I. That of all debts on which interest had been paid, the sum of the interest paid should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three successive years.
II. That no citizen should hold more than five hundred jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the public land, nor should feed on the public pastures more than one hundred head of larger cattle and five hundred of smaller, under penalty of a heavy fine.
III. That henceforth consuls, not consular tribunes, should always be elected, and that one of the two consuls must be a plebeian.
Of these laws, the first is of a kind not very uncommon in rude states of society. If persons lend and borrow money they enter into a legal contract, and the state is bound to maintain this contract. Cases will occur when the borrower is unable to pay his debts, and that from no fault or neglect of his own; and the laws provide for cases of insolvency in which the insolvent is not guilty of fraud. But if the state were to cancel all legal debts, persons would be very slow to lend money at all, and thus credit and commerce would be destroyed. At Rome, after the Gallic War, as at Athens in the time of Solon (when a similar ordinance was passed), all things were in such confusion that it might be necessary to resort to arbitrary measures; and we may well believe that Licinius, himself a wealthy man, would not have interfered but for necessity. But the precedent was bad; and in later times one of the worst means used by demagogues was a promise of novæ tabulæ, or an abolition of all debts.
The second law was a general agrarian law. Former agrarian laws had merely divided certain portions of public land among the needy citizens; but this laid down a general rule, by which the holding (possessio) of all such lands was to be limited. The purpose of Licinius was good. He wished to maintain that hardy race of yeomen who were the best soldiers in the state-militia; whereas if all these lands were absorbed by the rich, they would be cultivated by hired labourers or slaves. The subsequent history will show how unfortunate it was for Rome that this law was not more fully executed.
[376-368 B.C.]
At first the patricians were equally opposed to all these laws; they were the chief creditors, and therefore would lose by the first law; they held the bulk of the public lands on easy terms, and therefore would lose by the second; they alone could be consuls, and therefore they could not brook the third. We need not therefore wonder at a violent resistance; nor is it wonderful that they should enlist many rich plebeians on their side, for these persons would suffer as much as themselves from the first two laws. Accordingly we find that some tribunes were found to put a veto on the bills. But Licinius and Sextius would not be thus thwarted, and themselves turned the powerful engine of the veto against their opponents. When the time of the elections arrived they interdicted all proceedings in the comitia of the centuries; consequently no consuls, consular tribunes, censors, or quæstors could be elected. The tribunes and ædiles, who were chosen at the comitia of tribes, were the only officers of state for the ensuing year.
This state of things (as the Roman annalists say) lasted for five years,[37] Licinius and Sextius being re-elected to the tribunate every year. But in the fifth year, when the people of Tusculum, old allies of Rome, applied for aid against the Latins, the tribunes permitted consular tribunes to be elected to lead the army, and among them was M. Fabius Ambustus, the father-in-law and friend of Licinius. The latter, far from relaxing his claims, now proposed a fourth bill, providing that, instead of two keepers of the Sibylline books (duumviri), both patricians, there should be ten (decemviri), to be chosen alike from both orders—so scornfully did he treat the pretensions of the patricians to be sole ministers of religion.
The latter felt that the ground was slipping from under them, and that the popular cause was daily gaining strength. In vain did the senate order a dictator to be named for the purpose of settling the matter in their favour. The great Camillus assumed the office for the fourth time, but resigned; and P. Manlius Capitolinus, who was named presently after, effected nothing.
Once more, as when the patricians were in opposition to the tribunes, Terentilius and Canuleius, so now did the more moderate party propose a compromise. The law respecting the keepers of the Sibylline books was allowed to pass, and it was suggested that the two former of the Licinian rogations, the two social laws, might be conceded, if the plebeians would not press the political law, and claim admission to the highest curule rank. But this the tribunes refused. They could not, they said, effectually remedy the social evils of their poor brethren unless they had access to the highest political power; and they declared they would not allow the first two bills to become law unless the third was passed together with them. “If the people will not eat,” said Licinius, “neither shall they drink.” In vain the patricians endeavoured to turn this declaration against them; in vain they represented the tribunes as ambitious men who cared not really for the wants of the poor in comparison of their own honour and dignity; in vain the mass of the plebeians avowed themselves ready to accept the compromise. The tribunes set their faces like iron against the threats of the higher sort and the supplications of the lower. For another five years the grim conflict lasted, till at length their resolution prevailed, and in the year 367 B.C. all the three Licinian rogations became law.