ABSTRACT
THE yielding of agriculture on a small scale to that on a large scale was a matter which from all time occupied the minds of the more far-sighted of the Romans—even of those who still held out for the patrician prerogatives and, whilst wishing to maintain the preponderance of an oligarchy, knew that the existence of a rural middle class was indispensable if the balance were to be kept intact. The agrarian laws passed towards the middle of the second century were not the first of their kind and neither Tiberius nor Caius brought forward a completely new formula; they merely applied with varying degrees of energy and courage, a method to which the magistrates—following Servius himself—had already had recourse at various periods in the preceding centuries.
