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Land Ownership and Social Conflict in the Late Republic

The increasing concentration of land ownership was a serious social problem and a hot-button political issue in the late republic. Traditionally only landowners could be conscripted into the army, and as families lost their property to wealthy absentee owners, the number of possible soldiers declined and many impoverished landless people flocked to the city of Rome. How did political leaders of the late republic seek to solve the problem, and why were their measures unsuccessful?

He took his place and spoke on behalf of the poor. “The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens, each has a place of repose and refuge. But the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light. Without house or home they wander about with their wives and children. Their commanders lie when they exhort the soldiers in their battles to defend sepulchres and shrines from the enemy, for not one of these many Romans has either hereditary altar or ancestral tomb; they fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others; they are styled masters of the world, and have not a single clod of earth they can call their own.” About this time King Attalus Philometor [of Pergamum] died, and Eudemus of Pergamum brought to Rome his last will, in which the Roman people was named the king’s heir. Tiberius proposed a law of popular appeal providing that the king’s money, when brought to Rome, should be distributed among those of the citizens receiving allotments of public land, to provide them with equipment and give them a start in farming. As for cities that were in the kingdom of King Attalus, he declared that the disposal of them was not the senate’s business, but that he himself would put a resolution before the people. By this he offended the senate more than ever.

After speaking thus he again brought forward the existing law providing that nobody should hold more than 500 iugera [about 300 acres] of public domain. But he added a provision to the former law that two sons of the occupiers might each hold one half of that amount [in addition to that held by their father] and that the remainder should be divided among the poor. This was extremely disturbing to the rich because . . . they could no longer disregard the law as they had done before. . . . They collected together in groups, and made lamentation, and accused the poor of appropriating their fields of long standing, their vineyards, and their buildings. Some said they had paid the price of the land to their neighbors. Were they to lose the money with the land? . . . Others said that their wives’ dowries had been expended on these estates, or that the land had been give to their own daughters as dowry. Moneylenders could show loans made on their security. All kinds of wailing and expressions of indignation were heard at once. On the other side were heard the lamentations of the poor — that they were being reduced from competence to extreme poverty, because they were unable to rear their offspring. They recounted the military services they had rendered, by which this very land had been acquired, and were angry that they should be robbed of their share of the common property. [The law was passed through procedures that many senators regarded as illegal.] Gracchus, immensely popular by reason of the law, was escorted home by the multitude as though he were the founder, not of a single city or people, but of all the nations of Italy. . . . The defeated ones remained in the city and talked the matter over, feeling aggrieved and saying that as soon as Gracchus should become a private citizen he would be sorry that he had done outrage to the sacred and inviolable office of tribune, and had sown in Italy so many seeds of future strife.

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Of the laws which he now proposed with the object of gratifying the people and destroying the power of the senate, the first concerned public lands, which were to be divided among the poor citizens; another provided that common soldiers were to be clothed at public expense without any reduction in pay, and that no one under seventeen years of age should be conscripted into military service; another concerned the allies, giving the Italians equal suffrage rights with the citizens of Rome; a fourth related to grain, lowering the market price for the poor; a fifth, dealing with the courts of justice, was the greatest blow to the power of the senators, for hitherto they alone could sit on juries, and were therefore much feared by the plebs and equites [wealthy commoners]. . . . He also proposed measures for sending out colonies, for constructing roads, and for building public granaries.

With respect to the public land belonging to the Roman people within Italy . . . whatever portion of such public land or ground within Italy, or outside the city of Rome, or in a city, town, or village a land commissioner has granted or assigned and any individual shall hold or possess at the time when this measure becomes law . . . excluding such land or ground specially excepted as aforesaid, shall be private land, and for all such land, ground, or buildings there shall be the same right of purchase or sale as for other private lands, grounds, or buildings. . . . Nor shall any person take steps whereby an individual who rightfully holds or shall hold the said land, ground, or building in accordance with the law or plebiscite shall be prevented from using, enjoying, holding, or possessing the said land, ground, or building . . . nor shall any person make a proposal to that effect in the senate.

[The bill proposed] that land be purchased with the windfall which will come in from the new foreign revenues in the next five years. The senate was opposed to this whole agrarian scheme, suspecting that Pompey was aimed at getting some new powers. Pompey set his heart on carrying the law through. I, with the full approval of the applicants for land, was for confirming the holdings of all private persons — for, as you know, our strength lies in the rich landed gentry; at the same time I satisfied Pompey and the populace — which I also wanted to do — by supporting the purchase of land, thinking that if it were faithfully carried out, the dregs of the city population could be drained off and the deserted parts of Italy peopled.

ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Using the sources above, along with what you have learned in class and in this chapter, write a short essay that analyzes land reform and social conflict in the later Roman Republic. How did political leaders of the late republic seek to solve the problem of increasing landlessness and a concentration of wealth, and why were their measures unsuccessful? How did this issue play into the power struggle between the Senate and charismatic military leaders during this period?

Sources: (1) Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 4.1–2; (2) Appian, Civil Wars, 1.i.9–2.16. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.; (3) Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus, 3–9; (4) The Agrarian Law of 111 B.C., Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Berlin, 1865– ), no. 585; (5) Cicero, Letters to Atticus, book 1, no. 29. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.