It was the triumph of the Plebeians for the
benefit of all. The revolution then effected was strictly conservative
in its nature, and whatever of internal evil Rome afterwards experienced
was owing, not to the adoption of the Licinian law, but to the
departure by the state from the practice under it which it was intended
permanently to establish.
The last great Agrarian contest which the Romans had was that which
takes its name from the Gracchi, and which began at the commencement of
the fourth generation before the birth of Christ. On the part of the
reformers, it was as strictly legal a movement as ever was known. Not
a single acre of private land was threatened by them; and whoever pays
attention to the details of their measures cannot fail to be struck with
the great concessions they were ready to make to their opponents,--the
men who had literally stolen the public property, and who pretended to
hold it as of right. Perhaps it was too late for any such reform as that
contemplated by the Gracchi to succeed, the condition of Rome then being
in no important respect like what it had been in the time of Licinius
Stolo; but one of the most interesting chapters in the history of things
which might have been is that which relates to the possible effect of
the Sempronian legislation.
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