Leges Liciniae

Leges Liciniae In B.C. 375 C. Licinius Stole and L. Sextius, two of the tribunes of the plebs, proposed a number of rogationes, partly in the political, partly in the economical interests of the plebeians (Liv. 6.35). The latter were aggrieved by their practical exclusion from the chief magistracies: but they were still more distressed by the burden of their debts. They had suffered heavily through the sacking of the city by the Gauls (Liv. 6.11, &c.), and in comparison with the patricians were taxed out of all proportion to their real means (Liv. 4.60, 5.10; Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. 1.645); they were largely indebted to the other order, which was rapidly buying them out of their land (Liv. 34.4), and cultivating its new acquisitions by slave labour, so that the plebeians were debarred from making their livings even as farmers holding under their own creditors (Appian, App. BC 1.8).

The Licinian rogation which was intended to settle the financial question proposed that all sums which had been paid by way of interest should be struck off the capital debts, and that three annual periods should be allowed for the payment of the residue (Liv. 6.35, 39). The precise content of the second (de modo agrorum, Liv. 34.4; Gel. 20.1, 23; V. Max. 8.6, 3; Veil. Pat. 2.6, 3; Appian, App. BC 1.8; Plin. Nat. 18.3) is less certain. According to one view (Puchta, Institutionen, § 57) it proposed that no one should own more than 500 jugera of land, or pasture on the ager publicus more than 100 cattle and 500 sheep or smaller beasts: others (e. g. Niebuhr, and Walter, Gesch. des röm. Rechts, § 62) hold that it prescribed the limit of 500 jugera merely for the possessiones of ager publicus: a third view (advanced by Huschke, Ueber die Stelle des Varro, 1835, and Rudorff, Röm. Feldmesser, 2.312, Röm. Rechtsgeschichte, 1.38) is that both ownership and possession were comprised in the enactment. The first of these theories at any rate seems to be disproved by Livy, 6.37 and 39 ( agris occupatis... injustis possessoribus ), Plin. Nat. 18.17, and Appian, App. BC 1.8 sq.; and perhaps that of Niebuhr is best supported by the authorities. It was also proposed, in the interest of those plebeians who were too poor to buy land, that a certain number of free persons should be employed on every estate (Appian, loc. cit.). A third rogatio was for the abolition of the military tribunate (an office created some years previously in order to relieve the consuls of some of their less important duties, to which the plebeians had been eligible, though Livy says, 6.37, that in B.C. 369 it had not been occupied by any of them for forty-four years), and for the election of one of the consuls every year from the ranks of the plebeians (Liv. 6.35, 7.1, 21, 22, 25, 10.7; Gel. 17.21, 26, 27; Schol. Bob. pro Scauro, p. 375; Orelli). The patricians prevented the enactment of these rogations by inducing the other tribunes to veto them: Stole and Sextius, according to Livy, retaliated in the same way, and, being repeatedly re-elected tribunes, persevered for five years in preventing the election of any curule magistrates.

In B.C. 368, encouraged by the support of one of the tribuni militum, M. Fabius, Licinius' father-in-law, and by the decreasing opposition of their colleagues, the two tribunes proposed, and after two years' violent agitation carried (B.C. 366), a new rogatio that, instead of the duumviri hitherto established, there should be a collegium of decemviri for the custody of the Sibylline books, and the performance of the sacra therewith connected, and that one-half of these decemviri should be plebeians (Liv. 6.42). This paved the way for the admission of the plebeians to the consulship: and in the next year (B.C. 365) the three original rogations were at last carried together in the form of a Lex Satura (Liv. 7.39; Dio Cass. Fragm 33), and L. Sextius was elected consul, being the first plebeian who attained that dignity. The patricians were in some degree compensated by retaining the monopoly of the praetorship (urbana): but the incorrectness of Livy in representing them also as solely eligible to the curule aedileship, established about this time, has been shown by Niebuhr, 3.39-49.

The penalty fixed for an infraction of the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum was an arbitrary fine sued for before the populus by the plebeian aediles. Curiously enough, Licinius Stolo himself was (B.C. 357) the first person against whom the statute was put in force (V. Max. 8.6, 3). Livy (7.16) says that together with his son he held a thousand jugera of ager, and by emancipating his son fraudulently evaded the provisions of his own law: which apparently means that he emancipated the son in order that the latter might get 500 jugera nominally for himself, but which would practically be at his father's disposal: at any rate, he was fined 10,000 asses. From this story (which is also told by Columella, 1.3, and Pliny, Plin. Nat. 18.17) it is clear that the plebeians had now acquired the right of holding (possidere) the ager publicus, probably under the Lex Licinia itself; and it would seem that the estates which the patricians had to surrender as being against the statute came for the most part into the possession of plebeians. Niebuhr (Röm. Geschichte, 3.19) attributes to the lex a genuinely agrarian character, and believes that there was a regular distribution of land among them; but the passages on which he relies (especially Varro, de Re Rust. 1.2, and Columella, loc. cit.) hardly bear out his view, which is directly contradicted by Appian (App. BC 1.8). The history of the later agrarian legislation, however, makes it clear that in some way or other the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum (if it related at all to the possessiones of ager publicus, which Puchta denies) was persistently evaded.

(Besides the works of Niebuhr, Puchta, Huschke, and Rudorff, already referred to, cf. Göttling, Geschichte der röm. Staatsverfassung, p. 354; the Classical Museum, Nos. v. vi. and vii.; and AGRARIAE LEGES).