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Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic by Andrew Stephenson
page 28 of 124 (22%)
I-V; Madvigi Opus., _loc. cit_.]




CHAPTER II.




Sec. 5.--Lex Cassia.


Every year added to the difference between the patrician and plebeian, the
rich and the poor; a difference which had now grown so great as to threaten
seriously the very existence of the state. The most sagacious of all the
plans which had been proposed to stop this evil, was that set forth by
Spurius Cassius, a noble patrician now acting as consul for the third[l]
time. In the year 268, he submitted to the burgesses[2] a proposal to have
the public land surveyed, that portion belonging to the populus set aside
and the remainder divided among the plebeians or leased for the benefit[3]
of the public treasury.

He thus attempted to wrest from the senate the control of the public land
and, with the aid of the Latini and the plebeians, to put an end to the
system of occupation.[4] The lands which he proposed to divide were solely
those which the state had acquired through conquest since the general
assignment by king Servius, and which it still retained.[5] This was the
first measure by which it was proposed to disturb the possessors in their
peaceful occupation of the state lands, and, according to Livy, such a
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