Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic Part 11

Line 18. Such occupants if forcibly ejected to be restored.

Lines 19-20. Land a.s.signed by the Semp.r.o.nian commission, in compensation for land in a colony which had been made public, to become private.

Lines 23-24. Confirmation of the t.i.tle or rest.i.tution of such land to be made before the Ides of March next.

Lines 24-25. 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.

Line 26. While the cattle or sheep were driven along the '_calles_,' or beast-tracks, and along the public roads to the pasture grounds, no charge was made for what they consumed along the road.

Line 27. Land given in compensation out of public land, to be _privatus utei quoi optuma lege_.

Line 27. Land taken in this way from private ownership to be _publicus_, as in 133.

Lines 27-28. Land given in compensation for _ager patritus_ to be itself _patritus_.

Line 28. Public roads to remain as before.

Line 29. Whatever Latins and _peregrini_ might do in 112, and whatever is not forbidden citizens to do by this law, they may do henceforward.

Lines 29-30. Trial of a Latin to be the same as for a Roman citizen.

Lines 31-32. Territory (1) of borough towns or colonies (2), in trientabulis, to be, as before, public.

Lines 33-34. Cases of dispute about land made private between 133 and 111, or by this law, to be judged by the consul or praetor before next Ides of March.

Lines 35-36. Cases of dispute after this date to be tried by consuls, praetors, or censors.

Lines 36-39. Judgment on money owing to publicani to be given by consuls, proconsuls, praetors or propraetors.

Line 40. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to swear to laws contrary to this law.

Lines 41-42. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to obey laws contrary to this law.

Lines 43-44. On the colony of Sipontum (?).

Thus we see that the _lex Thoria_ had two main objects in view: (1) The guaranteeing to possessors full property in the land which they occupied.

(2) The freeing from _vectigal_ or _scriptura_ the property of every one.

In this way was the reaction of the aristocracy completed. It left nothing of the Semp.r.o.nian law. Appian[31] has fully comprehended all this, and, in his enumeration of the three laws, connection between which he indicates, we see clearly the entire revolutionary system, conducted, we must admit, with a rare address and a perfidy which rendered the effect certain. 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.bility. The results could hardly have been otherwise. Sumptuary laws, false economic principles, had closed all channels[33] of trade and manufacture to the n.o.bility, while conquest had filled their hands with gold and placed at their disposal vast numbers[34]

of slaves. There was but one channel open for the investment of this gold,--the agrarian.[35] Farming and cattle-raising were the only occupations in which slaves could be used with advantage and so, as a natural result of Roman economics, the plebeian, with little or no money and subject to the military call, was compelled to enter into a one-sided contest with capital and slave labor. So long as these conditions existed so long would all the laws of the world fail to save him from abject poverty and its attendant evils.

[Footnote 1: Rudorff, _Ackergesetz des Spurius Thorius_, Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-158. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. V, pp. 75-86. Wordsworth, _Specimens and Fragments of Early Latin_, 440-459.]

[Footnote 2: Appian, _Bell. Civ._, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 3: Ihne, _Roman History_, V, 9.]

[Footnote 4: Momm., _Rom. Hist._, III, 165.]

[Footnote 5: Long, _Decline of the Rom. Rep._, I, 352. See Lange, _Rom.

Alter._, III, 48.]

[Footnote 6: Long, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 7: Momm., III, 161; Ihne, V, 10.]

[Footnote 8: Long, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 9: Lange, III, 48-49; Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 108.]

[Footnote 10: Long, _loc. cit._ Momm., III, 167-168; Ihne, V, 8-10.]

[Footnote 11: Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 12: Long, I, 353.]

[Footnote 13: Long, I, 354.]

[Footnote 14: Ihne, V, 10-11.]

[Footnote 15: Long, I, 353; Wordsworth, 440; Momm., III, 165, note; Ihne, V, 9; Lange, III, 48; Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 16: Cicero, _Brut._, 36.]

[Footnote 17: Cicero, _De Orat._, II, 70.]

[Footnote 18: Marquardt u. Momm., _Rom. Alter._, IV, 108, n. 4; Wordsworth, 441.]

[Footnote 19: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. I, p. 74.]

[Footnote 20: Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 21: Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440.]

[Footnote 22: Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440; See Rudorff, Ack. des Sp.

Thor.]

[Footnote 23: Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s.

1-194.]

[Footnote 24: C.I.L., I, pp. 75-86.]

[Footnote 25: Long, I, 356.]

[Footnote 26: Wordsworth, 447. See the text of this law in C.I.L., vol. I, pp. 79-80.]

[Footnote 27: Long, I, 359.]

[Footnote 28: "Quom quis ceivis Roma.n.u.s agri colendi causa in eum agrum agri jugera non amplius x.x.x possidebit habebitue, is ager privatus esto."]