Andrew Stephenson

“ In fine, it was a fundamental principle of the public law of Rome that the lands and the persons of the people conquered belonged to the conqueror, the Roman people, who either in person or by their delegates disposed of them as it seemed best. Among the ancients war always decided concerning both liberty and property.
The result of all these facts was that the Roman territory was made the object of a division or a primitive distribution either among the three races of the first population, or a little later among the citizens or inhabitants. ”

“ The aristocracy did not rest. As soon as they had gained the people by their new bait of money and food, soothed them by their apparent generosity, and familiarized them with the idea that the possessions of the nobles were not only legally acquired but inviolable, then they raised the mask, and by a bold step swept away the vectigal, [32] thus leaving their property free. The enactment of this law virtually closed the long struggle between patrician and plebeian over the public lands of Rome, and left them as full property in the hands of the rich nobility. ”

“ Competition was impossible between fathers of families and slaves who labored en masse in the vast work-shops of their masters, with no return save the scantiest subsistence, no families, no cares, and most of all no army service. In the country it was still worse. It would appear that none but slaves were employed in the cultivation of the land. Doubtless the number of slaves in Italy has been greatly exaggerated, but it is certain that the substitution of slave labor for free, was an old fact when Licinius [1] attempted by the formal disposition of his law to check the evil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No other nation, ancient or modern, has ever so completely controlled her colonies as did the Roman. Her civil law, indeed, reflected itself in both political and international relations. In Greece, as soon [l] as a boy had attained a certain age his name was inscribed upon the tribal rolls and henceforth he was free from the potestas of his father and owed him only the marks of respect which nature demanded. So too, at a certain age, the colonies separated themselves from their mother city without losing their remembrance of a common origin. This was not so in Rome. ”

“ We are very imperfectly informed upon many points in Tiberius' agrarian law. In the first place, the question arises, were those persons holding less than 500 jugera at the time of its enactment given their lands as bona fide private property with the privilege of making up the deficiency? If not, then the law, instead of punishing, would seem to reward violation of its tenets, and he who had with boldness appropriated the greatest quantity of domain land would now be an object of envy to his more honest but less fortunate neighbors. ”

“ Licinius Stolo had attempted in vain to combat it. Twenty-four centuries of fruitless legislation since his death has scarcely yet taught the most enlightened nations that it is a waste of energy to regulate by law the greatest crime against humanity, so long as the conditions which produced it remain the same. ”

“ In the following pages it has been my object to trace the history of the domain lands of Rome from the earliest times to the establishment of the Empire. The plan of the work has been to sketch the origin and growth of the idea of private property in land, the expansion of the ager publicus by the conquest of neighboring territories, and its absorption by means of sale, by gift to the people, and by the establishment of colonies, until wholly merged in private property. ”

“ The most ancient documents which have reached us from the history of India and Egypt reveal that they had landed property fully established, while Roman annals reveal to us the very creation of this institution. Whatever modern criticism may deduce, Dionysius, Plutarch, Livy, and Cicero agree in representing the first king of Rome as merely establishing public property in Roman soil. This national property, the people possessed in common and not individually. ”

“ In this way does ignorance commonly reward its benefactors. This agitation aroused by Cassius, stirred the Roman Commonwealth, now more than twenty years old, to its very foundations, but it had no immediate effect upon the ager publicus. The rich patrician together with the few plebeians who had wealth enough to farm this land, still held undisputed possession. The poor plebeian still continued to shed his blood on the battle field to add to Roman territory, but no foot of it did he obtain. Wealth centralized. ”

“ This restriction upon free competition, by giving the advantage to Roman citizens, was in itself sufficient to ruin the prosperity of every Italian town. This law operated continually and unobservedly and resulted in placing, [25] year by year, a still larger quantity of the soil of Italy in the hands of the Roman aristocracy. In order to palliate the evils of conquest or at least to hide their conditions of servitude, the Romans had accorded to a part of the Italians the title of allies, and to others the privileges of municipia. ”

“ Grants of land were the only means of recompensing their military services. This is the first example that we have found of soldiers being thus rewarded, and it consequently initiated a custom which became most frequent especially in the time of the empire. Upon the conquest of Italy which followed the expedition of Pyrrhus, the Romans found themselves led into a long series of foreign wars; Sicily furnished the stepping-stone to Africa; Africa to Spain; all these countries becoming Roman provinces. As soon as the second Punic war closed, Hannibal formed an alliance with the king of Macedonia. ”

“ This law was a repeal of all the restrictions which the Gracchi had placed upon assignments of public land. The object of this clause was to secure the success of their great reforms, and to establish a number of small proprietors who would cultivate their little farms, and breed citizens and soldiers. But forced cultivation is impossible, and sumptuary laws have never yet succeeded in increasing [5] population. Again it is inconsistent to give land to a man and deprive him of the power of sale, for this is an essential part of that domain which we call property in land. ”

“ But in the main the rich still grew richer and the poor and mean, poorer and more contemptible. Such was ever the liberty of the Roman. For the mean and the poor there was no means of retrieving their poverty and degradation.
These laws, then, had little or no effect upon the domain question or the re-distribution of land. They did not fulfil the evident expectation of their author in uniting the plebeians into one political body. This was impossible. What they did do was to break up and practically abolish the patriciate. [29] Henceforth were the Roman people divided into rich and poor only. ”

“ The plebeians who most wanted relief cared so little for having the consulship opened to the richer men of their estate that they would readily have dropped the bill concerning it, lest a demand should endanger their own desires. In the same temper the more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors of the poor and the tenants of the domain, would have quashed the proceedings of the tribunes respecting the discharge of debt and the distribution of land, so that they carried the third bill only, which would make them consuls without disturbing their possessions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the first centuries of Rome, slaves must have been scarce. They were still dear in the time of Cato, and even Plutarch mentions as a proof of the avarice of the illustrious [2] censor, that he never paid more than 15,000 drachmae for a slave. After the great conquests of the Romans, in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Greece, and the Orient, the market went down by reason of the multitude of human beings thrown upon it. An able-bodied, unlettered man could be bought for the price of an ox. Such were the men of Spain, Thrace, and Sardinia. ”

“ The law provided,—"that all the ground which has been justly acquired by any persons shall continue in the possession of the owners, but that such part of it as may have been usurped by force or fraud by any persons and built upon, shall be given to the people; those persons being repaid the expenses of such buildings by the estimation of umpires to be appointed for that purpose, and that all the rest of the ground belonging to the public, be divided among the people, they paying no consideration for the same." ”

“ The citizens who occupied this land had grown rich by reason of its possessions. Some of them received it as an inheritance, and doubtless looked upon it as their property as much as the Ager Romanus. These to a man opposed the bill. The patricians arose en masse. The rich plebeians, the aristocracy of wealth, took part with them. Even the commons were dissatisfied because Spurius Cassius proposed in accordance with federal rights and equity to bestow a portion of the land upon the Latini and Hernici, their confederates and allies. ”

“ The very comprehensiveness of his measures proved the safeguard of Licinius. Had he preferred but one of these demands, he would have been unhesitatingly opposed by the great majority of the patricians. On the other hand he would have had comparatively doubtful support from the plebs. If the interests of the poorer plebeians alone had been consulted, they would not have been much more active or able in backing their tribunes, while the richer men would have gone over in a body to the other side with the public tenants and the private creditors among the patricians. ”

“ All conquered lands before being granted or sold to private individuals were Ager Publicus [3] a term which with few exceptions came to embrace the whole Roman world.
This Ager Publieus was farther increased by towns [4] voluntarily surrendering themselves to Rome without awaiting the iron hand of war. These were commonly mulcted of one-third of their land. [5] "The soil of the country is not the product of labor any more than is water or air. Individual citizens cannot therefore lay any claim to lawful property in land as to anything [6] produced by their own hands." ”

“ Plebeians were already established in almost all parts of the city and held, as vassals of the patricians, considerable portions of Roman territory. This little hill could never have furnished [22] homes of any sort to the whole plebeian population. What it did do was to furnish to the plebeians a trysting place in time of strife with their patrician neighbors, where they could meet, apart and secure from interruption, to devise means for resisting the encroachments of the patricians and to further establish their rights as Roman citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This territory, being either confiscated from the allies for taking part with Hannibal, or deserted by the colonists, swelled the ager publicus of Rome, and was either given to veterans [23] or occupied by Roman capitalists, thus increasing the revenues of a few nobles.
If a nation is in a healthful condition politically and economically so that the restorative vigor of nature is not impeded by bad restrictive laws, the devastations of land and losses of human life are quickly repaired. ”

“ They did not appear to be subject to Rome; their contingents of men and money were looked upon as voluntary [35] gifts; but, in reality, they were under the domination of Rome, and had, at Rome, defenders or patrons chosen because of their influence with the Roman citizens and charged with maintaining their interests. Such was the system adopted by Rome. It would have been easy for a person in the compass of a few miles to find villages having the jus Latii, others with simply the jus Italicum, colonies, prefectures, municipia cum et sine suffragio. ”

“ Land besides this which remains public is not to be occupied, but to be left free to the public for grazing. A fine for occupation is imposed. The law allowed all persons to feed their beasts great and small on this public pasture, up to the number mentioned in lines 14-15 as the limit to be pastured on the ager campascuus, free of all tax. This, according to Rudorff, was done for the benefit of the small holders. Those who sent more than this number of animals to the public pastures must pay a scriptura, for each head. ”