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Updated: July 1, 2025
Such also were the laws originating in the conflicts of the orders directed against usury as well as against an undue use of the common pasture and a disproportionate appropriation of the occupiable domain-land.
With reference on the other hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation which, over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with the Gracchan maximum it was resolved definitively to secure them to those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility of future distribution.
The growth of pastoral husbandry was favoured also by the occupation of domain-land.
The new domain-arrangement, by granting the right of driving very considerable flocks and herds upon the public pastures, and that of occupying domain-land not laid out in pasture up to a maximum fixed on a high scale, conceded to the wealthy an important and perhaps even disproportionate prior share in the produce of the domains; and by the latter regulation conferred upon the domain-tenure, although it remained in law liable to pay a tenth and revocable at pleasure, as well as upon the system of occupation itself, somewhat of a legal sanction.
A -collegium- of three men, who were regarded as ordinary and standing magistrates of the state and were annually elected by the assembly of the people, was entrusted with the work of resumption and distribution; to which was afterwards added the important and difficult function of legally settling what was domain-land and what was private property.
The growth of pastoral husbandry was favoured also by the occupation of domain-land.
After the conquest of the Boii and Apuani no new territory was acquired in Italy excepting the far from attractive Ligurian valleys; therefore no other land existed for distribution there except the leased or occupied domain-land, the laying hands on which was, as may easily be conceived, just as little agreeable to the aristocracy now as it was three hundred years before.
The Italian domain-land was not solely in the hands of Roman burgesses; large tracts of it had been assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied with or without permission by Latin burgesses. The allotment- commission at length attacked these possessions also.
On the other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit of the populace of the capital apparently by forming part of the fund for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius.
It was added, that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd- owner should not practically exclude the small.
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