provinces. As soon as the second
Punic war closed, Hannibal formed an alliance with the king of Macedonia.
A war-cloud rose[18] in the east. The AEtolians asked aid from Rome, and
statesmen could foretell that it would be impossible for Roman armies not
to interfere between Greece and Macedonia. But these countries had been
from ancient times most intimately connected with the orient, _i.e._, Asia,
where the Seleucidae still ruled, so that a war with Greece, which was
inevitable, could not fail to bring on a war with the successors of
Alexander, and, these hostilities once engaged in, who could say where
these accidents of war would cease, or when Roman arms could be laid aside?
In this critical condition it was prudent to attach the soldiers to the
republic by bonds and interests the most intimate, to make them proprietors
and to assure subsistence to their families during their long absence.
These wars did not much resemble those of the early republic which had for
a theatre of war the country in the immediate vicinity of Rome.

The senate continued to take the initiative in agrarian movements. In 172,
after the close of the wars against the Ligurians and Gauls, we again see
the senate spontaneously decreeing a new division of the lands. A part of
the territory of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul was confiscated and a _senatus
consultum_ ordered a distribution of this land to the commons. The praetor
of the city A. Atilius, was authorized to appoint _decemvirs_, whose names
Livy gives, to assign ten jugera to Roman citizens and three jugera to
Latin[19] allies. Thus the senate, with a newly-born sagacity, rendered
useless the demands of the tribune and recognized the justice and the
utility of the agrarian laws against which it had so long protested.
Indeed, it justified the propositions of the first author of an agrarian
law by admitting to a share in the conquered lands the Latin allies who had
so often contributed to their growth. This is the last agrarian law which
Livy mentions. The Persian war broke out in this year, and an account of
it fills the remaining books of this author which have come down to
us. However, prior to the proposition of Tiberius Gracchus, we find
in Varro[20] the mention of a new assignment of land of seven jugera
_viritim_, made by a tribune named Licinius in the year 144; but the author
has given such a meagre mention of it that we are unable to determine where
these lands were located. If we jo