De Lege Agraria

When I wished to join them familiarly in conversation, I was shut out; their projects were concealed from me: and when I assured them that, if the law appeared to me to be advantageous to the Roman people, I would assist them in it and promote it, still they rejected this liberality of mine with scorn, and said that I could not possibly be induced to approve of any liberal measures. I ceased to offer myself to them, lest perchance my importunity should seem to them treacherous or impudent. In the meantime they did not cease to have secret meetings among themselves, to invite some private individuals to them, and to choose night and darkness for their clandestine deliberations. And what great alarm this conduct of theirs caused us, you may easily divine by your own conjectures founded on the anxiety which you yourselves experienced at that time.

At last the tribunes of the people enter on their office. The assembly to be convened by Publius Rullus was anxiously looked for, both because he was the chief mover of the agrarian law, and because he behaved with more violence than his colleagues. From the moment that he was elected tribune, he put on another expression of countenance, another tone of voice, a different gait; he went about in an old-fashioned dress, without any regard to neatness in his person, with longer hair and a more abundant beard than before; so that he seemed by his eyes and by his whole aspect to be threatening every one with the power of the tribunes, and to be meditating evil to the republic. I was waiting in expectation of his law and of the assembly. At first no law at all is proposed. He orders an assembly to be summoned as his first measure. Men flock to it with the most eager expectation. He makes a long enough speech, expressed in very good language. There was one thing which seemed to me bad, and that was, that out of all the crowd there present, not one man could be found who was able to understand what he meant. Whether he did this with any insidious design, or whether that is the sort of eloquence in which he takes pleasure, I do not know. Still, if there was any one in the assembly cleverer than another, he suspected that he was intending to say something or other about an agrarian law. At last, after I had been elected consul, the law is proposed publicly. By my order several clerks meet at one time, and bring me an accurate copy of the law.

I assure you with the most real sincerity, O Romans, that I applied myself to the reading and understanding of this law with these feelings, that if I had thought it well adapted to your interests, and advantageous to them, I would have been a chief mover in and promoter of it. For the consulship has not, either by nature, or by any inherent difference of object, or by any instinctive hatred, any enmity against the tribuneship, though good and fearless consuls have often opposed seditious and worthless tribunes of the people, and though the power of the tribunes has sometimes opposed the capricious licentiousness of the consuls. It is not the dissimilarity of their powers, but the disunion of their minds, that creates dissension between them.

Therefore, I applied myself to the consideration of the law with these feelings, that I wished to find it calculated to promote your interests, and such an one as a consul who was really, not in word only, devoted to the people; might honestly and cheerfully advocate. And from the first clause of the proposed law to the last, O Romans, I find nothing else thought of, nothing else intended, nothing else aimed at, but to appoint ten kings of the treasury, of the revenues, of all the provinces, of the whole of the republic, of the kingdoms allied with us, of the free nations confederate with us—ten lords of the whole world, under the pretence and name of an agrarian law.

I do assert to you, O Romans, that by this beautiful agrarian law, by this law calculated solely for the good of the people, nothing whatever is given to you, everything is sacrificed to a few particular men; that lands are displayed before the eyes of the Roman people, liberty is taken away from them; that the fortunes of some private individuals are increased, the public wealth is exhausted; and lastly, which is the most scandalous thing of all, that by means of a tribune of the people, whom our ancestors designed to be the protector and guardian of liberty, kings are being established in the city. And when I have shown to you all the grounds for this statement, if they appear to you to be erroneous, I will yield to your authority, I will abandon my own opinion, but if you become aware that plots are laid against your liberty, under a pretence of liberality, then do not hesitate, now that you have a consul to assist you, to defend that liberty which was earned by the sweat and blood of your ancestors, and handed down to you, without any trouble on your part. The first clause in this agrarian law is one by which, as they think, you are a little proved, to see with what feelings you can bear a diminution of your liberty. For it orders “the tribune of the people who has passed this law to create ten decemvirs by the votes of seventeen tribes, so that whomsoever a majority consisting of nine tribes elects, shall be a decemvir.”

On this I ask, on what account the framer of this law has commenced his law and his measures in such a manner, as to deprive the Roman people of its right of voting? As often as agrarian laws have been passed, commissioners, and triumvirs, and quinquevirs, and decemvirs have been appointed. I ask this tribune of the people, who is so attached to the people, whether they were ever created except by the whole thirty-five tribes? In truth, as it is proper for every power, and every command, and every charge which is committed to any one, to proceed from the entire Roman people, so especially ought those to do so, which are established for any use and advantage of the Roman people; as that is a case in which they all together choose the man who they think will most study the advantage of the Roman people, and in which also each individual among them by his own zeal and his own vote assists to make a road by which he may obtain some individual benefit for himself. This is the tribune to whom it has occurred above all others to deprive the Roman people of their suffrages, and to invite a few tribes not by any fixed condition of law, but by the kindness of lots drawn, and by chance, to usurp the liberties belonging to all.