Lex Sempronia Agraria

Lex Sempronia Agraria carried by Tiberius Gracchus when tribune, B.C. 133. In settling its provisions he was aided by the advice of Crassus, then Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, then Consul and later Pontifex Maximus himself, and Appius Claudius (Plut. Tib. Gracchus, 9); their main objects being to relieve the poverty of the humbler Roman citizens, and to establish a population of free and independent yeomen over the vast tracts of public land, the enjoyment of which the patricians had practically appropriated, notwithstanding the Lex Licinia, and which were at that date but sparsely peopled by shepherds, herdsmen, and a few slave cultivators. Its main enactment was that no person should hold more than 500 jugera of ager publicus (Liv. Epit. 58; Aurel. Victor de Vir. ill. 64), with an additional 250 jugera for each of two sons: but in no case was the holding to exceed 1000 jugera. From the estates recovered from the present tenants, as being in excess of the maximum fixed by the statute, holdings were to be provided for the poorer and landless citizens, which they were to have no power of alienating or even letting (Appian, App. BC 1.9, 10); the taxes assessed on the land were to be paid by the tenant. The execution of the statute was entrusted to a commission of three, which was to be elected every year (Appian, loc. cit.), the first three commissioners being Tiberius himself, his brother C. Gracchus, and Appius Claudius; but it was attended with great difficulties. The ager publicus had been held by private persons for generations as private property, had often changed hands by sale or assignment, and had been improved and built upon. Proposals were originally made for the payment of compensation for buildings and unexhausted improvements (Plut. loc. cit.; Appian, App. BC 1.11); but these, it would appear, were withdrawn.

The execution of the measure was stopped by a senatusconsultum which extinguished the powers of the commissioners to whom it had been entrusted; but it was revived by the Lex Sempronia of C. Gracchus, B.C. 123. The senate, however, practically rendered it a dead letter by employing Livius Drusus, another of the tribunes, to bring forward agrarian proposals even more popular with the proletariate than that of Gracchus; especially one permitting alienation of the holdings, whereby the tenants got money instead of land, and the rich were enabled to buy back the estates of which they had been temporarily deprived. (Plut. C. Gracchus; Appian, App. BC 1.21 ff.: for the whole subject, see Merivale's Fall of the Roman Republic, chap. i.)