it must have been one previously enacted but dishonestly set aside and, in Dionysius’ account, this is the form which the commotion occasioned by it takes.[9] Though this is doubtless true, yet the law, by reason of the combined opposition, became a dead letter and the people who would have been most benefited by its enforcement joined with Cassius’ enemies at the expiration of his term of office to condemn him to death.  In this way does ignorance commonly reward its benefactors.  This agitation aroused by Cassius, stirred the Roman Commonwealth, now more than twenty years old, to its very foundations, but it had no immediate effect upon the ager publicus.  The rich patrician together with the few plebeians who had wealth enough to farm this land, still held undisputed possession.  The poor plebeian still continued to shed his blood on the battle field to add to Roman territory, but no foot of it did he obtain.  Wealth centralized.  Pauperism increased.

[Footnote 1:  Dionysius, VIII, 68; “[Greek:  Oi de para touton taen upateian paralabontaes poplios Ouerginios kai Sporios Kassios, to triton tote apodeichtheis upotos, k. t. l.]”]

[Footnote 2:  Dionysius, VIII, 69; Livy, II, 41, seq.]

[Footnote 3:  Dionysius, VIII, 81.]

[Footnote 4:  Dionysius, VIII, 69; Mommsen, I, 363.]

[Footnote 5:  Niebuhr, II, 166.]

[Footnote 6:  Livy, II, 41; “Tum primum lex agraria promulgata est nunquam deinde usque ad hanc memoriam sine maximus motibus rerum agitata.”]

[Footnote 7:  Livy, II, 41; Dionysius, VIII, 69.]

[Footnote 8:  Niebuhr, II.]

[Footnote 9:  Dionysius, VIII, 81:  [Greek:  “Ekklaesiai te sunegeis hypo ton tote daemarchon eginonto kai apaitaeseis taes hyposcheseos.”  See also VIII, 87, line 25 et seq.].]

SEC. 6.—­AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS BETWEEN 486 AND 367.

Modern historians who have written upon the Roman Republic have, so far as I know, passed immediately from the consideration of the Lex Cassia to the law of Licinius Stolo.  Meanwhile more than a century had passed away.  Cassius died in 485, Licinius Stolo proposed his law in 376.  During this century which had beheld the organization of the republic and the growth, by tardy processes, of the great plebeian body many agrarian laws were proposed and numerous divisions of the public land took place.  Both Dionysius and Livy mention them.  The poor success of the proposition of Cassius and the evil consequences to himself in no way checked the zeal of the tribunes.  Propositions of agrarian laws followed one another with wonderful rapidity.  Livy enumerates these propositions, but almost wholly without detail and without comments upon their tendencies or points of difference from one another or from the law of Cassius.  As this law failed of its object by being disregarded, we may safely conclude that the most of these propositions were but a reproduction of the law of Cassius.