A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

4i8
The Revolution
How Tiberius
became
a reformer.
Plutarch,
Tiberius
Gracchus, 8.
His agrarian
law, 133 B.C.
Appian,
Civil Wars,
i. 9
Rome, 152;
A ncienl
World, 410.
Opposition.
Appian,
Civil Wars,
i. 10.
herdsmen, lest free laborers should be drawn from their
employment into the army.
The ownership of slaves itself brought great gain from
the large number of children, who multiplied because
slaves were exempt from military service. Thus the
powerful men became enormously rich, and the race of
slaves increased throughout the country, while the Italian
people dwindled in numbers and strength, oppressed by
penury, taxes, and military service.
If they had any respite
from these evils, they passed their time in idleness,
because the land was held by the rich, who employed
slaves instead of freemen as cultivators.
In a certain book Gaius recorded that as Tiberius, his
brother, was passing through Etruria on his way to
Numantia, he saw that the country was depopulated, and
that the laborers and shepherds were foreign slaves and
barbarians; then for the first time Tiberius thought out
those political measures which to the two brothers were the
beginning of infinite calamities. But the energy and ambition
of Tiberius were roused mainly by the people, who
by writing on the porticos, walls, and tombs, urged him
to recover the public land for the poor.
He brought forward a law which provided (i)
that no
one should hold more than five hundred jugera of the
public land. But he added a provision to the former law,
(2) that the sons of the present occupiers might each
hold one-half that amount, and (3) that the remainder
should be divided among the poor by triumvirs, who
should be changed annually.
This greatly disturbed the rich because, on account
of the triumvirs, they could no longer disregard the law
as they had done before: nor could they buy the allotments
of others, for Gracchus had provided against this