[Sidenote: Provision for the administration of the law.] We can
understand so much of the law of Gracchus, but it is hard thoroughly
to understand more. It has been urged as a difficulty not easily
explained that few people, after retaining 500 jugera for themselves
and 250 for each of their sons, would have had much left to surrender.
But this difficulty is imaginary rather than real; for Appian says
that the public land was 'the greater part' of the land taken by Rome
from conquered states, and the great families may have had vast
tracts of it as pasture land. [Sidenote: Things about the law hard to
understand.] There are, however, other things which with our meagre
knowledge of the law we cannot explain. For instance, was a hard
and fast line drawn at 500 jugera as compensation whether a man
surrendered 2 jugera or 2,000 beyond that amount? Again, considering
the outcry made, it is hard to imagine that only those possessing
above 500 jugera were interfered with. But this perhaps may be
accounted for by recollecting that in such matters men fight bravely
against what they feel to be the thin end of the wedge, even if they
are themselves concerned only sympathetically. What Gracchus meant to
do with the slaves displaced by free labour, or how he meant to decide
what was public and what was private land after inextricable confusion
between the two in many parts for so many years, we cannot even
conjecture. The statesmanlike comprehensiveness, however, of his main
propositions justifies us in believing that he had not overlooked such
obvious stumbling-blocks in his way. [Sidenote: Appian's criticism of
the law.] When Appian says he was eager to accomplish what he thought
to be a good thing, we concur in the testimony Appian thus gives to
Gracchus having been a good man. But when he goes on to say he was so
eager that he never even thought of the difficulty, we prefer to judge
Gracchus by his own acts rather than by Appian's criticism or the