The Political and Economic Origins of the Roman Revolution

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The paper considers some economic and legal aspects of the struggle for the public land in Late Republican Rome. This period is one of the most controversial in ancient history; it brought many significant changes to the socio-economic and political life of Rome and contributed much to its transformation from Republic to Principate. Nevertheless, there is no special paper examining the competition between the Romans and Italians for the ager publicus populi Romani which started with the agrarian reform of Tiberius Gracchus in modern historiography. The first episode ended after the enactment in 111 B.C. of the lex agraria, when a large amount of public land was brought into private hands by its Roman possessors. A further part of the ager publicus populi Romani was still public and remained in hands of the socii. The logic of historical process, the economic changes of the second century B.C. which led Rome from Republic to Principate, demanded the formation of a new class of landowners. The latter would be the basis of the political system of the Roman Empire instead of the nobilitas; its political power would be based on private ownership of land. This was impossible without the full privatization of public land, and it is logical that the struggle for the ager publicus populi Romani was not ended in 111 B.C. Only after privatization of that land, which was possessed by the allies, the agrarian question in Rome could be fully resolved. The latter problem is of crucial importance for the further history of Rome, because it not only caused the Social War but also radically changed both the social structure and the political balance within Roman society during the last decades of the Republic.