the capital—for that no reliance was to
be placed on the country people coming only from time
to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent—with
its interests steadfastly to its leader. This
purpose was served, first of all, by introducing distributions
of corn in the capital. The grain accruing to
the state from the provincial tenths had already been
frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9)
Gracchus enacted that every burgess who should personally
present himself in the capital should thenceforth
be allowed monthly a definite quantity—
apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)—from
the public stores, at 6 1/3 -asses- (3d.) for the
-modius-, or not quite the half of a low average price;(10)
for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged
by the construction of the new Sempronian granaries.
This distribution—which consequently excluded
the burgesses living out of the capital, and could
not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-proletariate—was
designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the
capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the
aristocracy, into dependence on the leaders of the
movement-party, and thus to supply the new master
of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm
majority in the comitia. For greater security
as regards the latter, moreover, the order of voting
still subsisting in the -comitia centuriata-, according
to which the five property-classes in each tribe gave
their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead
of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously
in an order of succession to be fixed on each occasion
by lot. While these enactments were mainly designed
to procure for the new chief of the state by means
of the city-proletariate the complete command of the
capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control
over the comitial machinery, and the possibility in
case of need of striking terror into the senate and
magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same
time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress
the existing social evils.
Agrarian Laws
Colony of Capua
Transmarine Colonialization
It is true that the Italian domain question was in
a certain sense settled. The agrarian law of
Tiberius and even theallotment-commission still continued
legally in force; the agrarian law carried by Gracchus
can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to
the commissioners of the jurisdiction which they had
lost. That the object of this step was only
to save the principle, and that the distribution of
lands, if resumed at all, was resumed only to a very
limited extent, is shown by the burgess-roll, which
gives exactly the same number of persons for the years
629 and 639. Gaius beyond doubt did not proceed
further in this matter, because the domain-land taken
into possession by Roman burgesses was already in substance
distributed, and the question as to the domains enjoyed
by the Latins could only be taken up anew in connection