Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/191

Rh the commission. In 111 an agrarian law enacted that the occupants of the public domain and the possessors of the lands assigned by the commission should become the full owners thereof and pay no rent It further decreed that henceforward the public lands were either to be leased or to be turned into public pastures, in which no one was to graze, free of charge, more than ten head of large and fifty head of small cattle. Thus the system of occupation disappeared, after serving for centuries as a means of enriching the governing class and ruining the lower classes, and after leaving the state in possession of public lands of only limited extent. Finally, the law confirmed to the Latins and other allies the rights in regard to public lands which had been guaranteed to them by their charters, or treaties.

Of the chief enactments of Gaius Gracchus, the laws respecting appeal, grain, the province of Asia, jurymen, and consular provinces still remained in force.