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Chapter 2 - From Licinius Stolo to Tiberius Gracchus: Roman Frugality and the Limitation of Landholding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2020

By
John Rich
Edited by
Ingo Gildenhard  and
Cristiano Viglietti
Ingo Gildenhard
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Cristiano Viglietti
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi, Siena
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Summary

Republican Rome saw a range of laws designed to moderate the acquisition of wealth, and this chapter focuses on two such measures, the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum (367 BCE) and Tiberius Gracchus’ agrarian law of 133 BCE. In our later sources these two historical moments tend to be conflated, and the chapter begins by confronting the ensuing methodological problems. A critical review of the previous scholarship establishes that whereas the pre-Gracchan limit applied to all landholding not just public land, Gracchus, who was interested in reclaiming public land for distribution rather than putting a limit on elite wealth, revived the earlier limit, but applied it only to public land. These findings serve as basis for a discussion of the law carried by the tribune C. Licinius Stolo in 367 BCE, including the identification of an ‘ethos of frugality’ in mid-republican Rome which was meant to prevent individuals from accumulating excessive material resources. The final part of the chapter traces the history of the tension between the pursuit of personal enrichment and the interest of the wider community to keep such pursuits in check – an endeavour rendered increasingly difficult given Rome’s foreign conquests.

Keywords

ager publicusagrarian legislationhistory of scholarshipLex Licinia de modo agrorumLicinius StoloRoman historiographysource criticismTiberius Gracchus
Type
Chapter
Information
Roman Frugality
Modes of Moderation from the Archaic Age to the Early Empire and Beyond
 , pp. 159 - 191
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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