I. On the Ager Publicus in Italy.
This part may be divided roughly into three sections: (1) Lines 1-24, defining ager privatus; (2) 24-32, defining ager publicus; (3) 33-43, on disputed cases.
It thus embraces the first forty-three lines of the law, and is concerned with the public land of Italy, from the Rubicon southwards. It commences by referring to the condition of this land in the year 133, when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune. The law does not affect to touch any thing which had been enacted concerning this land prior to 133. It either confirms or alters what had been done in 133, and since that time. All the public land which was exempted from the operation of the Sempronian laws, i.e., Ager Campanus and Ager Stellatis, was also excluded from the operation of the lex Thoria.
(1) The first ten lines of the law relate to that part of the ager publicus which was occupied before the time of the Gracchi, if the amount of such land did not exceed the maximum fixed by the Sempronian laws;
(2) Also, to the assignments made by lot (sortito) to Roman citizens by the commissioners since the enactment of the Sempronian laws, if such assignments were not made out of land which had been guaranteed to the old possessors;
(3) Also, to all lands taken from an old possessor, but on his complaint restored to him by the commissioners;
(4) Also, to all houses and lands, in Rome or in other parts of Italy, which the commissioners had granted without lot, so as such grants did not interfere with the guaranteed title of older possessors;
(5) Also, to all the public land which Gaius Sempronius, or the commissioners, in carrying out his law, had used in the establishment of colonies or given to settlers, whether Roman citizens, Latini, or Italian Socii, or which they had caused to be entered on the "formae" or "tabulae."
All the lands comprised in the above are declared in lines seven and eight to be private property, in these words: "Ager locus omnis quei supra scriptus est, extra eum agrum locum, quei ager locus ex lege plebeivescito, quod C. Sempronius Ti. f. tr. pl. rogavit, exsceptum cavitumve est nei divideretur... privatus esto."
Lines 8-10 declare that the censors shall, from time to time, enter this land upon their books like any other private property; and it is further declared that nothing shall be said or done in the senate to disturb the peaceful enjoyment of this land by those persons possessing it.
Of lines 11-13 (ch. II) nothing definite can be said, because of the few words which have been preserved.[27] Rudorff explains them as referring to land granted to viasii vicani (dwellers in villages along the roads), by the Sempronian commissioners; such lands to remain in their possession, but to be theoretically ager publicus.
Lines 13-14 refer to lands occupied since 133 agri colendi causa. They allow to every Roman citizen the privilege of occupying, for the purpose of cultivation, thirty jugera of public land; they further declare that he who shall possess or have not more than thirty jugera of such land, shall possess and have it as private property,[28] with the provision that land so occupied shall be no part of the public land excepted from appropriation, and further, that such occupation shall not interfere with the guaranteed lands of a previous possessor.
Lines 14-15 relate to holders of pasture land (ager compascuus). This ager compascuus was land which had been left undivided, and had not become the private property of any individual, but was the common property of the owners of the adjacent lands. These persons had the right to pasture stock upon this land by paying pasture dues (scriptura or vectigal) to the state. The Thoria lex freed these lands from the vectigal or scriptura, and granted free pasturage to each man for ten head of large beasts—cattle, asses, and horses—and fifty head of smaller animals—sheep, goats, and swine. This common pasture must be carefully distinguished from the communal property which was granted to the settlers in a Colonia and called "compascua publica" with the additional title[29] of the colony, as "Julienses."
These rights of common resemble, in some respects, the English common of pasture as described by Bracton.[30] By English customary law, every freeholder holding land within a manor, had the right of common of pasturage on the lord's wastes as an incident to his land.
Lines 15-16. The possession of land, granted by the commissioners in a colony since 133, to be confirmed before the Ides of March next.
Lines 16-17. The same rule applied to lands granted otherwise by the same commissioners.
Line 18. Such occupants if forcibly ejected to be restored.
Lines 19-20. Land assigned by the Sempronian commission, in compensation for land in a colony which had been made public, to become private.
Lines 23-24. Confirmation of the title or restitution of such land to be made before the Ides of March next.
Lines 24-25. Land besides this which remains public is not to be occupied, but to be left free to the public for grazing. A fine for occupation is imposed. The law allowed all persons to feed their beasts great and small on this public pasture, up to the number mentioned in lines 14-15 as the limit to be pastured on the ager campascuus, free of all tax. This, according to Rudorff, was done for the benefit of the small holders. Those who sent more than this number of animals to the public pastures must pay a scriptura, for each head.
Line 26. While the cattle or sheep were driven along the 'calles,' or beast-tracks, and along the public roads to the pasture grounds, no charge was made for what they consumed along the road.
Line 27. Land given in compensation out of public land, to be privatus utei quoi optuma lege.
Line 27. Land taken in this way from private ownership to be publicus, as in 133.
Lines 27-28. Land given in compensation for ager patritus to be itself patritus.
Line 28. Public roads to remain as before.
Line 29. Whatever Latins and peregrini might do in 112, and whatever is not forbidden citizens to do by this law, they may do henceforward.
Lines 29-30. Trial of a Latin to be the same as for a Roman citizen.
Lines 31-32. Territory (1) of borough towns or colonies (2), in trientabulis, to be, as before, public.
Lines 33-34. Cases of dispute about land made private between 133 and 111, or by this law, to be judged by the consul or praetor before next Ides of March.
Lines 35-36. Cases of dispute after this date to be tried by consuls, praetors, or censors.
Lines 36-39. Judgment on money owing to publicani to be given by consuls, proconsuls, praetors or propraetors.
Line 40. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to swear to laws contrary to this law.
Lines 41-42. No one to be prejudiced by refusing to obey laws contrary to this law.
Lines 43-44. On the colony of Sipontum (?).
Thus we see that the lex Thoria had two main objects in view: (1) The guaranteeing to possessors full property in the land which they occupied. (2) The freeing from vectigal or scriptura the property of every one.
In this way was the reaction of the aristocracy completed. It left nothing of the Sempronian law. Appian[31] has fully comprehended all this, and, in his enumeration of the three laws, connection between which he indicates, we see clearly the entire revolutionary system, conducted, we must admit, with a rare address and a perfidy which rendered the effect certain. The aristocracy did not rest. As soon as they had gained the people by their new bait of money and food, soothed them by their apparent generosity, and familiarized them with the idea that the possessions of the nobles were not only legally acquired but inviolable, then they raised the mask, and by a bold step swept away the vectigal,[32] thus leaving their property free. The enactment of this law virtually closed the long struggle between patrician and plebeian over the public lands of Rome, and left them as full property in the hands of the rich nobility. The results could hardly have been otherwise. Sumptuary laws, false economic principles, had closed all channels[33] of trade and manufacture to the nobility, while conquest had filled their hands with gold and placed at their disposal vast numbers[34] of slaves. There was but one channel open for the investment of this gold,—the agrarian.[35] Farming and cattle-raising were the only occupations in which slaves could be used with advantage and so, as a natural result of Roman economics, the plebeian, with little or no money and subject to the military call, was compelled to enter into a one-sided contest with capital and slave labor. So long as these conditions existed so long would all the laws of the world fail to save him from abject poverty and its attendant evils.
[Footnote 1: Rudorff, Ackergesetz des Spurius Thorius, Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-158. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. V, pp. 75-86. Wordsworth, Specimens and Fragments of Early Latin, 440-459.]
[Footnote 2: Appian, Bell. Civ., I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 3: Ihne, Roman History, V, 9.]
[Footnote 4: Momm., Rom. Hist., III, 165.]
[Footnote 5: Long, Decline of the Rom. Rep., I, 352. See Lange, Röm. Alter., III, 48.]
[Footnote 6: Long, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 7: Momm., III, 161; Ihne, V, 10.]
[Footnote 8: Long, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 9: Lange, III, 48-49; Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 108.]
[Footnote 10: Long, loc. cit. Momm., III, 167-168; Ihne, V, 8-10.]
[Footnote 11: Appian, I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 12: Long, I, 353.]
[Footnote 13: Long, I, 354.]
[Footnote 14: Ihne, V, 10-11.]
[Footnote 15: Long, I, 353; Wordsworth, 440; Momm., III, 165, note; Ihne, V, 9; Lange, III, 48; Appian, I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 16: Cicero, Brut., 36.]
[Footnote 17: Cicero, De Orat., II, 70.]
[Footnote 18: Marquardt u. Momm., Röm. Alter., IV, 108, n. 4; Wordsworth, 441.]
[Footnote 19: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. I, p. 74.]
[Footnote 20: Appian, I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 21: Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440.]
[Footnote 22: Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440; See Rudorff, Ack. des Sp. Thor.]
[Footnote 23: Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-194.]
[Footnote 24: C.I.L., I, pp. 75-86.]
[Footnote 25: Long, I, 356.]
[Footnote 26: Wordsworth, 447. See the text of this law in C.I.L., vol. I, pp. 79-80.]
[Footnote 27: Long, I, 359.]
[Footnote 28: "Quom quis ceivis Romanus agri colendi causa in eum agrum agri jugera non amplius xxx possidebit habebitue, is ager privatus esto."]
[Footnote 29: Long, loc. cit.; Wordsworth, 446.]
[Footnote 30: Digby, History of the Law of Real Property in England, p. 157.]
[Footnote 31: Long, I, 357.]
[Footnote 32: Appian, I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 33: Long, loc. cit.; Ihne, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 34: Ihne, loc. cit.; Long, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 35: Momm., loc. cit.]
← Back to Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic