land from possessors had been made long before this by Spurius Cassius; and he had paid for his daring with his life. [Sidenote:  The Licinian Law.] More than a century later the Licinian law forbade anyone to hold above 500 ‘jugera’ of public land, for which, moreover, a tenth of the arable and a fifth of the grazing produce was to be paid to the State.  The framers of the law are said to have hoped that possessors of more than this amount would shrink from making on oath a false return of the land which they occupied, and that, as they would be liable to penalties for exceeding the prescribed maximum, all land beyond the maximum would be sold at a nominal price (if this interpretation of the [Greek:  kat’ oligon] of Appian may be hazarded) to the poor.  It is probable that they did not quite know what they were aiming at, and certain that they did not foresee the effects of their measure.  In a confused way the law may have been meant to comprise sumptuary, political, and agrarian objects.  It forbade anyone to keep more than a hundred large or five hundred small beasts on the common pasture-land, and stipulated for the employment of a certain proportion of free labour.  The free labourers were to give information of the crops produced, so that the fifths and tenths might be duly paid; and it may have been the breakdown of such an impossible institution which led to the establishment of the ‘publicani.’ [Sidenote:  Composite nature of the Licinian law.] Nothing, indeed, is more likely than that Licinius and Sextius should have attempted to remedy by one measure the specific grievance of the poor plebeians, the political disabilities of the rich plebeians and the general deterioration of public morals; but, though their motives may have been patriotic, such a measure could no more cure the body politic than a man who has a broken limb, is blind, and in a consumption can be made sound at every point by the heal-all of a quack.  Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its political provisions, a dead letter.  Licinius was the first man prosecuted for its violation, and the economical desire of the nation became intensified. [Sidenote:  The Flaminian law.] In 232 B.C.  Flaminius carried a law for the distribution of land taken from the Senones among the plebs.  Though the law turned out no possessors, it was opposed by the Senate and nobles.  Nor is this surprising, for any law distributing land was both actually and as a precedent a blow to the interests of the class which practised occupation.  What is at first sight surprising is that small parcels of land, such as must have been assigned in these distributions, should have been so coveted. [Sidenote:  Why small portions of land were so coveted.] The explanation is probably fourfold.  Those who clamoured for them were wretched enough to clutch at any change; or did not realise to themselves the dangers and drawbacks of what they desired; or intended at once to sell their land to some richer neighbour; or, lastly, longed