SEC. 17.—­LEX JULIA AGRARIA.

During the first consulship of Caius Julius Caesar, he brought forward an agrarian[1] bill at the instigation of his confederates.  The main object of this bill was to furnish land to the Asiatic army[2] of Pompey, In fine, this bill was little more than a renewal of a bill presented by Pompey the previous year (58), but rejected.  Appian gives the following account of this bill:  “As soon as Caesar and Bibulus[3] (his colleague) entered on the consulship, they began to quarrel and to make preparation to support their parties by force.  But Caesar who possessed great powers of dissimulation, addressed Bibulus in the senate and urged him to unanimity on the ground that their disputes would damage the public interests.  Having in this way obtained credit for peaceable intentions, he threw Bibulus off his guard, who had no suspicion of what was going on, while Caesar, meanwhile, was marshalling a strong force, and introducing into the senate laws for favoring the poor, under which he proposed to distribute land among them and the best land in Italy, that about[4] Capua which at the present time was let on public account.[5] He proposed to distribute this land among heads of families who had three children, by which measure he could gain the good will of a large multitude, for the number of those who had three children was 20,000.  This proposal met with opposition from many of the senators, and Caesar, pretending to be much vexed at their unfair behavior, left the house and never called the senate together again during the remainder of his consulship, but addressed the people from the rostra.  He, in the presence of the assembly, asked the opinion of Pompeius and Crassus, both of them approving, and the people came to vote on them (the bills), with concealed daggers.  Now as the senate[6] was not convened, for one consul could not summon the senate without the consent of the other consul, the senators used to meet at the house of Bibulus, but they could make no real opposition to Caesar’s power....  Now Caesar secured the enactment of the laws, and bound the people by an oath to the perpetual observance of them, and he required the same oath from the senate.  As many of the senators opposed him, and among them Cato, Caesar proposed death as a penalty for not taking the oath and the assembly ratified this proposal.  Upon this all took the oath immediately because of fear, and the tribunes also took it, for there was no longer any use in making opposition after the proposal was ratified.”

This agrarian law did not affect the existing rights of property and heritable possession.  It destined for distribution only the Italian domain land, that is to say, merely the territory of Capua, as this was all that belonged to the state.[7] If this was not enough to satisfy the demand, other Italian lands were to be bought out of the revenue from the eastern provinces at the taxable value rated in the censorial