection of the thrifty farmers who, as tenants of the state, cultivated this territory and paid their rents regularly into the state coffers. Wherever the new settlers were brought in, the old cultivators were turned out. No ancient writer says anything about the condition of these people. Cicero, in his second speech upon the land bill of Rullus, when speaking of the consequences that would follow its enactment, declared that if the Campanian cultivators were ejected they would have no place to go, and he truly says that such a measure would not be a settlement of plebeians upon the land, but an ejection and expulsion of them from it.[16]
Did it pay to send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers[17]who, for two generations, had been fed at the public charge from the corn-bins of Rome, simply in order that a like number of honest peasants, who had been not only self-supporting but had paid a large part of the Roman revenue, should be compelled to sacrifice their goods in a glutted market and become debauched and idle?
After Pompey had been vanquished at Pharsalia, and the republicans in Africa, Cæsar proceeded to distribute lands to his soldiers in accordance with his promise to give them lands, "not by taking them from their proprietors as Sulla did; not by mixing colonists with citizens despoiled of their goods and thus breeding perpetual strife,—but by dividing both public land and his own private property,[1]and, if this were not sufficient, by buying what was needed." Appian says that Caesar did not succeed in carrying out these promises in full, but that veterans were in some cases settled upon lands legally belonging to others.[2]However, his soldiers were not huddled together like those of Sulla, in military colonies of their own, but when they settled in Italy they were scattered[3]as much as possible throughout the entire peninsula in order to make them more easily amenable to the laws.[4]In Campania, where Cæsar had lands at his disposal, the soldiers were settled in colonies, and so, close together. According to a letter of Cicero to Paetus, among the lands distributed were those of Veii and Capena. Historians have estimated that there were 100,000 soldiers who received lands in Italy by this distribution.
Thedeath of Cæsarin no way stopped the assignment of lands, but rather rendered all possession of land in Italy unsafe. A few weeks after his death two new laws were promulgated, one by the tribune, Lucius Antonius,[1]alex agraria, and the other thelex de colonis in agros deducendisby the consul Marcus Antonius. The first was enacted on the 5th of June,[2]and ordered that all theager publicusstill at the disposal of the state, including the Pomptine marshes which Cæsar had at one time planned to drain, but had not, be divided among the veterans and citizens. It was abrogated by asenatus consultumof the 4th of January, 43,[3]but was nevertheless carried into execution almost immediately with great relentlessness towards the enemies[4]of Antonius. The second, theLex Antonia, perished in April of 44, and had as a result the establishment of a colony near Casilinum,[5]which Cæsar had already colonized; the remainder of the domain lands, theager Campanusandager Leontinus, was converted into a reward for the supporters of Antonius.[6]This was also set aside by the new law of the consul C. Vibius Pansa, in February, 43.[7]
Second Triumvirate.When Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius were reconciled, thus forming the second triumvirate, the treaty sanctioning this new state of affairs stipulated, in favor of the soldiers, a new distribution of lands,i.e., a new agrarian law; Appian says:—"In order to increase the zeal of the army, the triumvirs promised to the soldiers, independent[8]of other results of victory and a gratuity of colonies, 18 Italian towns, important by means of their wealth and the richness of their lands. These were divided among the soldiers with their lands and buildings, as conquered towns. Among the number were Capua, Rhegium, Venusia, Beneventum, Nuceria and Vibo. Thus the most beautiful part of Italy became the prey of the soldiers."
Dion Cassius, Suetonius and Velleius Paterculus all mention these assignments. After the battle of Philippi and the defeat and death of Brutus and Cassius, 170,000 men were provided for, in accordance with these promises, out of the goods of the proscribed and the lands confiscated to the state. The lands of the towns mentioned in Appian were taken under the form of a forced sale, but the purchase money was never paid owing to the bankrupt condition of the treasury.
If we examine into the nature of these agrarian laws since the death of Julius Caesar, we shall find that they differ in all respects from previous enactments:
1. They were executed at the expense not only of public domains but also of private property.
2. They were the work of one man and not of the entire people.
3. The name of the people was never mentioned in these laws; they were enacted wholly for the profit of the soldiery. Before the distributions made by the triumvirate, the public lands had been absorbed, or at least the fragments remaining were in no way sufficient to recompense the service of the veterans.
Upon the establishment of the empire, the public lands became a vast manorial estate whose over-lord was the emperor himself.