[Footnote 15: Plutarch, Tib. Grac., 14; Florus, II.]

[Footnote 16: Cicero, De Amicitia, 12. "Tiberius Gracchus regnum occupare
conatus est vel regnavit is quidem paucas menses."]

[Footnote 17: Momm., II, p. 417.]

[Footnote 18: Professor Long thinks that the law of Tiberius soon became a
dead letter. Lange (Röm. Alter., III, 26-29), inclines to this view. Duruy
(II, 419-420), and most other modern writers agree with Mommsen.]





SEC. 12.--LEX SEMPRONIA GAIANA.


Gaius Gracchus really enacted no new agrarian law but merely re-established
the power of the commission which had been appointed by his brother ten
years before; which power they had lost by the law of Scipio.[1] Gaius' law
was enacted merely to preserve the principle, and the distribution of land,
if resumed at all, was on a very limited scale. This is made known from
the fact that the burgess-roll showed precisely the same number capable of
bearing arms in 124 and 114. As has already been stated, the domain
land had been exhausted by the commission before losing its power, and,
therefore, Gaius had none to distribute.[2] The land held by the Latini
could only be taken into consideration with the difficult question of the
Roman franchise. But when Gaius proposed the establishment of colonies in