and reckon, as previously stated.--ED.

CHAPTER XXIII

FALL OF THE REPUBLIC

DECADENCE OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS

=Destruction of the Peasantry.=--The old Roman people consisted of
small proprietors who cultivated their own land. These honest and
robust peasants constituted at once the army and the assembly of the
people. Though still numerous in 221 and during the Second Punic War,
in 133 there were no more of them. Many without doubt had perished in
the foreign wars; but the special reason for their disappearance was
that it had become impossible for them to subsist.

The peasants lived by the culture of grain. When Rome received the
grain of Sicily and Africa, the grain of Italy fell to so low a price
that laborers could not raise enough to support their families and pay
the military tax. They were compelled to sell their land and this was
bought by a rich neighbor. Of many small fields he made a great
domain; he laid the land down to grazing, and to protect his herds or
to cultivate it he sent shepherds and slave laborers. On the soil of
Italy at that time there were only great proprietors and troops of
slaves. "Great domains," said Pliny the Elder, "are the ruin of
Italy."

It was, in fact, the great domains that drove the free peasants from
the country districts. The old proprietor who sold his land could no
longer remain a farmer; he had to yield the place to slaves, and he
himself wandered forth without work. "The majority of these heads of
families," says Varro in his treatise on agriculture, "have slipped
within our walls, leaving the scythe and the plough; they prefer
clapping their hands at the circus to working in their fields and
their vineyards." Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed
in a moment of indignation, "The wild beasts of Italy have at least
their lairs, but the men who offer their blood for Italy have only the
light and the air that they breathe; they wander about without
shelter, without a dwelling, with their wives and their children.
Those generals do but mock them who exhort them to fight for their
tombs and their temples. Is there one of them who still possesses the
sacred altar of his house and the tomb of his ancestors? They are
called the masters of the world while they have not for themselves a
single foot of earth."

=The City Plebs.=--While the farms were being drained, the city of
Rome was being filled with a new population. They were the descendants