The kings had always sought to put a curb on these usurpations,[129] and perhaps it was a similar attempt which cost Servius Tullius his life. But after the fall of the kingly power, the patricians, having become more powerful, determined to preserve the lands which they had unjustly seized.[130]
And it must be acknowledged, as they supported the greatest share of the burthen of war and taxation, they had a better claim than the others to the conquered lands; they thought, moreover, that the colonies were sufficient to support an agricultural population, and they acted rather as State farmers than as proprietors of the soil. According to the public law, indeed, the _ager publicus_ was inalienable, and we read in an ancient author:--“Lawyers deny that the soil which has once begun to belong to the Roman people, can ever, by usage or possession, become the property of anybody else in the world.”[131]
In spite of this principle, it would have been wisdom to give, to the poor citizens who had fought, a part of the spoils of the vanquished; for the demands were incessant, and after 268, renewed almost yearly by the tribunes or by the consuls themselves. In 275, a patrician, Fabius Cæso, taking the initiative in a partition of lands recently conquered, exclaimed: “Is it not just that the territories taken from the enemy should become the property of those who have paid for it with their sweat and with their blood?”[132] The Senate was as inflexible for this proposition as for those which were brought forward by Q. Considius and T. Genucius in 278, by Cn. Genucius in 280, and by the tribunes of the people, with the support of the consuls Valerius and Æmilius, in 284.[133]
Yet, after fifty years of struggles since the expulsion of the Tarquins, the tribune Icilius, in 298, obtained the partition of the lands of Mount Aventine, by indemnifying those who had usurped a certain portion of them.[134] The application of the law Icilia to other parts of the _ager publicus_[135] was vainly solicited in 298 and the following years; but in 330, a new tax was imposed upon the possessors of the lands for the pay of the troops. The perseverance of the tribunes was unwearied, and, during the thirty-six years following, six different propositions were unsuccessful, even that relating to the territory of the Bolani, newly taken from the enemy.[136] In 361 only, a senatus consultus granted to each father of a family and to each free man seven acres of the territory which had just been conquered from the Veii.[137] In 371, after a resistance of five years, the Senate, in order to secure the concurrence of the people in the war against the Volsci, agreed to the partition of the territory of the Pomptinum (the Pontine Marshes), taken from that people by Camillus, and already given up to the encroachments of the aristocracy.[138] But these partial concessions were not enough to satisfy the plebeians or to repair past injustices; in the Licinian law the claims of the people, which had been resisted during a hundred and thirty-six years, triumphed;[139] it did not entirely deprive the nobles of the enjoyment of the lands unjustly usurped, but it limited the possession of them to five hundred _jugera_. When this repartition was made, the land which remained was to be distributed among the poor. The proprietors were obliged to maintain on their lands a certain number of free men, in order to augment the class from which the legions were recruited; lastly, the number of cattle on each domain was fixed, in order to restrain the culture of the meadows, in general the most lucrative, and augment that of the arable lands, which relieved Italy from the necessity of having recourse to foreign corn.