which we meet with in the beginning of the Roman history, exhibits the peculiar form which the political and social dependence of the lower class assumed. The client was the hereditary debtor of his patron, and his debts arose not only from loans for implements, stock, and seedcorn, but also from his obligation to pay an annual rent. Other plebeians also, who were not clients, might of course borrow money and become insolvent, but the great mass of debt must have been a natural consequence of the legal position of the client-plebeians, and thus the general complaint of oppression for debt became a plebeian grievance, and the remedy for it was sought by means of a treaty between the two classes. CHAP. III. 366 B.C. This state of things explains the close connexion of the Abolition relief given to debtors with the agrarian laws of Licinius. of debt. It shows that the debts of the plebeians arose, not from speculative loans, but through the distress of the poor, a distress which was the natural and inevitable consequence of the laws regulating the tenure of land. If this distress was to be removed, it was necessary not only to give temporary relief, by a total or partial remission of debt, but to adopt measures by which the dependent peasant should be made a freeholder. Viewed in this light the abolition of debts appears no longer an unjust and revolutionary measure. If the patricians had actually made loans of money to the plebeians, which the latter employed for their own profit, it would not be possible to justify, even from the plebeian point of view, a reduction of the capital equal to the amount of interest paid; for the laws of the Twelve Tables had given a legal sanction to a certain fixed rate of interest. But the case was different if the debts were in reality a consequence of the state of dependence in which the plebeians stood as clients to the patricians, and were loans only by a legal fiction. The exclusive possession of the common land by the patricians had long been disputed by the plebeians and branded as a crying injustice. The Icilian law, passed as early as 456 B.C., had released the plebeians settled on the Aventine from their BOOK 366 B.C. Effects of the Licinian dependence as tenants of the patricians and had changed their imperfect tenure into freehold.' After the great acquisitions of land, especially those which followed the conquest of Veii, the demands of the plebeians for freehold land had become louder and more vehement.2 It is not unlikely that these demands of the plebeians were the real substance of the dispute between them and Camillus, and the crime of Manlius may have been nothing more than the proposal to deliver the settlers on the Veientine territory from the duty of paying tithes. If the tribunes Licinius and Sextius entertained these questions, they were able to allege that the patrician occupiers of the new land, who had made advances to their clients for agricultural implements, stock, and seed-corn, were not entitled to more than the re-payment of these advances together with the lawful interest, that they ought never to have claimed an annual rent, and that all the payments made under this head should be deducted from the capital advanced. Thus we can understand the principal features of the Licinian law which effected a reduction of debts. But legislation. the details are beyond our reach. We do not know whether a difference was made between debts arising from loans and debts arising from prædial dependence. Nor is it in any way hinted by what means the debtors were enabled to pay within three years the debts remaining after deduction of the interest already paid. Still less are we able to discover how the law was carried outwhether it produced the intended effect, or whether, like so many other laws enacted with the best intentions, it was evaded or frustrated by the intrigues of its powerful opponents. That, at any rate, it produced no thorough change is evident from the continued distress of the plebeians, and from the repeated attempts to remedy it by legislation. Change in The agrarian laws of Licinius may, on account of their the meaning of the great importance, be compared to the abolition of villenage CHAP. 366 B.C. in several modern states. Their object was the formation, or at least the increase, of an independent peasantry, and a corresponding diminution of the seignorial rights of the great landed proprietors. These measures were carried at word populus. a most favorable conjuncture, when, by the success of the Roman arms, the original territory was more than doubled and when that class of citizens which had hitherto been dependent and labouring under disabilities found itself sufficiently strong to claim a share as well in the material gains of these successes as in the honours and distinctions of the republic. The import of the word people (populus) had changed in course of time. From the original people of the patricians it had passed over to the body of burgesses, consisting of the two classes. When the centuries had taken upon themselves all the burdens, and with them the sovereignty, of the republic, the patricians could no longer say, 'We are the state.' As a matter of course the old import of the word 'common land' (ager publicus) could no longer be maintained, and a continued exclusion of the plebeians from this common land became a crying injustice. Consequently, after the very first acquisition of territory in 442 B.C. which was made by the republic after a long period of distress,' we meet with traces of plebeian agitations in which the exclusive claim of the patricians to the common land is called an injustice.' Yet the old privilege did not give way at the first blow. The Roman patricians fought for it with all the tenacity of their character. It was only in consequence of the violent agitation for the Licinian laws that the ruling class made a concession which so nearly affected their interests.3 tion of Niebuhr was the first to show, what is now generally Occupa admitted, that the maximum of five hundred jugera of public land which the Licinian laws allowed, was not private land. property but common land. The measure was therefore no confiscation, but a regulation of the right of occupying the public land, a right which the patricians had hitherto • Plutarch, Camill., 39 : τὸν νόμον τὸν μάλιστα λυποῦντα τοὺς πατρικίους. BOOK 366 B.C. exercised without limitation according to their will and pleasure. It was usual for the state after a new conquest to dispose, by assignation or sale, of only a portion of the acquired territory. The greater part was left to be occupied by the citizens; the state reserving to itself only the fee simple and (at least since 406 B.C.) an annual rent. It is clear that such an occupation of land by sufferance of the state, though it could not confer the title of ownership, could nevertheless claim to be recognised and protected by law, especially in cases where the occupied land. was improved by the occupier, and where capital had been laid out on it for buildings, roads, and other purposes. When, in course of time, such land passed into other hands by sale or inheritance, the state could not disturb the possession without straining its legal right even to the verge of injustice. A resumption of such lands without compensation would have amounted almost to confiscation of private property. But at the time of the Licinian laws, the occupation of the Veientine territory was comparatively recent. Veii had fallen in 396 B.c. In the year 376 Licinius first brought forward his rogations. In the twenty years intervening, the inroad of the Gauls took place, which could not but prevent all considerable investments in land. Moreover the agitation for the division of the conquered land among the plebeians, which began immediately after the fall of Veii, might serve as a warning to the patricians not to look upon any possession in that quarter as safe property. It is not likely, therefore, that many patricians had actually begun to farm more than five hundred jugera in the district of Veii, and the Licinian measure may have had no retrospective effect at all, and may have been intended rather to regulate the right of occupation for the future only. Consequently we hear This is the more likely, as the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, more that 200 years later, fixed the same maximum of 500 jugera for the possession of land to be held by one individual. What may have been a very moderate estate in the time of the Gracchi must have been considered unusually large at the time of Licinius. of no case of a patrician being compelled to restore to the state any land that he had already occupied. The sanction for the occupation of five hundred jugera, conferring, as a matter of course, a guarantee for the security of this possession, may be looked upon as a compensation for the losses which the patricians suffered by being deprived of the tithes of their clients for the future.' Under these circumstances the whole measure was as free from injustice to the large proprietors as it was beneficial to the peasantry. CHAP. III. 366 B.C. tures of modern Livy's statements regarding the details of the agrarian Conjeclaw of Licinius are extremely scanty. He mentions nothing but the legal maximum of land which an indivi- historians. dual was allowed to possess. But there are several points with regard to which we should like to be more fully informed. Niebuhr2 has attempted to draw a more complete sketch of the legislation of Licinius and Sextius by borrowing some features from the agrarian laws of the Gracchi which are somewhat better known, and which were essentially re-enactments of the Licinian laws, and by gathering a few detached statements found here and there in Appian, Plutarch, and elsewhere. But his conjectures are very doubtful, because it appears that neither Appian nor Plutarch had access to any genuine traditions bearing on the older law, and that their statements are nothing but guesses and inferences. ment of It is very doubtful whether in the time of Licinius the Employemployment of slaves in agriculture had become very m extensive, and had threatened to ruin the small peasants labour. by the competition of slave labour, and to facilitate the growth of large landed properties. It is well known that this was the case in the time of the Gracchi, and that they endeavoured to counteract the evil by proposing a law 1 It is not certain that the provisions of the agrarian law of Licinius were intended to be applied to other lands beside the Veientine district. We think it improbable that the former territory of Fidenæ, conquered 50 years before 426 B.C., was affected by it. 2 Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch., iii. 14; English translation, iii. 13. |