Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
The two fundamental ideas of the new policy to reunite the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic, and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic had already in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus: but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application.
The revolution, at an end in so far as the old constitution was recognized by both sides as finally set aside and the aim and method of the new political development were clearly settled, had yet up to this time discovered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem of the reorganization of the state; neither the Gracchan nor the Sullan constitution of the community bore the stamp of finality.
The older system of colonisation was the device which naturally occurred to Drusus and his advisers, and the choice was the more attractive in that it might be employed in a manner which would accentuate certain elements in the Gracchan scheme of settlement that had not commended themselves to public favour.
Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which it governed in the main the restored Gracchan constitution was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy.
It is characteristic of the government, that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto set aside by the Gracchan reforms.
The two fundamental ideas of the new policy to reunite the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic, and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic had already in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus: but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application.
New Arrangement as to Jurymen With respect to the position of jurymen, the regulation of Sulla, that the roll of the senators was to serve as the list of jurymen, was no doubt abolished; but this by no means led to a simple restoration of the Gracchan equestrian courts.
There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution, or of projects to attain piecemeal in the way of constitutional reform what Lepidus and Sertorius had attempted by the path of revolution.
But the existence of thirty-six thousand settlers with free allotments would immediately suggest a grievance to those citizens who, under the Gracchan scheme of land-assignment, had received their lots subject to the condition of the payment of annual dues to the State. If the new allotments were to be declared free, the burden must be removed from those which had already been distributed.
The consul Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the Capitoline temple; one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony, Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hand, haughtily ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he would lay hands on Gaius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his sword and cut the man down.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking