did not give in their names to the censors, and did not attend to the
education of their children. These men would, on receiving allotments,
enrol themselves. The consul of the year 132 inscribed on a public
monument that he was the first who had turned the shepherds out of
the domains, and installed farmers in their stead; and these farmers
became, as Gracchus intended, a strong reinforcement to the Roman
soldier-class, as well as a check to slave labour. What was done at
Rome was done also, it is said, throughout Italy, and if on the same
scale, it must have been a really enormous measure of relief to the
poor, and a vast stride towards a return to a healthier tenure of the
land. [Sidenote: Difficulties and hardships in enforcing it.] But it
is not hard to imagine what heart-burnings the commissioners must have
aroused. Some men were thrust out of tilled land on to waste land.
Some who thought that their property was private property found to
their cost that it was the State's. Some had encroached, and their
encroachments were now exposed. Some of the Socii had bought parcels
of the land, and found out now that they had no title. Lastly, some
land had been by special decrees assigned to individual states, and
the commissioners at length proceeded to stretch out their hands
towards it.

Historians, while recording such things, have failed to explain why
the chief opposition to the commissioners arose from the country which
had furnished the chief supporters of Tiberius, and what was the exact
attitude assumed by Scipio Aemilianus. It is lost sight of that as at
Rome there were two classes, so there were two classes in Italy. It
is absurd constantly to put prominently forward the sharp division of
interests in the capital, and then speak of the country classes as
if they were all one body, and their interests the same. [Sidenote:
Divisions in Italy similar to those in Rome.] The natural and