# 37. On the Troubles to which the Agrarian Laws gave rise in Rome; and how great is the Trouble given in a Republic by passing a Law that is too Retrospective and Contravenes an Ancient Custom of the City

Ancient writers were of opinion that men are wont to get annoyed with adversity and fed up with prosperity, both of which passions give rise to the same effects. For, whenever there is no need for men to fight, they fight for ambition’s sake; and so powerful is the sway that ambition exercises over the human heart that it never relinquishes them, no matter how high they have risen. The reason is that nature has so constituted men that, though all things are objects of desire, not all things are attainable; so that desire always exceeds the power of attainment, with the result that men are ill content with what they possess and their present state brings them little satisfaction. Hence arise the vicissitudes of their fortune. For, since some desire to have more and others are afraid to lose what they have already acquired, enmities and wars are begotten, and this brings about the ruin of one province and the exaltation of its rival.

I have made these preliminary remarks because the Roman plebs were not content with having made their position secure in regard to the nobles by the creation of tribunes, which necessity constrained them to demand; but, having acquired them, at once began to quarrel with the nobles out of ambition, and to demand also a share in the distribution of honours and of propertya than which man esteems nothing more highly. This grew into a disease, which led to the dispute about the Agrarian Law and in the end caused the destruction of the republic.

Now, in as much as well-ordered republics have to keep the public rich but their citizens poor,26 it looks as if in the city of Rome this law was defective, either because it had not been so made at the outset as to prevent the need of going back on it, or because the making of it had been so long deferred that to deal now with an old difficulty gave trouble, or because, though well drawn up at the outset, in practice it had become corrupted. Anyhow, it came about that, whenever this law was mentioned in Rome, everything was turned topsy-turvy in that city.

The provisions made by this law fell under two heads. It provided first that no citizen should be allowed to possess above so many acres of land; and, secondly, that all the lands that were taken from an enemy should be divided among the Roman people. This gave offence to the nobility in two ways; for those who possessed more land than the law allowed – and they were the greater part of the nobility – were to be deprived of the overplus; and the sharing of enemy goods among the plebs put a stop to their chance of enriching themselves. Wherefore, since these provisions gave offence to powerful men, and it seemed to them that, in opposing the law, they were acting in the public interest, whenever the question cropped up the whole city was turned topsy-turvy, as has been said. Patiently and industriously the nobles sought to put the matter off, either by setting out with an army for foreign parts, or by setting up another tribune against the tribune who proposed the law, or sometimes by a partial concession, or again by sending a colony out to the place where the land was to be distributed. This happened, for instance, in regard to the lands round about Antium, which had given rise to a controversy about the law; for a colony, drawn from Rome, was sent there, to which the lands in that neighbourhood were assigned. In regard to this Titus Livy makes a remark worth mentioning. He says that in Rome it was difficult to get men to put their names down to go with the colony, and observes that the plebs were much more keen on voicing in Rome their desire for things than they were in taking possession of them at Antium.

Dissatisfaction with this law for a time went on causing trouble in Rome, until the Romans began to lead their armies to the more remote parts of Italy, and beyond it, when for some time it seems to have ceased. This was because the lands which the enemies of Rome possessed, being far away from where any of its plebs lived and in places where it was not easy to cultivate them, the plebs came to be less keen on having them; and again because the Romans were less severe in punishing their enemies by such deprivations, and because, when they did despoil a place of the lands in its neighbourhood, they were distributed among colonists. This being so, the Agrarian law lay dormant until the time of the Gracchi, and, when they raised it again, it spelt the complete destruction of Rome’s liberty. For by that time the power of its adversaries was twice as great, and, as a result, the mutual hatred existent between the plebs and the senate was so intense that it led to armed conflict and bloodshed, in which neither moderation nor respect for civic customs was shown. So that, the public magistrates being unable to find a remedy and none of the factions having any longer any confidence in them, recourse was had to private remedies, and each party began to look out for some chief to head and defend it.

In this scandal and disorder the plebs took the first step by staking its reputation on Marius, to such effect that it made him four times consul. His consulship was in fact continuous, except for short intervals, and this enabled him on his own authority to appoint himself consul on three other occasions. As the nobility had no other remedy whereby to counteract this pest, they took to backing Sulla, and, when he was made the head of their party, civil war broke out, and in it, after much bloodshed and many changes of fortune, the nobility got the upper hand.

These animosities were revived in the time of Caesar and Pompey. For, when Caesar became the head of the Marian party and Pompey the head of Sulla’s, they came to blows, and Caesar got the best of it, and so became Rome’s first tyrant. After which that city never again recovered its liberties.

Such, then, was the beginning, and such the end of the Agrarian law. Elsewhere we have shown that it was enmity between the senate and populace of Rome that kept Rome free, because it was owing to this that laws were made in favour of liberty. And, though with this conclusion the result of the Agrarian Law may seem to be incompatible, I must confess that I am not on this account inclined to change my opinion, for, so great is the ambition of the great that unless in a city they are kept down by various ways and means, that city will soon be brought to ruin. Hence, if it was fully three hundred years before the Agrarian Law led to the servitude of Rome, it would, perchance, have led to servitude much sooner, had not the plebs by means of this law and by other demands prompted by their appetites, always kept the ambition of the nobles in check.

It is also clear from this that men set much greater store on property than on honours. For the Roman nobility always gave way to the plebs in the matter of honours without causing serious troubles; but, when it came to property, so great was the obstinacy with which they defended it, that in order to satisfy their appetites the plebs had recourse to those irregular means which have been mentioned above. To this disorderly conduct they were moved by the Gracchi, whose intention is more praiseworthy than was their prudence. For to seek to remove a disorder which has grown inveterate in a commonwealth by making a law that is too retrospective is not a wise course to adopt, and, as has been explained at length above, serves but to accelerate the evil to which the disorder is urging you on; whereas, by temporizing, either the evil will be postponed, or by this means it will in course of time spend itself before it reaches a head.