Clearly then Cicero did not mean to say that Thorius relieved the ager publicus of Tiberius' land law; nor can any other agrarian statute previous to 111 B. C. be found to which the words vitiosa et inutili lege could apply. Accordingly on grounds of content as well as of form the passage in Cicero cannot be regarded as an allusion to the second of Appian's measures.

Those scholars who would refer Cicero's words to the third law of Appian translate Thorius relieved the public land (i. e. the occupiers thereof) of a rent by means of an improperly passed and harmful law`, the rent in question being that which was imposed by Appian's second statute and abolished by a δήμαρχος ἕτερος, the author of the third statute.

If this is what Cicero meant to say, he used an inexact expression, for the land relieved of taxation by the law of 111 B. C. had been made private by Appian's second measure and should not in strictness be called. ager publicus. But originally this estate had indeed been public land, and after its conversion into private property it was still burdened with dues to the public treasury, though these now took the form of a tax in lieu of a rent. We might go so far as to believe, without disrespect to Cicero, that he confused the tax with the rent: minima non curat pater patriae. The present rendering of Cicero's text also has the disadvantage of creating a discrepancy between him and Appian. If Cicero is rightly regarded as identifying the Lex Thoria with the statute of 111 B. C.. Appian is plainly wrong in assigning it to some previous year (118 or 114 or 112 B. C.). But this variance need hardly cause misgivings. Appian's mistakes as to names and dates are so so numerous that one blunder more or less does not weigh in the scale1). Moreover if the second of his laws is dated, in accordance with the suggestion made above2), to

p. 630 n. 3); Pöhlmann: 'man kann nicht ... in dem Sinne von einem sozialrevolutionären Vorgehen reden, daß Gracchus die Reform etwa durch einen Rechtsbruch durchgesetzt hätte.' (Berichte d. bayrischen Akademie, hist. Klasse, 1907, pp. 464 – 5.)

1) An analysis of Appian's Ergiczά has led Nissen to pass the following judgment: ganz besonders hat Appian Namen und Zahlen in einer wahrhaft horrenden Weise entstellt.' (Untersuchungen üb. d. Quellen d. vierten u. fünften Dekade des Livius, p. 115.)

In the first two books of the Civil Wars the following errors may be noted: I. 37 § 168: Mummius the destroyer of Corinth is exiled by the Quaestio Varia of 91 B. C.

I. ch. 40-42: Lucius Julius Caesar (consul in 90 B. C.) is repeatedly confused with Sextus (consul in 91 B. C.).

I. 120. 557: Appian fails to distingmish between M. and L. Lucullus.

II. 32. 124: C. Iulius Caesar's expedition to Britain is dated 50 B. C.
II. 111. 464: C. Cassius is confused with his brother Lucius.

2) P. 186.

112 B. C., instead of 114 or 118 B. C., the margin of error is reduced to one year only. On the whole, therefore, the objections against referring the lex Thoria to 111 B. C. seem less formidable than those which militate against an earlier date.

Confirmation of the theory now under consideration may be obtained in another passage of Cicero, which gives a further clue to the contents of the Lex Thoria: cum ageretur de agris publicis et lege Thoria et premeretur Lucilius ab iis, qui a pecore eius depasci agros publicos dicerent 1). The charge here brought forward is that Lucilius' beasts cropped away all the public pasturage. Now there are some clauses in the statute of 111 B. C. which distinctly assert the right of all and sundry to graze cattle up to a certain number on the common land, and consequently forbid the engrossing or monopolising of public pastures 2). It is true that this connexion between the two texts has been pronounced illusory3); but further investigation may show that it ought after all to be accepted as • quite valid. The law on which Lucilius' accusers took their stand was undoubtedly the Lex Thoria, else why should Cicero have gone out of his way to mention that measure? Now if the Lex Thoria is not the third of the acts in Appian's series, then it is the second. But the second law, so far as Appian describes it, contains nothing whatever concerning the use or misuse of public domains; and it is unlikely that it comprised, beside the provisions mentioned by Appian, a large assortment of other clauses on miscellaneous agrarian topics, for if such had been the case there would have been no subsequent need for a comprehensive regulating act like that of 111 B. C. It follows that the Lex Thoria is probably identical with the statute of 111 B. C., which is the third in Appian's series.

If the statute to which Cicero alludes is that of the year 111 B. C., it becomes possible to offer an explanation for the epithet vitiosa which he applies to it. Among the provisions of the Lex Agraria of 111 B. C. are several paragraphs confirming a settlement of Roman or Italian emigrants on the territory of Carthage 4). Now this site had been placed under a solemn curse after the destruction of the town by Scipio Aemilianus, and it was on the strength of this imprecation that the Lex Rubria of 122 B. C., by which Carthage was to be repeopled, was opposed and eventually rescinded"). But if the Lex Rubria was nefas, so was the 1) De Oratore II ch. 70 § 284. 2) Chs. 24-26.

3) Walter, loc. cit. Hardy (Journal of Philology no. 63 p. 106) uses the passage in Cicero as evidence against the identification of the Lex Thoria with the statute of 111 B. C., on the ground that according to Cicero the Lex Thoria forbad the use of common pasture, whereas the act of 111 B. C. permitted it. But all that is implied in Cicero's text is that the Lex Thoria prohibited the monopolisation of common land ('depasci').

4) Chs. 45, 59-69. 5) Plutarch, ('. Gracchus chs. 11, 13.

law of 111 B. C. in so far as it confirmed the Lex Rubria, and it is unlikely that the pontifices never entered a protest against it. In this case there would be a fair show of reason for calling the measure vitiosa, and Cicero's use of this word in reference to the Lex Thoria would cease to be mysterious.

If Appian's third law is appropriated to Thorius, the authorship of his second statute cannot be fixed with any approach to certainty. But if its date, as suggested in the present article, is 112 B. C., it becomes tempting to bring the measure into connexion with M. Livius Drusus, consul of that year. Ten years previously Drusus had played a prominent part in overthrowing the authority of C. Gracchus; the same man might very well have come forward as the leader of the campaign against the Gracchan land commission. Moreover the laws which Drusus promulgated as tribune in 122 B. C. 1) are quite in keeping with the measure carried during his consulship. His tribunician bills are marked by a reckless profusion of the public revenues: they sacrifice sound finance to the necessities of political bribery. Similarly the act of 112 B. C. earmarked the rent on public lands for distribution to the Roman proletariate 2). Whether this distribution was intended to be made in money or in corn, it can only be regarded as an attempt to appease the multitude on the principle which afterwards became so familiar to Roman statecraft, that the plebecula urbana was better pleased with doles of corn within Rome than with allotments of land in the inhospita tesqua' of Italy). Again, the same concern for the Latins which distinguishes the law of 112 B. C. recurs in a seemingly extravagant form in a measure of the tribune Drusus which exempted Latin soldiers from the full rigour of Roman martial law. Whether Drusus was the formal author of the law passed during his consulship must remain a matter of complete uncertainty, but it may be tentatively conjectured that he was the real director of the movement which led to the extinction of the Gracchan land commission.

To sum up the previous discussion:

(1) The number of agrarian measures passed between the death of C. Gracchus and 111 B. C. does not exceed three.

(2) Of the first post-Gracchan land law nothing definite can be said

as to date and authorship.

1) Plutarch, C. Gracchus ch. 9.

2) Appian I ch. 27 § 122: νόμον ... φόρους ὑπὲρ τῆς γῆς) τῷ δήμῳ κατα τίθεσθαι, καὶ τάδε τὰ χρήματα χωρεῖν ἐς διανομάς.

3) Cicero, De Lege Agraria II ch. 27 § 71: vos vero, Quirites . . retinete istam possessionem . . . urbis. . . ludorum, festorum dierum, ceterorum omnium commodorum, nisi forte mavultis . . . in Sipontina siccitate aut in Salpinorum pestilentiae finibus. . . collocari.

(3) The second law was most probably passed in 112 B. C., and may tentativily be referred to the consul M. Livius Drusus.

(4) The third law is undoubtedly identical with the extant Lex Agraria of 111 B. C., and the balance of evidence is in favour of its being ascribed to Sp. Thorius.

(B) The Gracchan Land Acts and the Equites.

The opposition to the agrarian reforms of the Gracchi is usually regarded as coming solely from the ranks of the senatorial nobility, and the part played by the Ordo Equester in this conflict is seldom if ever discussed. Yet it is expressly stated by Livy that the land law of Tiberius was no less distasteful to the Equites than to the Senate). And this hostility on their part is no more than might have been expected, for it is probable that they stood to be penalised more heavily than the senators by Gracchus' proposals. Of the ager publicus which became liable to confiscation by Gracchus' law only a fraction can have belonged to the senatorial class. The Senate in the age of the Gracchi had a membership of about 3002). Out of these a certain number no doubt were not affected by Gracchus' threatened confiscations, as having no share in the ager publicus or too modest a portion to come within the scope of the new land law. On the other hand the amount of land assigned by the Gracchi after confiscation can hardly have been less than 1,000,000 iugera, and it may have been considerably more3).

If the whole of this acreage had been in the hands of, say, 250 senators, it would follow that each of these held at least 4000 iugera of public land, not to mention the 500-1000 iugera exempted from confiscation

1) Epit. LVIII: Ti. Sempronius Gracchus cum legem agrariam ferret adversus voluntatem senatus et equestris ordinis. See also Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum ch. 42 § 1.

2) Willems, Le Sénat, pp. 30, 32, 303–357.

3) The number of Gracchan colonists is usually estimated at 75000, on the strength of the increased census returns of 125 B. C. as compared with 130 B. C. Assuming that each colonist received 30 iugera, Nissen has calculated that the area of land allotted exceeded 2000 000 iugera (Italische Landeskunde II p. 30). This pro capita measure is in excess of the amount usually allotted to Roman colonists, and the passage in the Lex Agraria of 111 B. C. from which it is deduced (ch. 14: sei quis . agri iugra non amplius XXX possidebit habebitue) hardly warrants so precise an inference. From Livy, Epit. LVIII it may further be gathered that the settlers received less than they expected. Nevertheless it is probable that Gracchus was generous in his assignments. Having made his allotments inalienable, he was bound to ensure that they should provide a sufficient margin of subsistence, and he must at any rate have awarded more than the 8-10 iugera which previous experience had proved sometimes to be inadequate to the needs of colonists.

and such further territories as they might have owned or leased from the state in proper form. Now in the days of Cato the Elder the extent of a typical estate ranged from 100 to 240 iugera1). No doubt some domains, such as the great tracts of mountain pasture, considerably exceeded this limit, and in the era of the Gracchi there may have been an allround increase in the size of holdings. But after due allowance has been made for these facts it remains incredible that the senators of this period held on an average 4-5000 iugera or more of ager occupatorius. The land confiscated by the Gracchi cannot possibly have been concentrated in the hands of the senatorial class: a substantial amount thereof, perhaps the greater part, must have been held by the Equites2).

It must perhaps always remain an open question to what extent Gaius Gracchus was influenced by a desire to buy off the opposition of the Ordo Equester to his agrarian policy when he accorded them extravagant political privileges. But the possibility of this motive having contributed to his resolve is worth taking into account3).

(C) The Encyclopaedia of Cassius Dionysius.

This treatise, which in Varro's day had become a standard reference book on agriculture 4), has given rise to some discussion as to its date and object. Mahaffy, arguing that its composition was synchronous with the agrarian reforms of the Gracchi, has suggested that its purpose was to impart the most scientific methods of cultivation to the colonists whom C. Gracchus sent out to southern Italy 5). Viewed in this light, Cassius' book was written in the interests of 'la petite culture'.

1) De re rustica chs. 10 and 11.

2) Similarly the engrossment of public lands during the 16th and 18th centuries which has helped to create the latifundia of modern England was not so much the work of the nobility as of the enriched traders and professional men. Pollard, England under Protector Somerset, pp. 204-5; Johnson, The Disappearance of the small Landowner, p. 120.

It would have been a marvel if the Equites of the later Roman Republic, whose commercial operations were nothing if not speculative, had not invested a substantial portion of their profits in real estate, which in those days was the only gilt-edged security.

3) The most sweeping of Gaius' projects, the enfranchisement of the Italian allies, is explicitly described by Appian (I. 21. 86.) as an expedient for silencing their clamour against his land reforms.

4) Varro, Res rustica I. 1. 10: his nobilitate Mago Carthaginiensis praeterit, poenica lingua qui res dispersas comprendit libris XXIIX, quos Cassius Dionysius Uticensis vertit libris XX ac graeca lingua Sextitio (v. 1. Sextio) praetori misit: in quae volumina de graecis libris ... adiecit non pauca, et de Magonis dempsit instar librorum VIII.

5) Hermathena, 1889, pp. 33-35.