De Lege Agraria

I ask now, suppose there is no one who is willing to sell, what is to become of the money? The law says it is not to be brought into the treasury. It forbids its being refunded. The decemvirs, then, will keep all that money. Land will not be bought for you. After having alienated your revenues, harassed your allies, drained the confederate kings and all nations of their whole property, they will have the money, and you will not have the lands. Oh, says he, they will easily be induced by the magnitude of the sums offered to sell the lands. Then the effect of the law is to be thus: that we are to sell our property at whatever price we can get for it; and that we are to buy other men's property at whatever price they choose to put upon it.

And does the law order men to be conducted as settlers by those decemvirs, into those lands which have been bought in accordance with the provisions of this law? What? Is not the whole plan of such a nature that it does not make any difference to the republic whether a colony is led into that place or not? Is it a place which requires a colony? [a place which refuses one?] ---And in this class of places, as in the other parts of the republic, it is worthwhile to recollect the diligence exhibited by our ancestors; who established colonies in such suitable places to guard against all suspicion of danger, that they appeared to be not so much towns of Italy as bulwarks of the empire. These men are going to lead colonies into those lands which they have bought. Will they do so, even if it be not for the interests of the republic to do so?

“And into whatever places besides they shall think fit.” What is the reason, therefore, that they may not be able to settle a colony on the Janiculan Hill; and to place a garrison of their own for their own protection on your heads and necks? Will you not define how many colonies you choose to have led forth, into what districts they are to be led, and of what number of colonists they are to consist? Will you occupy a place which you consider suitable for the violence which perhaps you are meditating? Will you complete the number of the colony, and will you strengthen it by whatever garrison you may think advisable? Will you employ the revenues and all the resources of the Roman people to coerce and oppress the Roman people itself, and to bring it under the dominion and power of those intolerable decemvirs?

But I beg you now, O Romans, to take notice how he is planning to besiege and occupy all Italy with his garrison. He permits the decemvirs to lead colonists, whomsoever he may choose to select, into every municipality and into every colony in all Italy; and he orders lands to be assigned to those colonists. Is there any obscurity here in the way in which greater powers and greater defences than your liberty can tolerate are sought after? Is there any obscurity here in the manner in which kingly power is established? Is there any disguise about your liberty being wholly destroyed? For when it is one and the same body of men who with their resources lay siege, as it were, to all the riches and all the population,—that is to say, to all Italy,—and who propose to hold all your liberties in blockade by their garrisons and colonies,—what hope, yes, what possibility even is left to you of ever recovering your liberty?

But the Campanian district, the most fertile section of the whole world, is to be divided in accordance with the provisions of this law; and a colony is to be led to Capua, a most honourable and beautiful city. But what can we say to this? I will speak first of your advantage, O Romans. Then I will recur to the question of honour and dignity; so that, if any one takes particular pleasure in the excellence of any town or any district, he may not expect anything; and if any one is influenced by the idea of the dignity of the business, he may resist this fictitious liberality. And first of all I will speak of the town, in case there is any one whose fancy is more taken with Capua than with Rome. He orders five thousand colonists to be enrolled for the purpose of being settled at Capua; and to make up this number, each of the decemvirs is to choose five hundred men.

I entreat you, do not deceive yourselves about this matter. Consider it in its true light, and with due care. Do you think that in this number there will be room for you yourselves, or for any men like you—quiet, easy men? If there be room for all of you, or even for the greater part of you—although my regard for your honour compels me to keep awake day and night, and to watch with eager eyes every part of the republic—still I will close my eyes for a time, if your advantage will be at all promoted by my doing so. But, if a place and a city is being looked out for five thousand men, picked out as fit instruments for violence, and atrocity, and slaughter, from which they may be able to make war, and which may be able to equip them properly for war,—will you still suffer a power to be raised and garrisons to be armed in your own name against yourselves? Will you allow cities and lands and forces to be arrayed against your interest?

For they themselves have desired the Campanian district which they hold out a hope of to you. They will lead thither their own friends, in whose name they themselves may occupy it and enjoy it. Besides all this, they will make purchases; they will add the other ten acres to their present estate. For if they say that that is not lawful by the law; by the Cornelian law it certainly is not. But we see (to say nothing about lands at a distance) that the district of Praeneste is occupied by a few people. And I do not see that anything is wanting to their fortunes, except farms of such a description that they may be able by the supplies which they derive from them to support their very large households, and the expense of their farms near Cumae and Puteoli. But if he be thinking of what is for your advantage, then let him come, and let him discuss with me, face to face, the decision of the Campanian district.

I asked him on the first of January, to what men he was going to distribute that land, and on what principles. He answered that he should begin with the Romilian tribe. In the first place now, what is the object of such pride and arrogance as to cut off one portion of the people, and to neglect the order of the tribes? to contrive to give land to the country people who have it already, before any is given to the city people, to whom the hope of land and the pleasure they are to derive from it is held out as an inducement ? Or if he says that this is not what he said, and if he has some plan in his head to satisfy all of you, let him produce it; let him allot it in divisions of ten acres; let him put forth your names in a regular arrangement from the district of the Subura to that of the Arnus. If you perceive not only that ten acres are not given to you, but that it is actually impossible for such a body of men to be collected together in the district of Campania, will you nevertheless allow the republic to be harassed, the majesty of the Roman people to be despised, and you yourselves to be deluded any longer by the tribune of the people?

But if that land could possibly come to you, would you not rather that it remained as part of your patrimony? Will you allow the most beautiful estate belonging to the Roman people—the main source of your riches, your chief ornament in time of peace, your chief source of supply in time of war, the foundation of your revenues, the granary from which your legions are fed, your consolation in time of scarcity—to be ruined? Have you forgotten what great armies you supported by means of the produce of Campania, in the Italian war, when you had lost all your ordinary sources of revenue? Are you ignorant that all those magnificent revenues of the Roman people are often dependent on a very slight impulse of fortune-on a critical moment? What will all the harbours of Asia, what will the plains of Syria, what will all our transmarine revenues avail us, if the very slightest alarm of pirates or enemies be once given?

But as our revenues derived from the territory of Campania are of such a nature that they are always at home, and that they are protected by the bulwark of all our Italian towns, so they are neither hostile to us in time of war, nor variable in their productiveness, nor unfortunate from any accidents of climate or soil. Our ancestors were so far from diminishing what they had taken from the Campanians, that they even bought additional lands to be added to it, from those from whom they could not reasonably take it without purchase. For which reason, neither the two Gracchi, who thought a great deal of what was advantageous for the Roman people, nor Lucius Sulla, who gave away everything without the slightest scruple to any one he pleased, ever ventured to touch the Campanian territory. Rullus was the first man to venture to remove the republic from that property, of which neither the liberality of the Gracchi nor the uncontrolled power of Sulla had deprived it. That land which now, as you pass by it, you say is yours, and which foreigners whose road lies through it hear is yours, when it is divided will neither be nor be said to be yours.

And who are the men who will possess it? In the first place they are active men, prepared for deeds of violence, willing for sedition, who, the very moment the decemvirs clap their hands, may be armed against the citizens and ready for slaughter. In the next place, you will see the whole district of Campania distributed among a few men already rich in wealth and power. Meanwhile you, who have received from your ancestors those most beautiful homes, if I may so say, of your revenues, which they won by their arms, will not have left to you one single clod of earth of all your paternal hereditary possessions. And there will be this difference between your diligence and that or private individuals, that when Publius Lentulus, while he was chief of the senate, had been sent into those parts by our ancestors, in order to purchase at the public expense those lands, being private property, which projected into the public domain in Campania, he is said to have reported that he had not been able to purchase a certain man's estate for money; and that he who had refused to sell it, had given this reason why he could not possibly be induced to sell it, that, though he had many farms, this was the only farm from which he never had had any bad news.

Is it so? Did this reason weigh with a private individual and shall it not weigh with the Roman people to prevent their giving up the district of Campania to private individuals for nothing, at the request of Rullus? And the Roman people may say the very same thing about this revenue, that he is said to have said about his farm. Asia for many years during the Mithridatic war produced you no revenue. There was no revenue from the Spains in the time of Sertorius. Manius Aquilius even lent corn to the Sicilian cities at the time of the Servile war. But from this tributary land no bad news was ever heard. Other of our revenues are at times weighed down by the distresses of war; but the sinews of war are even supplied to us by this tributary land.

Besides, in this allotment of lands which is to take place, even that, which is said in other cases, cannot be said here, namely, that lands ought not to be left deserted by the people, and without the cultivation of free men. For this is what I say,—if the Campanian land be divided, the common people is driven out of and banished from the lands, not settled and established in them. For the whole of the Campanian district is cultivated and occupied by the common people, and by a most virtuous and moderate common people. And that race of men of most virtuous habits, that race of excellent farmers and excellent soldiers, is wholly driven out by this tribune who is so devoted to the people. And these miserable men, born and brought up on those lands, practised in tilling the ground, will have no place to which, when so suddenly driven out, they can betake themselves. The entire possession of the Campanian district will be given over to these robust, vigorous, and audacious satellites of the decemvirs. And, as you now say of your ancestors, “Our ancestors left us these lands,” so your posterity will say of you, “Our ancestors received these lands from their ancestors, but lost them.”

I think, indeed, that if the Campus Martius were to be divided, and if every one of you had two feet of standing ground allotted to him in it, still you would prefer to enjoy the whole of it together, than for each individual to have a small portion for his own private property. Wherefore, even if some portion of these lands were to come to every individual among you.—which is now indeed held out to you as a lure, but is in reality destined for others,—still they would be a more honourable possession to you when possessed by the whole body, than if distributed in bits to each citizen. But now when you are not to have any share in them, but when they are being prepared for others and taken from you, will you not most vigorously resist this law as you would an armed enemy, fighting in defence of your lands. He adds the Stellate plain to the Campanian district, and in the two together he allots twelve acres to each settler. As if the difference was slight between the Stellate and Campanian districts!

And now a multitude is sought out, by which those towns are to be peopled. For I have said before that leave is given by the law for them to occupy with their settlers whatever municipalities and whatever old colonies they choose. They will fill the municipality of Cales; they will overwhelm Teanum; they will extend a chain of garrisons through Atella, and Cumae, and Naples, and Pompeii, and Nuceria; and the whole of Puteoli, which is at present a free city, in the full enjoyment of its ancient rights and liberties, they will occupy with a new people, and with a foreign body of men. Then that standard of a Campanian colony, greatly to be dreaded by this empire, will be erected at Capua by the decemvirs. Then that other Rome, which has been heard of before, will be sought in opposition to this Rome, the common country of all of us.

Impious men are endeavouring to transfer our republic to that town in which our ancestors decided that there should be no republic at all, when they resolved that there were but three cities in the whole earth, Carthage, Corinth, and Capua, which could aspire to the power and name of the imperial city. Carthage has been destroyed, because, both from its vast population, and from the natural advantages of its situation, being surrounded with harbours, and fortified with walls, it appeared to project out of Africa, and to threaten the most productive islands of the Roman people. Of Corinth there is scarcely a vestige left. For it was situated on the straits and in the very jaws of Greece, in such a way that by land it held the keys of many countries, and that it almost connected two seas, equally desirable for purposes of navigation, which were separated by the smallest possible distance. These towns, though they were out of the sight of the empire, our ancestors not only crushed, but, as I have said before, utterly destroyed, that they might never be able to recover and rise again and flourish.