essed_ (that is to say, who occupied)
more than five hundred jugers. Such were the main provisions of the law,
which did not touch private property of any kind. The state was merely
to assert its undisputed legal right over the public domain, and the
Plebeians became landholders, which was the best thing that could happen
to the republic, and which was what was aimed at in every community of
antiquity. Even the partial observance of this law was the cause of the
supremacy of Rome being established over the finest portions of the
ancient world. Had Licinius failed, Rome would have gone down in her
contest with the Samnites, and the latter people would have become
masters of Italy. As it was, his success created the Roman people; and
from the time of that success must be dated the formation of the Roman
constitution as it was recognized and acted on during the best period of
the Republic. True, the Agrarian law was but one of three measures which
he carried through in the face of all the opposition the Patricians
could make; but the other laws were of a kindred character, and they all
worked together for good. It was the triumph of the Plebeians for the
benefit of all. The revolution then effected was strictly conservative
in its nature, and whatever of internal evil Rome afterwards experienced
was owing, not to the adoption of the Licinian law, but to the
departure by the state from the practice under it which it was intended
permanently to establish.

The last great Agrarian contest which the Romans had was that which
takes its name from the Gracchi, and which began at the commencement of
the fourth generation before the birth of Christ. On the part of the
reformers, it was as strictly legal a movement as ever was known. Not
a single acre of private land was threatened by them; and whoever pays
attention to the details of their measures cannot fail to be struck with
the great concessions they were ready to make to their opponents,--the
men who had literally stolen the public property, and who pretended to
hold it as of right. Perhaps it was too late for any such reform as that
contemplated by the Gracchi to succeed, the condition of Rome then being
in no important respect like what it had been in the time of Licinius
Stolo; but one of the most interesting chapters in the history of things
which might have been is that which relates to the possible effect of
the Sempronian legislation. Had that legislation been fairly tri