Sec. 15 —Effect of the Sullan Revolution.
As soon as Sulla found himself established, he caused a bill to pass the Comitia Centuriata by means of which he was empowered to inflict punishment upon certain Italian communities. For the accomplishment of this purpose commissioners were appointed to coöperate with the garrisons established throughout all Italy. The less guilty were required to pay fines, pull down their walls, and raze their citadels.[1] Those that had been guilty of continued opposition, as Samnium, Lucania, and Etruria, had their territory in whole or in part confiscated, their municipal rights cancelled, immunities taken from them, which had been granted by old treaties, and the Roman franchise,[2] which they had been granted by the Cinnan government, annulled. Such persons received, instead, the lowest Latin rights which did not even imply membership in any community and rendered them destitute of civic constitution and the right of making a testament.[3] This latter treatment applied only to those whose land was confiscated. Thus Sulla vindicated the majesty of the Republic and at the time avoided furnishing his enemies with a nucleus in Italian communities. In Campania, the democratic colony established at Capua by Cinna[4] was done away with and the domain given back to the state, thus becoming ager publicus. The whole territory of Praeneste and Norba in Latium, and Spoletium in Umbria was confiscated. The town of Sulmo in Pelignium was razed. But more direful than all this was the punishment which fell upon Etruria[5] and Samnium. These people had marched upon Rome and, with the avowed determination of exterminating the Roman people, had engaged in battle at the Colline gate. They were utterly destroyed and their country left desolate. The territory of Samnium was not even opened up for settlement, but left as a lair for wild beasts. Henceforth from the Rubicon to the Straits of Sicily there were to be none but Romans; the laws and the language of the whole peninsula were to be the laws[6] and the language of Rome.
To accomplish such an object as this, it was not enough to destroy and make desolate, it became necessary to repopulate the waste places and rebuild that which had been torn down. Roman citizens had to be sent as colonists into the desolate regions. Sulla, accordingly, undertook to carry out his plans of colonization, the grandest and most comprehensive which Rome had ever seen, and which indeed have had no parallel in history till the settlement of the north of Ireland by Cromwell and William III. The arrangements as to the property of the Italian soil placed at the disposal of Sulla[7] all the Roman domain lands which had been placed in usufruct to the allied communities, and which now reverted to the Roman government. It also placed at his disposal all the confiscated territories of the communities incurring punishment. Upon these territories he established military colonies, and thus obtained a three-fold result.[8] He remunerated his soldiers for the faithful service rendered him in long years of toil and danger. He repeopled the regions desolated by war (except Samnium). He provided a military protection for himself and the new constitution which he established.
Most of his new settlements were directed to Etruria, Faesulae and Arretium being among the number; others, to Latium[9] and Campania, where Praeneste and Pompeii became Sullan colonies. A great part of these colonies were, after the Gracchan manner, merely grafted upon town-communities already existing. The comprehensiveness of these settlements may be seen in this fact that 20,000 allotments were[10] made in different parts of Italy. Notwithstanding this vast disposal of territory, Sulla gave lands to the temple of Diana at Mt. Tifata, while the territory of Volaterrae and Arretium remained undisturbed. He also revived the old plan of occupation which had been legally forbidden in the year 118. Many of Sulla's intimate friends availed themselves of this method of becoming masters of large estates.
[Footnote 1: App., Bell Civ., I, 94-100; Livy, Epit., 89. Plutarch, Life of Sulla.]
[Footnote 2: Ihne, V, 391.]
[Footnote 3: Momm., III, 428, note. See article on Sulla, in Brittannica.]
[Footnote 4: Momm., III, 401.]
[Footnote 5: Momm., III, 429; Ihne, V, 392; Long.]
[Footnote 6: Momm., III, 429.]
[Footnote 7: Momm., loc. cit.; Ihne, V, 391-395.]
[Footnote 8: Momm., III, 429.]
[Footnote 9: Momm., III, 430; Marquardt u. Momm., Röm. Alter., IV, 111, totam Italiam suis praesidiis obsidere atque ocupare; Cicero, De Leg. Agr., 2, 28, 75.]
[Footnote 10: App., I, 100; Cicero, De Legibus Agrariis, II, 28, 78; Ihne, V, 394; Marquardt u. Momm., IV, 111; Zumpt, Comm. Epigr., 242-246; Cicero, Ad Att., I, 19, 4: "Volaterranos et Arretinos, quorum agrum Sulla publicarat."]
← Back to Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic