and soil of Italy and the Roman army proportionately depreciated.
[Sidenote: Nothing demagogic about the proposal.] To fill the vacuum
he proposed to distribute to the poor not only of Rome but of the
Municipia, of the Roman colonies, and, it is to be presumed, of the
Socii also, land taken from the rich members of those four component
parts of the Roman State. This consideration alone destroys at once
the absurd imputation of his being actuated merely by demagogic
motives; but in no history is it adequately enforced. No demagogue at
that epoch would have spread his nets so wide. At the same time it
gives the key to the subsequent manoeuvres by which his enemies strove
to divide his partisans. Broadly, then, we may say that Gracchus
struck boldly at the very root of the decadence of the whole
peninsula, and that if his remedy could not cure it nothing else
could. [Sidenote: The Socii--land-owners.] How the Socii became
possessors of the public land we do not know. Probably they bought it
from Cives Romani, its authorised occupiers, with the connivance of
the State. We now see from whom the land was to be taken, namely, the
rich all over Italy, and to whom it was to be given, the poor all over
Italy; and also the object with which it was to be given, namely,
to re-create a peasantry and stop the increase of the slave-plague.
[Sidenote: Provision against evasions of the law.] In order to prevent
the law becoming a dead letter like that of Licinius, owing to poor
men selling their land as soon as they got it, he proposed that the
new land-owners should not have the right to dispose of their land to
others, and for this, though it would have been hard to carry out, we
cannot see what other proviso could have been substituted. Lastly, as
death and other causes would constantly render changes in the holdings
inevitable, he proposed that a permanent board should have the
superintendence of them, and this too was a wise and necessary
measure.