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.

[SEC. 16.]—AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS BETWEEN 86 AND 59.

The first agrarian movement after the Sullan Revolution was that inaugurated by the tribune Rullus. This has become the most famous of all the agrarian laws because of the speeches made against it by the great adversary of Rullus, Cicero, who succeeded in defeating the measure by reason of his brilliant rhetoric. Plutarch[1] has thus analyzed this proposition. "The tribunes of the people proposed dangerous innovations; they demanded the establishment of ten magistrates with absolute power, who, while disposing, as masters, of Italy, Syria, and the new conquests of Pompey, should have the right to sell the public lands; to prosecute those whom they wished; to banish; to establish colonies; to draw upon the public treasury for whatever money they had need; to levy and maintain what troops they deemed necessary. The concession of so widely extended power gained for the support of the law the most powerful men in Rome. The colleague of Cicero, Antonius, was one of the first to favor it, in the hope of being one of the decemvirs. Cicero opposed the new law in the senate and his eloquence so completely overpowered even the tribunes that they had not one word to reply. But they returned to the charge and having gained the support of the people, they brought the matter before the tribes. Cicero was in no way alarmed; he left the senate, appeared on the rostrum before the people and spoke with so great force that he not only caused the law to be rejected but took from the tribunes all hope of being successful in similar enterprises."

In 61 we find Cicero advocating a bill similar in nature to the one he had so brilliantly combatted in 64. In the last instance, however, the law was proposed by Pompey, and in favor of Pompey's soldiers and that made all difference to a man who ever curried favor with the great. Flavius, who proposed this law, was but the creature of Pompey. Cicero has made known to us, in one of his letters to Atticus, the conditions of the law which Flavius proposed and the modifications which he himself wished to apply to it. Flavius proposed to distribute lands both to the soldiers of Pompey and the people; to establish colonies; to use for the purchase of the lands for colonization, the subsidies which should accrue in five years, from the recently conquered territories.[2] The senate rejected this law entirely, in the same spirit of opposition which it had shown to all agrarian laws, probably thinking that Pompey would thereby obtain too great an increase of power.[3] This was the last attempt at agrarian legislation until the year 59, when Julius Caesar enacted his famous law.

[SEC. 17.]—LEX JULIA AGRARIA.

During the first consulship of Caius Julius Cæsar, he brought forward an agrarian[1] bill at the instigation of his confederates. The main object of this bill was to furnish land to the Asiatic army[2] of Pompey, In fine, this bill was little more than a renewal of a bill presented by Pompey the previous year (58), but rejected. Appian gives the following account of this bill: "As soon as Cæsar and Bibulus[3] (his colleague) entered on the consulship, they began to quarrel and to make preparation to support their parties by force. But Cæsar who possessed great powers of dissimulation, addressed Bibulus in the senate and urged him to unanimity on the ground that their disputes would damage the public interests. Having in this way obtained credit for peaceable intentions, he threw Bibulus off his guard, who had no suspicion of what was going on, while Cæsar, meanwhile, was marshalling a strong force, and introducing into the senate laws for favoring the poor, under which he proposed to distribute land among them and the best land in Italy, that about[4] Capua which at the present time was let on public account.[5] He proposed to distribute this land among heads of families who had three children, by which measure he could gain the good will of a large multitude, for the number of those who had three children was 20,000. This proposal met with opposition from many of the senators, and Cæsar, pretending to be much vexed at their unfair behavior, left the house and never called the senate together again during the remainder of his consulship, but addressed the people from the rostra. He, in the presence of the assembly, asked the opinion of Pompeius and Crassus, both of them approving, and the people came to vote on them (the bills), with concealed daggers. Now as the [6] was not convened, for one consul could not summon the senate without the consent of the other consul, the senators used to meet at the house of Bibulus, but they could make no real opposition to Cæsar's power.... Now Cæsar secured the enactment of the laws, and bound the people by an oath to the perpetual observance of them, and he required the same oath from the senate. As many of the senators opposed him, and among them Cato, Cæsar proposed death as a penalty for not taking the oath and the assembly ratified this proposal. Upon this all took the oath immediately because of fear, and the tribunes also took it, for there was no longer any use in making opposition after the proposal was ratified."