and other matters were urged against him as evidence that he had an intention to make himself king. Whatever his designs may have been, he made himself mortal enemies by attempting to disturb the Possessors. After he had quitted his office, he was tried in some form, according to the tradition, condemned and put to death.

The Agraria Lex which bears the name of the tribune C. Licinius Stolo was enacted in B.C. 367 after a long struggle. The Lex was enacted for the purpose of limiting the amount of men's land (de modo agrorum). The substance of the enactment, as we have it, was that no man should possess more than five hundred jugera of land (agri). Neither the passage of Livy nor that of Varro in which the terms of the enactment are recorded, speaks of this limitation applying to the Public Land. The expression is simply land (ager, agri), from which some modern writers have concluded that the Lex applied only to private land, or, in other words, to property in land, and not to the Possession of Public Land; but this conclusion is absolutely irreconcileable with all the facts. Indeed one German writer who maintains that the Licinia Lex applied to private land, admits that the whole tenour of Livy's history shows that he thought that the Lex Licinia applied only to the Public Land, the grand matter in dispute between those who held it and those who wished to see it divided into small allotments. But this difficulty is removed by the critic informing us that Livy was mistaken. Other critics, among them Huschke, interpret the words of the Lex to mean, that no man should have more than five hundred jugera of land of any kind; that the whole amount of land which he held in ownership and in possession should not exceed this legal limit. Niebuhr and those who have followed him maintain that the Licinia Lex applied only to the Public Land. Niebuhr founded his opinion on the fundamental difference between 'ager' or private property and 'possessio' or the possession of the Public Land. 'Ager' was the only form of ownership of land which the Plebeians enjoyed, and their title to this land was from the state. He supposed the possession of Public Land to have been originally the exclusive privilege of the Patricians, though it was admitted that the

Patricians of course could have private property, and that their title to it would be the original assignments of land made by the state. But we may ask what is meant by these first or original assignments of land? When we can explain what was the origin of the Roman state, we may talk of first or original assignments of land. When we first learn any thing of Rome, even in the oldest traditions, it had long existed as a state, and all that we can do is to follow from some point of time far remote from the beginning the development of a political community, the origin of which was unknown to itself. We know so much as this: there was a time when the Patricians, whether they alone or others also we do not know, were occupying and using Public Land acquired by conquest; and the poor Plebeians were receiving small allotments of this land from time to time, which were assigned to them in complete ownership. Consistently with this it may be believed that the object of the Licinia Lex was to limit the excessive occupation of the Public Land by the Patricians or any other persons, and to give to the Plebs, to the poorer sort, allotments either out of the Public Land which was resumed by the state, or out of future acquisitions, or both.

Another chapter of the Licinia Lex, according to Appian, limited the number of a man's larger beasts to one hundred, and of the smaller, sheep and goats we may suppose, to five hundred; but it is not said that this rule applied only to animals fed on the public pastures (ager, saltus publicus). The absurdity of a law which limited the number of a man's beasts on his own land is even greater than the absurdity of a rule which limited the amount of land that he could own; but Huschke, who vigorously defends his view of the Licinia Lex, says that by this chapter Licinius designed to reach those rich men who chiefly looked after the raising of beasts, for as they kept more than they could or would maintain on their own land, a fact for which we have the critic's testimony and nothing else, they would of course trespass on the public pastures and drive away the beasts of the poor.

The difficulty of understanding the Licinia Lex is owing to the deficiencies of the antient authorities. Niebuhr sup

ported his view of the Lex by affirming that it contained other provisions, and he states what they are, but he has no evidence to confirm what he says. One of these assertions is that the Lex Licinia first gave the Plebeians a right to use and enjoy, in other words to possess, Public Land. There is no evidence at all for this assertion, but there is some evidence against it, and some good reasons too. Huschke supposes that the Plebeians had the right of enjoying the Public Land ever since the establishment of the Republic or Consular Government; but neither is there any evidence of this, nor can he show any reason for fixing on the expulsion of the last king as the epoch when the Plebs obtained new powers. But there is good reason when he suggests that ever since the time of Servius Tullius the enjoyment of the Public Land was a right of every citizen, for in all matters that relate to property the two orders, as already observed, must have been put on a footing of equality by that constitution.

It is not absolutely necessary that we should know the exact character of the Licinia Lex in order to understand the Agrarian Law of Ti. Gracchus. Plutarch in his Life of Ti. Gracchus does not mention by name the Licinia Lex, but he means this Lex when he says a 'Law was passed which forbade any one to have more than five hundred jugera of land.' But in course of time the law was evaded and the rich 'at last openly got possession of the greater part of the public lands in their own names.' He adds that 'C. Laelius, the friend of Scipio, attempted to remedy the mischief, but he desisted through fear of the disturbances that were threatened by the opposition of the rich, whence he got the name of wise or prudent, for such is the signification of the Roman word Sapiens. Tiberius, on being elected tribune, immediately undertook the same measures.' This seems to mean that he attempted to do what Laelius wished to do, whatever that was, whether it was a mere revival of the Licinia Lex or something more. The terms of the law of Tiberius, according to Plutarch, as finally settled 'merely declared that the rich should give up their unjust acquisitions upon being paid the value of them, and should allow the lands to be occupied by the citizens who were in want of this relief.' The Licinia

Lex, so far as we know, did not eject the Possessors; it only declared that no man must hold more than five hundred jugera, and imposed a fine on him if he held more, for this is the inference which Huschke derives from Plutarch's words. Thus a man would be obliged in some way to get rid of all his land above five hundred jugera, if he wished to escape the penalties of the Licinia Lex. The Licinia was accordingly, says Huschke, a Lex Imperfecta, as the Romans would call it. Perhaps Huschke has hardly used this word with strict propriety. It was the Sanctio contained in a Lex which made it Perfecta. If an act was done contrary to the provisions of a Lex Perfecta, the Lex declared the act to be null. A Lex which did not contain this Sanctio was Imperfecta. A Lex was named minus quam perfecta, when it did not declare the nullity of the act, which was done contrary to its provisions, but merely imposed a penalty. Such a Licinia Lex as Huschke describes was imperfect every way, and is simply an impossibility.

The conclusion of Huschke is this. The Licinia Lex and the Sempronia of Ti. Gracchus had only this in common, the limit of five hundred jugera and the object of providing for the poor. The Sempronia Lex touched only the Public Land, which commissioners named Triumviri, annually elected, were empowered to distinguish from private land, and they were also empowered to resume on the part of the state all the Public Land which any man held above five hundred jugera; but with a reservation in favour of the Possessors, by which reservation a son in the power of his father (filiusfamilias) was entitled to have two hundred and fifty jugera of this Public Land. The land thus resumed was to be distributed among poor citizens, who were not allowed to sell their allotments. The Sempronia, says Huschke, contained nothing about private land, nothing about the number of beasts that a man was allowed to have, nothing about the superintendence of the farms of the rich by poor free people. The Licinia on the other hand dealt with the means of acquiring land generally; it forbade any man to possess more than five hundred jugera of land of any kind; it limited the number of a man's beasts, and required a certain number of free persons

to be employed on the estates; and all this was enforced only by penalties. Further, there is no mention of Triumviri in the case of the Licinia Lex, nothing about separating Public from Private Land, nothing about the resumption of Public Land and the establishment of colonies. In short, he concludes the Sempronia was an Agrarian Law: the Licinia was a Lex de modo agri, as the extant Latin authorities term it, or the absolute limitation of property in land and live stock: the Sempronia was a political measure; the Licinia, a sumptuary law.

This conclusion of Huschke as to the Licinia Lex is derived from a stricter adherence to the words of the antient authorities than Niebuhr's explanation of the Licinia, a great part of which explanation is pure invention. It is on the omission of the word 'public,' when the antient authorities treat of the Licinia Lex, that Huschke's argument is founded. But the examination of the disputes about the Public Land, as reported by Livy, from the attempt of Cassius to the time of Licinius, will show any unprejudiced person that Livy thought that the law of Licinius applied to the Public Land and to nothing else, though the term Public does not occur when he mentions the provisions of the Licinia Lex. There is a remark in Livy which helps us, if not to the truth, at least to Livy's conception of the Licinia Lex. He says, the rich Romans held very little land except that which had been acquired by conquest: in fact, says Livy, Rome was planted in an enemy's country and the territory of Rome was won by the sword. Thus then, as Livy understood the matter, the rich occupied and enjoyed a large part of the Public Land, and the commonalty or the poor plebeians had from time to time their allotments; and thus practically the question of private land, the disturbance of the ownership of land, did not arise, when the Licinia Lex was enacted.

Huschke has made several unanswerable objections to Niebuhr's account of the Licinia Lex, but still he has not disproved the fundamental principle of Niebuhr, that the Lex applied only to Public Land. Huschke's ingenious explanation of the law contains many difficulties which he has not anticipated or removed. Yet if we accept the statements of Livy