ting back the land from the
poor occupiers, and so, when the Senate abolished the vectigalia,
it was really pocketing them, and once for all and by a legal form
turning the public into private land. This law, which is here called
the Baebian law, Cicero ascribes to Spurius Thorius, who, he says,
freed the land from the vectigal. But as Appian says that Spurius
Borius imposed the vectigal, it is assumed that Cicero confused names,
that the Spurius Borius of Appian was Spurius Thorius, and that the
tribune whom Cicero calls Thorius was really quite another person.
However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich
would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly
meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor
farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which
had been specially assigned to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius
Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state
as before his legislation; that is to say, the Senate did not give
the occupiers an indefeasible title, but it did not meddle with
them. Moreover, it amply indemnified the Socii and Latini who had
surrendered land for the colonies of Caius, while some compensation
was given to poor farmers by a clause, that in future a man might only
graze ten large and fifty smaller beasts on the pastures of what still
remained public land. By this law the jurisdiction over land which had
been assigned by the triumvirs was given to the consuls, censors,
and praetors, the jurisdiction over cases in which disputes with the
publicani required settlement being granted to the consuls, praetors,
and, as such cases would occur chiefly in the provinces which were
mostly under propraetors, to propraetors also.

[Sidenote: Pernicious results of the reaction.] The results of this
reactionary legislation are partly summed up by Appian, when he
attributes to it a dearth of citizens, soldiers, and revenue. To our
eyes its effects are clearer still. Slave labour and slave-discontent,
'latifundia,' decrease of population, depreciation of the land,
received a fresh impetus, and the triumphant optimates pushed the
State step by step further down the road to ruin. For the end for
which they struggled was not the good of Italy, much less of the
world, but the supremacy of Rome in Italy, and of themselves in Rome.
Wealth and office were shared by an ever narrowing circle. Ten years
after the