SEC. 16.—­AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS BETWEEN 86 AND 59.

The first agrarian movement after the Sullan Revolution was that inaugurated by the tribune Rullus.  This has become the most famous of all the agrarian laws because of the speeches made against it by the great adversary of Rullus, Cicero, who succeeded in defeating the measure by reason of his brilliant rhetoric.  Plutarch[1] has thus analyzed this proposition.  “The tribunes of the people proposed dangerous innovations; they demanded the establishment of ten magistrates with absolute power, who, while disposing, as masters, of Italy, Syria, and the new conquests of Pompey, should have the right to sell the public lands; to prosecute those whom they wished; to banish; to establish colonies; to draw upon the public treasury for whatever money they had need; to levy and maintain what troops they deemed necessary.  The concession of so widely extended power gained for the support of the law the most powerful men in Rome.  The colleague of Cicero, Antonius, was one of the first to favor it, in the hope of being one of the decemvirs.  Cicero opposed the new law in the senate and his eloquence so completely overpowered even the tribunes that they had not one word to reply.  But they returned to the charge and having gained the support of the people, they brought the matter before the tribes.  Cicero was in no way alarmed; he left the senate, appeared on the rostrum before the people and spoke with so great force that he not only caused the law to be rejected but took from the tribunes all hope of being successful in similar enterprises.”

In 61 we find Cicero advocating a bill similar in nature to the one he had so brilliantly combatted in 64.  In the last instance, however, the law was proposed by Pompey, and in favor of Pompey’s soldiers and that made all difference to a man who ever curried favor with the great.  Flavius, who proposed this law, was but the creature of Pompey.  Cicero has made known to us, in one of his letters to Atticus, the conditions of the law which Flavius proposed and the modifications which he himself wished to apply to it.  Flavius proposed to distribute lands both to the soldiers of Pompey and the people; to establish colonies; to use for the purchase of the lands for colonization, the subsidies which should accrue in five years, from the recently conquered territories.[2] The senate rejected this law entirely, in the same spirit of opposition which it had shown to all agrarian laws, probably thinking that Pompey would thereby obtain too great an increase of power.[3] This was the last attempt at agrarian legislation until the year 59, when Julius Caesar enacted his famous law.

[Footnote 1:  Plutarch, Cicero, 16-17.]

[Footnote 2:  Cicero, Ad.  Att., I, 19.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid.:  “Huic toti rationi agrariae senatus adversabatur, suspicans Pompeio novam quamdam potentiam quaeri.”]