LUTION

=Necessity of the Revolution.=--The Roman people was no longer
anything but an indigent and lazy multitude, the army only an
aggregation of adventurers. Neither the assembly nor the legions
obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt nobles had lost all moral
authority, so that there was left but one real power--the army; there
were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no
longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer
practicable, gave place to the government of the general.

=The Civil Wars.=--The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come
at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it.
The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong
enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought
among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the
Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.

=The Gracchi.=--The first civil discord that blazed up in Rome was the
contest of the Gracchi against the Senate. The two brothers, Tiberius
and Gaius Gracchus, were of one of the noblest families of Rome, but
both endeavored to take the government from the nobles who formed the
Senate by making themselves tribunes of the plebs. There was at that
time, either in Rome or in Italy, a crowd of citizens without means
who desired a revolution; even among the rich the majority were of the
class of the knights, who complained that they had no part in the
government. Tiberius Gracchus had himself named tribune of the plebs
and sought to gain control of the government. He proposed to the
people an agrarian law. All the lands of the public domain occupied by
individuals were to be resumed by the state (with the exception of 500
acres for each one); these lands taken by the state were to be
distributed in small lots to poor citizens. The law was voted. It
caused general confusion regarding property, for almost all of the
lands of the empire constituted a part of the public domain, but they
had been occupied for a long time and the possessors were accustomed
to regard themselves as proprietors. Further, as the Romans had no
registry of the lands, it was often very difficult to ascertain
whether a domain were private or public property. To direct these
operations, Tiberius had three commissioners named on whom the people
conferred absolute authority; they were Tiberius, his brother, and his
father-in-law, an