The complaints of the possessors were loud against this proposed law ; and to the effect which has already been stated. They alleged that it was unjust to dis turb them in the possessions which they had so long enjoyed, and on which they had made great improvements. The policy of Gracchus was to encourage population by giving to the poor small allotments, which was indeed the object of such grants as far back as the time of the capture of Veii (Livy, v. 30) : he wished to establish a body of small independent landholders. He urged on the possessors the equity of his proposed measure, and the policy of having the country filled with free labourers instead of slaves; and he showed them that they would be indemnified for what they should lose, by receiving, as com pensation for their improvements, the ownership of five hundred jugera, and the half of that amount for those who had children. It seems doubtful if the law as finally carried gave any compen sation to the persons who were turned out of their possessions, for such part of their possessions as they lost, or for the improvements on it. (Plutarch, Tib. Gracchus, x.) Three persons (triumviri) were appointed to ascertain what was public land, and to divide it according to the law : Tiberius had himself, his bro ther Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius appointed to be commissioners, with full power to settle all suits which might arise out of this law. Tiberius Gracchus was murdered in a tumult ex cited by his opponents at the election when he was a second time a candidate for the tribuneship (n.c. 133). The law, however, was carried into effect after his death, for the party of the nobility pru dently yielded to what they saw could not be resisted. But the difficulties of fully executing the law were great. The possessors of public land neglected to make a return of the lands which they occupied, upon which Fulvius Flaccus, Papirius Carbo, and Caius Gracchus, who were now the commissioners for carrying the law into effect, gave notice that they were ready to receive the state ments of any informer ; and numerous suits arose. All the private land which was near the boundary of the public land was subjected to a strict investiga tion as to its original sale and boundaries, though many of the owners could not produce their titles after such a lapse of time. The result of the admeasurement was often to dislodge a man from his well-stocked lands and remove him to a bare spot, from lands in cultivation to land in the rough, to a marsh or to a swamp ; for the boundary of ' the public land after the several acquisitions by conquest had not been accurately ascer tained, and the mode of permissive occupa tion had led to great confusion in bound aries. * The wrong done by the rich," says Appian, " though great, was diffi cult exactly to estimate ; and this mea sure of Gracchus put everything into confusion, the possessors being moved and transferred from the grounds which they were occupying to others" (Civil Wars, i. 18). Such a general dislodge ment of the possessors was a violent Revolution. Tiberius Gracchus had also proposed that so much of the inheritance of Attains III., king of Pergamus, who had bequeathed his property to the Ro man State, as consisted of money, should be distributed among those who received allotments of land, in order to supply them with the necessary capital for cul tivating it. (Plutarch, Tiberius Grac chus, 14.) It is not stated by Plutarch that the measure was carried, though it probably was.
Caius Gracchus, who was tribune B.C. 123, renewed the Agrarian Law of his brother, which it appears had at least not been fully carried into effect; and he carried measures for the establishment of several colonies, which were to be composed of those citizens who were to receive grants of land. A variety of other measures, some of undoubted value, were passed in his tribunate ; but they do not immediately concern the present inquiry. Caius got himself appointed to execute the measures which he carried.
But the party of the nobility beat Coitus at his own weapons •, they offered the plebes more than he did. They procured the tribune Marcus Livius Drusus to propose measures which went far beyond those of Caius Gracchus. Living accord the establishment of twelve colonies, whereas Gracchus had only pro posed two. (Plutarch, Caius Gracchus, 9.) The law of Gracchus also had re quired the poor to whom land was as signed to pay a rent to the treasury, which payment was either in the nature of a tax or an acknowledgment that the land still belonged to the state : Drusus relieved them from this payment. Drusus also was prudent enough not to give him self or his kinsmen any appointment under the law for founding the colonies. Such appointments were places of honour at least, and probably of profit too. The downfall of Caius was thus prepared, and, like his brother, he was murdered by the party of the nobility, B.C. 121, when he was a third time a candidate for the tri bunate.
Soon after the death of Coins Gracchus, an enactment was passed which repealed that part of the law of the elder Gracchus which forbade those who received assign ments of lands from selling them. (Appian, Civil Wars, i. 27.) The historian adds, which one might have conjectured with out being told, that the rich immediately bought their lands of the poor; "or forced the poor out of their lands on the pretext that they had bought them ;" which is not quite intelligible.* Another law, which Appian attributes to Sparing Borius, enacted that there should be no future grants of lands, that those who had lands should keep them, but pay a rent or tax to the Aerarium, and that this stoney should be distributed among the poor. This measure then contained a poor-law, as we call it, or imposed a tax for their maintenance. This measure, observes Appian, was some relief to the poor by reason of the distribution of money, but it contributed nothing to the increase of population. The main ob ject of Tiberius Gracchus, as already stated, was to encourage procreation by giving small allotments of land, a mea sure well calculated to effect that object. Appian adds :—" When the law of Grac chus had been in effect repealed by these devices, and it was a very good and ex cellent law, if it could have been carried into effect, another tribune not long after carried a law which repealed that re lating to the payment of the tax or rent ; and thus the plebes lost everything at once. In consequence of all this, there was still greater lack than before of citi zens, soldiers, income from the (public) land, and distributions." Various Agrarian laws were passed be tween the time of the Gracchi and the outbreak of the Marsic war, B.C. 90, of which the law of Spurius Thorius (lex Thoria) is assigned by Rudorff to the year of the city 643, or B.C. I I I ; and this appears to be the third of the laws to which Appian alludes as passed shortly after the death of Caine Graechus. Ci cero also (Brutus, 36) alludes to the law of Thorius as a bad measure, which re lieved the public land of the tax (vec tigal). The subject of this lex was the public land in Italy south of the rivers bico and Macre, or all Italy except Cisalpine Gaul; the public land in the Roman province of Africa, from which country the Romans derived a large sup ply of grain ; the public land in the ter ritory of Corinth ; and probably other public land also, for the bronze tablet on which this law is preserved is merely a fragment, and the Agrarian laws of the seventh century of the city appear to have related to all the provinces of the Roman state. One tract, however, was excepted from the Thoria lex, the ager Campanus, or fertile territory of Capua, which had been declaredpublic land during the war with Hannibal, and which Neither the Gracchi nor any other poll titian, not even Lucius Salta, venturiql to touch : this land was reserved for a bolder hand. The provisions of the Thoria lex are examined by Rudorff in an elaborate essay.