CHAPTER XXXVII

WHAT TROUBLES THE AGRARIAN LAW BROUGHT FORTH IN ROME; AND HOW TROUBLESOME IT IS TO MAKE A LAW IN A REPUBLIC WHICH GREATLY REGARDS THE PAST BUT CONTRARY TO THE ANCIENT CUSTOMS OF THE CITY

It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. I have made this discussion because it was not enough for the Roman Plebs to secure themselves from the Nobles through the creation of the Tribunes, to which [desire] they were constrained by necessity, that they soon (having obtained that) begun to fight from ambition and to want to divide with the Nobles their honors and possessions, as things more esteemed by men. From this there arose the plague that brought forth the contentions about the Agrarian law, and in the end was the cause of the destruction of the Roman Republic. And because well-ordered Republics have to keep the public [State] rich and its Citizens poor, it was apparent that there was some defect in that law in the City of Rome, which either was now drawn in the beginning in such a way that it required to be redrawn every day, or that it was so long deferred in the making that it became troublesome in regard to the past, or if it had been well ordered in the beginning, it had become corrupted in its application. So that whatever way it may have been, this law could never be spoken of in Rome without that City going upside down [from turmoil]. This law had two principal articles. Through the first it provided that each Citizen could not possess more than so many jugeri of land, through the other that the fields which were taken from the enemy should be divided among the Roman people. This, therefore, came to make two strong offenses against the Nobles, for those who possessed more land than the law permitted (of whom the Nobles were the greater part) had to be deprived of it, and by dividing the possessions of the enemy among the Plebs, it deprived them [Nobles] that means of enriching themselves. Since this offense came to be against the powerful men, and who thought that by going against it they were defending the public, whenever (as I have said) this was brought up, that City would go upside-down, and the Nobles with patience and industry temporized, either by calling out the army, or by having that Tribune who proposed it opposed by another Tribune, or sometimes by yielding in part, or even by sending a Colony to that place that was to be distributed, as happened in the countryside of Antium, about which a dispute spring up from this law; a Colony drawn from Rome was sent to that place, to whom the said countryside was assigned. Concerning which Titus Livius used a notable remark, saying that it was difficult to find in Rome one who would give his name to go to the said Colony; so much more ready were the Plebs to defend the things in Rome than to possess them in Antium.

This mood concerning this law thus troubled them for a time, so that the Romans begun to conduct their armies to the extreme parts of Italy, or outside of Italy, after which time it appeared that things settled down. This resulted because the fields that the enemies of Rome possessed being far removed from the eyes of the Plebs, and in a place where it was not easy to cultivate them, became less desirable; and also the Romans were less disposed to punish their enemies in such a way, and even when they deprived them of some land from their countryside, they distributed Colonies there. So that for these reasons this law remained, as it were, dormant up to the time of the Gracchi, by whom it being revived, wholly ruined the liberty of Rome; for it found the power of its adversaries redoubled, and because of this [revival] so much hate developed between the Plebs and the Senate, that it came to arms and bloodshed beyond every civil limit and custom. So that the public Magistrates not being able to remedy them, nor either faction having further confidence in them, recourse was had to private remedies, and each of thy factions decided to appoint a chief [for themselves] who would defend them. In these troubles and disorders the Plebs came and turned to Marius with his reputations, so that they made him Consul four times; and with few intervening intervals that his Consulship continued so that he was able by himself to make himself Consul another three times. Against which plague thy Nobility, not having any remedy, turned their favor to Sulla, and having made him Head of their party, arrived at civil war, and after much bloodshed and changes of fortune, the Nobility remained superior. Later, in the time of Caesar and Pompey, these moods were revived, for Caesar making himself Head of the party of Marius, and Pompey of that of Sulla; [and] coming to arms Caesar remained superior, who became the first Tyrant in Rome, so that City was never again free.

Such, therefore, was the beginning and the end of the Agrarian law. And although elsewhere we showed that the enmity in Rome between the Senate and the Plebs should maintain Rome free, because it gave rise to those laws which favored liberty, and therefore the result of this Agrarian law may seem different from such a conclusion, I say that I do not on that account change my opinion, for so great is the ambition of the Nobles, that if it is not beaten down in various ways and means in a City, it will soon bring that City to ruin. So that if the contentions about the Agrarian law took three hundred years in bringing Rome to servitude, she would perhaps have been brought to servitude much sooner if the Plebs with this law and their other desires had not always restrained the ambitions of the Nobles. It is also to be seen from this how much more men esteem property than honors, for the Roman Nobility, always yielded without extraordinary trouble to the Plebs in the matter of honors, but when it came to property, so great was its obstinacy in defending it, that the Plebs in order to give vent to their appetites had recourse to those extraordinary proceedings which were discussed above. The movers of these disorders were the Gracchi, whose intentions should be praised more than their prudence. For to want to remove an abuse that has grown up in a Republic, and enact a retrospective law for this, is a badly considered proceeding, and (as was discussed above at length) does nothing else than to accelerate that evil which leads to that abuse; but by temporizing with it, either the evil comes much later, or by itself in time (before its end comes) it will extinguish itself.