The most forceful Roman opponent of the agrarian movement was, however,
Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero lays the groundwork for his view in theWrst book
of theDe oYciis. ‘‘Property becomes private,’’ he writes, in part ‘‘through long
occupancy,’’ and ‘‘each one should retain possession of that which has fallen to
his lot; and if anyone appropriates to himself anything beyond that, he will be
violating the laws of human society [ius humanae societatis]’’ (Cicero 1913 , 23 ).
In book two, he makes clear that the agrarian laws should be regarded as
precisely such a violation. ‘‘The man in administrative oYce,’’ he explains,
‘‘must make it hisWrst care that everyone shall have what belongs to him and
that private citizens suVer no invasion of their property rights by act of the state’’
(Cicero 1913 , 249 ). As his example of this kind of ‘‘invasion,’’ he submits that
‘‘ruinous policy’’ called thelex agraria. This policy, he continues, favored an
‘‘equal distribution of property.’’ ‘‘What plague could be worse?’’, he asks,
especially since it negates the basic purpose for which people enter civil asso-
ciation—namely, the preservation of their private property (custodia rerum
suarum). InDe legibus, Cicero adds that the strife over the Gracchan laws in
particular brought about ‘‘a complete revolution in the State’’ (Cicero 1928 ,
483 ). In short, Cicero characterizes the agrarian movement as seditious, dan-
gerous, and violently unjust. For what is an agrarian law, he asks, but an
initiative ‘‘to rob one man of what belongs to him and to give to another man
what does not belong to him?’’ (Cicero 1913 , 261 ).
For Cicero, as for so many other Roman writers, agrarian laws driven by
plebeian envy had disrupted theconcordiaof the Roman republic, given rise
to factions, and ultimately dismembered the body politic. This conviction, as
we have seen, had an enormous impact on the shape of the political theory
preserved for European readers in the Roman sources. If it was thelibertasof
the Roman republic that made virtue possible, it was the protection of private
iusthat brought itimperiumandgloria. And when justice ceased with the
agrarian laws, neither the republic nor its glory could long survive.
1RepublicanisminItaly
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
It is not diYcult to understand why this scale of values handed down from
Roman sources appealed so strongly to the Italian communes of the so-called
regnum italicum—the portion of northern Italy which theoretically remained
republican visions 197