The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution

Abstract

The Roman revolution, which transformed an oligarchic Republic into the Principate of Augustus, had its origin, as Sallust (BJ, 41–2) saw, partly in the misery of the poor, in a social crisis, whose origins I cannot discuss here; it began with the Gracchi and with agrarian reform, and agrarian reform remained a leitmotiv in the turbulent century that followed. I need only mention the laws or bills of Lucius Philippus, Saturninus, Sextus Titius and the younger Drusus, the settlement of the Sullan veterans, the proposals of Plotius, Rullus and Flavius, the agitation of Catiline, and the land allotments of Caesar, the Triumvirs and of Augustus himself. Modern accounts tend to obscure or even deny the unity of this theme throughout the period. It is true that in the earlier phase reformers were more concerned to find remedies for social distress as such, and in the later to provide homes for veterans. But the Gracchan settlers and the veterans had two things in common: they were mostly countrymen, and they desired to obtain a secure livelihood by owning their own land. According to Appian (BC 1, 27), whose testimony we have no right to reject, the work done by the Gracchi was not lasting (cf. n. 1). Hence, the distress they had tried to alleviate persisted or revived; the governing class remained indifferent. Unorganized and unarmed, the followers of the Gracchi could save neither their leaders nor their own interests; men of the same class, with arms in their hands, were the essential instruments for bringing down the Republic.