ABSTRACT
THE ager publicus for the possession of which the nobles and plebeians were contending was still within reach of the city and capable of being cultivated without obliging the husbandman to leave his own fields and go away to settle in districts but recently conquered and hardly pacified. The lands wrested by the Romans from the vanquished were not always easy of occupation. When in the fourth and third centuries the territory was extended simultaneously northwards and southwards, those who wished to take portions of it were obliged to take up arms and to leave Rome and its neighbourhood almost without any prospect of returning. Later, the lands of Etruria and of Campania were in their turn to be seized upon by the patricians when all danger of a rising had been removed and the subjugation of the country seemed complete. But during the early days of their annexation, the lands added to the ager in comparatively remote countries gave rise to little rivalry for their possession: Rome sent out colonists to dominate the conquered peoples and tied the emigrants to the soil by means of contractual grants.
