- Ager publicus
The Ager publicus is the
Latin language name for thepublic land of theRoman Republic andEmpire . It was usually acquired byexpropriation from Rome's enemies.In the earliest periods of Roman expansion in central Italy, the "ager publicus" was used for Roman and (after 338 BC) Latin colonies. Later tradition held that as far back as the 400s BC, the
Patrician andPlebeian classes disputed the rights of the rich to exploit the land, and in 367 BC two Plebeian Tribunes,Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Sextinus Lateranus promulgated a law which limited the amount of the "ager publicus" to be held by any individual to 500 iugera, roughly convert|350|acre|km2. In the half century following theBattle of Telamon (c. 225 BC), the Roman fully absorbedCisalpine Gaul , adding huge swathes of land to the "ager publicus", land which was more often than not given to new Latin colonies or to small freeholders. In the south of Italy, huge tracts of newly re-incorporated lands remained in the ager publicus, but tended to be leased out to wealthy citizens in return for rents, often ignoring the Laws of 367. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus attempted to address some of these violations in 133 BC, which led to much redistribution of the land. A similar move by his brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus in 123 BC failed because of his death the following year. In 111 BC, a new law was passed which allowed individual smallholders to assume ownership of their part of the "ager publicus".By the Imperial period, much of the "ager publicus" in
Italy had been distributed to the veterans of generals such asLucius Cornelius Sulla ,Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, so that all that remained were the properties of individual cities and common pasture lands. In the provinces, the "ager publicus" was huge, and came under the ownership of the emperor. However, in reality, almost all of it was under private occupation.References
*Drummond, Andrew, "Licinius Stolo, Gaius. Sextius Sextinus Lateranus, Lucius" in Simon Hornblower & Anthony Spawforth (eds.), "The Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd Edition, (Oxford, 1999), pp. 859-60
* Lewis, Andrew Dominic Edwards, "ager publicus" in Simon Hornblower & Anthony Spawforth (eds.), "The Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd Edition, (Oxford, 1999), p. 39
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