re of Rome.
_Results of this Law._ Although Tiberius was dead, yet his law still lived,
and, indeed, received added force from the death of its author. The senate
killed Gracchus but could not annul his law. The party which was favorable
to the distribution of the domain land gained control of affairs. Gaius
Gracchus, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, and Gaius Papirius Carbo, were the chief
persons in carrying the law into effect. Mommsen (vol. III, p. 128) says:
"The work of resuming and distributing the occupied domain land was
prosecuted with zeal and energy; and, in fact, proofs to that effect are
not wanting. As early as 622(i.e. from the Foundation of Rome, =132 B.C.)
the consul of that year, Publius Popillius, the same who presided over the
prosecution of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public
monument that he was 'the first who had turned the shepherd out of the
domains and installed farmers in their stead;' and tradition otherwise
affirms that the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the
formerly existing communities the number of farmers was everywhere
augmented--for it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate
the former class, not by the founding of new communities, but by the
strengthening of those already in existence.
"The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distributions are
attested by the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land-measuring
referable to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, the due
placing of boundary stones, so as to obviate future mistakes, appears to
have been first suggested by the Gracchan courts for defining boundaries
and by the distribution of land.
"But the number on the burgess-rolls gives the clearest evidence. The
census, which was published in 623, and actually took place probably in
the beginning of 622, yielded not more than 319,000 burgesses capable of
bearing arms, whereas six years afterwards (629), in place of the previous
falling off (p. 108), the number rises to 395,000, that is 76,000 of an
increase beyond all doubt solely in consequence of what the allotment
commission did for Roman burgesses."
Ihne says, concerning this same commission (vol. IV, p. 409): "The
triumvirs entered upon their duties under the most unfavorable
circumstances.... We may entertain serious doubts whether they or their
immediate successors ever got beyond this first stage of their labors, and
whether they really accomplish
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