Even to-day the traveller who traverses the silent and depopulated desert of the Roman Campagna, which is owned by a limited number of large proprietors and is left in an almost uncultivated state, is struck forcibly with the thought that the unwise and unjust distribution of the land has had much to do with the desolate and unproductive aspect of this district, which under judicious and scientific cultivation might yield rich harvests and contribute materially to the welfare of the inhabitants of Tuscany. The same thought struck Tiberius Gracchus as, on his departure for Spain, he travelled through Tuscany and found it almost a desert, or, at best, only rudely cultivated in some parts by barbarian and imported slaves. It was at that time that he first conceived the idea of bringing about a change--an idea which continued to haunt his mind until he was in a position to realize it. And in doing so he found a precedent for legislative action.
There already existed a law at Rome--the so-called Licinian law--which limited the number of acres to be possessed by any one citizen to five hundred. But this Licinian law had been a dead letter for many years, and there were many rich citizens in Rome who counted the number of their acres by the thousand or even ten thousand. It was this violation of the Licinian law, and the open injustice done to the poor by this violation, which Tiberius Gracchus wanted to correct. He therefore introduced a new agrarian law which aimed to revive the Licinian law, but at the same time greatly modified and attenuated its provisions. The change in the law which Tiberius Gracchus proposed was in one respect an act of injustice, because it put a premium on the violation of the law as it had existed, instead of punishing that violation by imposing an adequate fine. Under the new law a citizen might hold 500 acres of the public lands in his own name, and in addition, 250 acres for each son still under the paternal roof and authority. Moreover, the new law provided that, whenever a citizen should be compelled to give up land which he held in excess of the share which the law allowed him, he should be reimbursed for this loss, at the appraised value, from the public treasury. Tiberius Gracchus also favored the immediate distribution of the confiscated lands among the poor as their absolute property, and proposed that, whenever a Roman colony was founded on conquered territory, a similar distribution of the newly acquired land should be made.