As under the government of the nobility military affairs were in the hands of the magistrates and senate, this field was closed to comitial legislation.[2354] One of the most notable indications of growing democracy was the project of Ti. Gracchus, 133, for shortening the period of service. It was not brought to vote;[2355] but his brother Gaius succeeded in passing a plebiscite, 123, which ordered that the state should bear the cost of clothing soldiers, and forbade the enlistment of boys before the close of their seventeenth year.[2356] The pay of the soldiers, which since the war with Hannibal had remained five and a third asses a day, had under new conditions become wholly inadequate; and certainly insistence on the legal age limitation was prudent as well as humane. There is no ground, then, for imagining with Diodorus[2357] that in this salutary measure Gaius was catering for the support of the soldiers by inciting them to disobedience and lawlessness.
His greatest constructive work he aimed to achieve through colonization and through the extension of the franchise. His colonial law, 123, proposed to establish many settlements in Italy,[2358] two of which at least should be made up of men of the best character, not the neediest but traders and workmen of moderate means.[2359] The two actually founded were Scolacium and Neptunia,[2360] both in situations favorable for commerce. Several other settlements in Italy are attributed to his colonial or agrarian statute.[2361] As his colonies were exclusively citizen,[2362] if any aliens took part, they must by virtue of the colonial law have obtained the Roman rights. The statute of his colleague Rubrius the same year (123) provided for the founding of Junonia on the site of Carthage.[2363] But the most liberal and statesmanlike measure was reserved for his second tribunate, 122. It was a proposal to grant full citizenship to the Latins and the ius Latii to the remaining allies.[2364] The rejection of the bill by a popular vote proved the leader far too liberal and too progressive for his supporters. Deceived by the spurious proposals of M. Livius Drusus,[2365] a colleague of Gaius, for the founding of twelve colonies, the members of which were to hold their lots by fee simple and consequently exempt from rents, and for depriving the Roman magistrates of the right to inflict corporal punishment on Latins even when in military service under their commands,[2366] the populace, readily accepting the new proposals,[2367] turned against their true champion, and defeated him in the election for the tribunate for the ensuing year.[2368] It was probably the same measure of Gaius for extending the citizenship which alienated from him the equites, who in every crisis pursued their own selfish ends.[2369] In the ensuing struggle between the senate and Gaius they took the side of the former.[2370]
In the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus the life of the comitia reached the highest point of intensity. The two years of his administration afford evidence of what the assembly could accomplish when directed by the personality of a great statesman.[2371] The sum total of the measures adopted should be estimated not as a completed work, but as a foundation to be strengthened at defective points and to be built upon till the whole structure of the state and empire should be reconstituted and freshly vitalized. These results might have been achieved, had Gaius lived out his natural life and retained the support of the populace and the knights.[2372] His failure proved the comitia a weak, unsafe instrument for constructive statesmanship.
II. The Aristocratic Reaction and the Popular Recovery
122-103
The optimates waited only for the expiration of the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus to begin undoing his work, and they found the comitia ready to aid in the demolition. In 121 a plebiscite of M. Minucius Rufus repealed the Rubrian law for the colonization of Junonia (Carthage).[2373] Soon afterward, certainly not later than 118, a plebiscite, whose author is unknown, permitted the beneficiaries of the Sempronian agrarian laws to sell the lots they had received.[2374] This enactment was followed in 118 by a plebiscite which Appian[2375] assigns to Spurius Borius (?), a name not otherwise known.[2376] It put an end to the distributions, and must therefore have abolished the agrarian triumvirate. The same law confirmed all holders of the ager publicus in their possession, without converting any of this land into private property, and it continued the imposition of rents. We may assume that the lands here referred to included those recently distributed in small lots as well as those retained by the occupiers. Lastly it enacted that the revenues accruing from the rents should be used for distributions—probably of cheap grain.[2377] In 111 another tribune, whom Cicero[2378] names Sp. Thorius, through a law which has partially survived in an inscription, aimed to settle definitely and for all time in the interest of the nobles the questions raised by the Sempronian agrarian legislation.
I. This epigraphic lex agraria converts into private property the following classes of lands.[2379]
(1) Land assigned to a colony or in any way made public, and afterward restored to the original owners (domneis). It is to be private optuma lege.[2380]
(2) Land assigned to a colony and afterward restored to its former occupier (veteri possessori).[2381]
(3) Land within the legal limit (of five hundred iugera) left to the occupier by the three commissioners.[2382]
(4) Land assigned after 133 to colonies of Roman citizens.[2383]