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Updated: June 28, 2025
The people had the painful sense of the increasing weight of interest nearer to their hearts; and their private troubles became predominant amid the public contests. Through the wearisome effects of which the patricians ordered Lucius Cornelius Scipio, the interrex, for peace' sake to observe the Licinian law in the election of consuls.
Did we not see the deed done before we even suspected that it was going to be done? Where is the Caecilian and Didian law? What is become of the law that such bills should be published on three market days? What is become of the penalty appointed by the recent Junian and Licinian law? Can these laws be ratified without the destruction of all other laws?
It forbade anyone to keep more than a hundred large or five hundred small beasts on the common pasture-land, and stipulated for the employment of a certain proportion of free labour. Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its political provisions, a dead letter. Though the law turned out no possessors, it was opposed by the Senate and nobles.
The conception of limited magisterial power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the one and indivisible -imperium-. A first step was already taken in this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices, particularly the quaestorship; it was completely carried out by the Licinian laws , which prescribed the functions of the three supreme magistrates, and assigned administration and the conduct of war to the two first, and the management of justice to the third.
The people seemed to feel sure that Gracchus was intending to do something for them, and they eagerly came together and voted for him, and when he was elected, they crowded into the city from all the regions about to vote in favor of the re-establishment of the Licinian laws, with some alterations.
The conception of limited magisterial power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the one and indivisible -imperium-. A first step was already taken in this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices, particularly the quaestorship; it was completely carried out by the Licinian laws , which prescribed the functions of the three supreme magistrates, and assigned administration and the conduct of war to the two first, and the management of justice to the third.
We do not mean, however, to express any doubt that the regulations of the Licinian laws, such as they were, might and did substantially benefit the small farmer and the day-labourer.
No wonder the Romans were losing their old character. This was the very thing that the Licinian law had been intended to prevent, by forbidding any citizen to have more than a certain quantity of land, and giving the state the power of resuming it.
But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the Licinian laws.
Then he proposed reviving the Licinian law, that nobody should have more than 500 acres, and that the rest should be divided among those who had nothing, leaving, however, a larger portion to those who had many children. There was, of course, a terrible uproar; the populace clamoring for their rights, and the rich trying to stop the measure.
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