United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The domain land thus resumed was to be divided into lots of thirty jugera, and these distributed to burgesses and Italian allies, not as free property, but inalienable leaseholds, for which they paid rent to the State. This was a declaration of war upon the great landholders. The proposal of Gracchus was paralyzed by the vote of his colleague, Marcus Octavius.
"The experience of Gaberius, a Roman of the equestrian order, will illustrate the reason for this: for he, who had a thousand jugera of land near Rome, met one day a certain goatherd leading ten goats to town, and heard him say that he made a denier a day out of each goat, whereupon Gaberius bought a thousand goats, hoping that he might thereby derive from his property an income of a thousand deniers a day: but so it fell out that he lost all his goats after a brief illness.
Do not sacrifice a great thing while striving for a small, especially as you are to receive no contemptible compensation for your expenditure on the land, in free ownership of 500 jugera secure for ever, and in case you have sons, of 250 more for each of them.
It has been urged as a difficulty not easily explained that few people, after retaining 500 jugera for themselves and 250 for each of their sons, would have had much left to surrender. For instance, was a hard and fast line drawn at 500 jugera as compensation whether a man surrendered 2 jugera or 2,000 beyond that amount?
Great disorders followed, but the commons prevailed, and the Senate adopted the plebiscitum, and proposed it to the Comitia Curiata, and it became a law. This step raised the authority of the tribunes, and added to Roman liberties. He cultivated a little farm of four jugera with his own hands, and lived with great simplicity.
Writing about the cultivation of olives and vines he gives these formulas, viz.: For carrying on an olive farm of two hundred and forty jugera, thirteen slaves are necessary, to-wit: an overseer, a housekeeper, five labourers, three teamsters, an ass driver, a swineherd and a shepherd: for carrying on a vineyard of one hundred jugera, fifteen slaves are necessary, to-wit: an overseer, a housekeeper, ten labourers, a teamster, an ass driver and a swineherd.
The second consisted of all citizens of a town, whether natives municipes or settlers incolae who possessed landed property of more than twenty-five jugera, and did not belong to any privileged class: both these classes were hereditary. The third, of all free citizens whose poverty debarred them from belonging to either of the preceding divisions.
It is not claimed that there is much ornamental architecture to be found in these Cotswold buildings; it is something in these days if we can boast that there is nothing to offend the eye in a district which is less than a hundred miles from London. There is no other district of equal extent within the same radius of which as much could be said. "Jam pauca aratro jugera regiae Moles relinquent."
"Quingena viginti octo millia quadringinta duo jugera, quae Campania provincia, juxta inspectorum relationem, in desertis et squalidis locis habero dignoscitur, iisdem provincialibus concessum." Cod. Theod. lxi. i. 2382.
So Gracchus, after entering upon his office, proposed the enaction of an agrarian law, by which all State lands, occupied by the possessors, without remuneration, should revert to the State, except five hundred jugera for himself, and two hundred and fifty for each son.
Word Of The Day