ed out to publicans.

3. Some of the uncultivated land was resigned to the first
occupant, every Roman citizen having the right of settling there
and of cultivating it.

=Agrarian Laws.=--The Agrarian Laws which deeply agitated Rome were
concerned with this public domain. No Roman had leave to expel the
possessors, for the boundaries of these domains were gods (Termini)
and religious scruple prevented them from being disturbed. By the
Agrarian Laws the people resumed the lands of the public domain which
they distributed to citizens as property. Legally the people had the
right to do this, since all the domain belonged to them. But for some
centuries certain subjects or citizens had been permitted to enjoy
these lands; at last they regarded them as their own property; they
bequeathed them, bought and sold them. To take these from the
occupants would suddenly ruin a multitude of people. In Italy
especially, if this were done, all the people of a city would be
expelled. Thus Augustus deprived the inhabitants of Mantua of the
whole of their territory; Vergil was among the victims, but, thanks to
his verse, he obtained the return of his domain, while the other
proprietors who were not poets remained in exile. These lands thus
recovered were sometimes distributed to poor citizens of Rome, but
most frequently to old soldiers. Sulla bestowed lands on 120,000
veterans at the expense of the people of Etruria. The Agrarian Laws
were a menace to all the subjects of Rome, and it was one of the
benefits conferred by the emperors that they were abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] Wisps or bundle of hay were twisted around poles.--ED.

[124] Regarding all these Italian wars the Romans had only a number of
legends, most of them developed to glorify the heroism of some ancestor
of a noble family--a Valerius, a Fabius, a Decius, or a Manlius.

[125] These songs were mingled with coarse ribaldry at the expense of
the general.--ED.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONQUERED PEOPLES

THE PROVINCIALS

=The Provinces.=--The inhabitants of conquered countries did not enter
into Roman citizenship, but remained strangers (peregrini), while yet
subjects of the Roman empire. They were to pay tribute--the tithe of
their crops, a tax in silver, a capitation tax. They must obey Romans
of every order. But as the Roman people could not itself administer
the province, it sent a magistrate in its place with the mission of
governing. The country s