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The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and the land- distributions.
Transpadanes Freedmen But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period in a form suitable to the times. The election of the priests by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced and Sulla had again done away, was established by a law of the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691.
The sudden revival of the people's aspirations had doubtless led to a certain amount of misguided ambition on the part of some of its leaders, and the tribunate was now the centre of an agitation which was a faint counterpart of the closing scenes in the Gracchan struggles. Two occupants of the office, Publius Lucullus and Lucius Annius, were attempting to secure re-election for another year.
An aspirant for favour, who wished to enter on a race with the recent type of popular leader, must inevitably think of provision for the poor; but a mere copy or extension of the Gracchan proposals was impossible.
The Gracchan party, which suggested these extensions of territory beyond the Alps, evidently wished to open up there a new and immeasurable field for their plans of colonization, a field which offered the same advantages as Sicily and Africa, and could be more easily wrested from the natives than he Sicilian and Libyan estates from the Italian capitalists.
Commissioned by the senate, the tribune of the people Marcus Livius Drusus proposed to relieve those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on them, and to declare their allotments to be free and alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariate not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000 colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate suitable men; only, Drusus himself declined in contrast with the family-complexion of the Gracchan commission to take part in this honourable duty.
On the other hand, the remission of the impost must have relieved, and the sense of private ownership inspired, the labours of the smaller proprietors; and the perpetuation of a considerable proportion of the Gracchan settlers is probable on general grounds.
It became daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which had survived the fall of its author, was now, since the multitude and the moneyed aristocracy no longer went together, tottering to its foundations. As that constitution had been based on division in the ranks of the aristocracy, so it seemed that dissensions in the ranks of the opposition could not but bring about its fall.
The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and the land- distributions.
To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which is on various occasions apparent in the Gracchan legislation, if not to abolish capital punishment, at any rate to restrict it still further than had been done before a tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even in military jurisdiction.
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