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The settlement of the debt problem eased the fierce struggle between the commoners and the nobility, and the debt problem was an important part of the economic aspect of the struggle between the commoners and the nobility in the early years of the Republic
Building on the previous Debt Act, the Licini-Syxtu Reform of 367 BC, which resulted in the nobility's efforts to reach a compromise with the nobility, was only the beginning of the beginning of the resolution of the common people's debt problem in the early republic
After this debt reform, coupled with a series of debt settlement measures described above, the fierce struggle between the commoners and the nobility was greatly alleviated
Since the debt problem has always been the focus and reason for the struggle between the commoners and the nobility, the promulgation of the Licinies-Sextu Law in 367 BC and the subsequent debt reform, starting from the source of the debt burden of the commoners at the bottom, reduced the interest on loans, and fundamentally solved the foundation of the struggle step by step, so that the tribune completely lost the excuse of causing trouble with the debt problem, and eased the fierce struggle between the commoners and the nobles for many years
In addition, the change in the socio-economic base of Rome also determined the direction of the upper Roman republican political system
There is no doubt that the alleviation of the debt problem was an important economic achievement in the early years of the Republic
Against the background of the increasingly intensified contradictions in Rome, the plebeian group used this as an excuse to carry out reforms, and the Senate began to resolve the contradictions between the two classes with the debt problem, "while solving the debt problem with great fanfare, it was accompanied by various other reforms with a view to fundamentally solving the civilian problem."
Thus, the heavy debt burden and the outbreak of the debt slavery problem led to negotiations and reconciliation between the various strata of the Roman Republic, and the improvement of the republican legal and constitutional system
In this sense, the settlement of the debt problem not only has a direct economic impact on the later development of the Roman state, but also plays a role in the field of political system cannot be ignored, which is an important part of the dynamic changes in the political system of the Roman Republic, which changed the land system in Roman law
Changes in land-use patterns
As mentioned above, the enactment of the Licini-Sextu Land Act can be said to have provided an opportunity for the common people to acquire access to the Roman commons
The addition of commons to the use of commons is bound to change the pattern of land use in the Republic
Moreover, on the basis of the principle of balance, this reform retained the nobility's occupation of land to a certain extent, and at the same time was able to carry out the use of Roman commons by commoners, which can be said to maximize the efficiency of land use to a certain extent, which not only avoided the waste of resources caused by the excess land of the aristocracy, but also improved the embarrassing situation of lack of land resources and unsustainable livelihood for the commoners
The immediate effect of the Licini-Sextu Land Act may seem weak, but the impact of this land reform was even more profound and broad by providing the opportunity for future commoner nouveau riche and later knights to occupy the commons
Moreover, the promulgation of this law "aimed more at the legal and political equality of the two classes than at the interests of the poor, and was correspondingly reflected in economic gains"236, thus becoming an important part of the far-reaching impact of the Licini-Sextu Act
The collapse of the clan collective land system
Even before the promulgation of the Licini-Sextu Land Act, the clan collective land had been gradually divided with the demise of the clan organization itself, "reflected in the land, which is a process of increasing importance of public and private land and the gradual differentiation and disappearance of the clan collective land"
That is to say, from the time of Romulus to the allocation of private land, to Servius's creation of the hundred-person group system of property surveys based on families, and even the division of common land in the land law before the Licini-Sextu law, fully explain the gradual decline of clan power and the gradual decline of clan collective land
It is generally believed that the eradication of clan lands occurred during the Etrus monarchy, but more recent hypotheses suggest that this eradication should have taken place in the early 4th century BC, the final phase of which coincided with the approval of the Licinies-Sextu method in 367 BC.238
According to this view, the promulgation of the Licini-Sextu Land Act in 367 BC indirectly confirmed the status of allocated and occupied land through restrictions on individual occupation of land, "establishing in the legal sense the status of the 'family with its own law' rather than the protagonist and right holder of the clan in the occupation and use of common land", declaring the end of the era of the collective land system of the clan
Thus, after the promulgation of this Act, the early clan collective lands of the Republic were largely replaced by privately allocated land and Roman commons, and the dominance of land by clan leaders was transformed into private ownership of land and occupation of commons, which truly became the main types of Roman land
Codification of the rules of the land system
As mentioned above, before the promulgation of the Licini-Sextu law, the commoner class was basically excluded from the use of commons in the use of state land, and the occupation of commons by the nobles was supported by convention and customary laws, thus causing an imbalance in land use and triggering a fierce struggle between the commoners and the nobility
Beginning with the Licini-Sextu Act, the introduction of the Act limiting the size of land meant that the old practice of land use was restricted, so that the new struggle between the commoners and the nobility over land was to some extent transformed into a struggle between custom and written law
As a representative of the new written land law, although the Licini-Sextu method still retained the content of customary norms and the requirements for individuals, especially nobles, were still relatively relaxed, it was indeed the beginning of the transformation of unwritten rules into written law norms, laying the foundation for the late Roman period to solve the problem of national land division and land competition by enacting the written law model of land laws
Thereafter, "the pattern of use of commons is no longer regulated by mores, but by leges."
The foundations of the Gracchus brothers' land reform were laid
The content of the Gracchus reforms and their relationship with the Licini-Sextu method The reforms of the brothers Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus in 133 BC to 123 BC were the first major reforms of the Land Act proposed after the Licini-Sextu method, which was in fact a struggle against the new aristocratic ruling class centered on land reform
The Lagu brothers served as tribunes of Rome in the 2nd century BC, and as reformists, they advocated a redistribution of land and a curb to the power of the Senate
This reform, based on the content of the Licini-Sextu Land Act, sought to restore the small landowning class that had arisen after the Austro-Irish War as a result of land distribution but was marginalized in the new economic situation, and to "rebalance the economic conditions of free citizens."
Tiberius Gracchus's lex Semproniaagaria summarizes four points242:
First, it allows civilians to occupy and use commons within the limits recognized by the law, and the State does not reclaim them, but only within 500 yujeri, and prohibits private occupation of other commons;
second, two sons (or unlimited) per family may each own up to half of the highest share, i.e. 250 yujeri commons;
Third, Tiberius Gracchus' land law differed from the Licini-Sykestu law in that Gracchus' land reform required the reclamation of land in excess of the legal limit and its redistribution by a three-member committee that replaced every year, ensuring that poor civilians had effective access to land possession and use
Through the content of this land law reformed by Tiberius Gracchus, we can see that the restriction that no citizen may occupy and occupy more than 500 yujeri of land is based on the idea of the Licini-Sykestu Land Act, which "seeks to re-establish a norm linking with the Land Act of 367 BC to limit the size of the occupation of communal land"243
Although this act was largely beneficial in alleviating the status quo of the poor class, it violated the interests of the nobility and was opposed and eventually failed with the death of Tiberius Gracchus because the reforms were too drastic
Gaius Gracchus, Tiberius' brother, inherited his brother's will for reform, "trying to limit the rise in grain prices, proposing to provide grain to the urban populace at half the market price every month, in an attempt to alleviate the threat of the hungry proletarians to the country by improving the supply of grain and lowering prices."
In addition to this, Gaius Gracchus again introduced Tiberius Gracchus' Land Act and redistributed part of the land under his leadership
Compared with the Licini-Sextu Land Act, the Gracchus brothers' land reform was limited in nature only to the commons, rather than land in the broad sense; Second, the intensity of enforcement differs from the Licini-Sextu method of only imposing fines and penalties, but truly dispossessing land from the rich and distributing it
In general, the Gracchus brothers' land reform was the same as the reform of the Licini-Sextu Land Act of 367 BC, both of which were aimed at "limiting the excessive appropriation of land by the nobility and was a method of solving the land problem by the Roman government in the 4th and 2nd centuries BC."
Although the Gracchus brothers' land-centered reforms, although "the main purpose was to limit the nobility's possession of too much land, ensure that small peasants own land, and at the same time maintain the supply of Roman soldiers," but for the political and economic situation in Rome at that time, the Gracchus brothers' overly radical reforms, which in order to increase the source of troops and protect the small peasant economy, but to shake the economic base of the large estate class and infringe on the power of the senator and other nobles, inevitably attracted strong opposition, so that both were killed in the process of reform, resulting in the ultimate failure of the reform
In short, in the crisis era of large-scale land annexation in which the Gracchus brothers' reforms took place, although large-scale land development could no longer be stopped, the direct promulgation of land measures was still the most direct way to solve the land problem at that time
As a follow-up to the Licini-Sextu Land Act, although this reform ended in failure in the end, in fact, the land bill has been widely implemented, to a certain extent, alleviating various social contradictions arising from the land issue, ensuring the size of small peasant collectives eligible to join the army, and indirectly improving the situation of the Roman army
From the Licini-Sextu Reform to the Gracchus Reform, the improvement of land law, as mentioned earlier, before 367 BC the occupation of land by the nobility was mainly carried out by custom, and in 367 BC the Licini-Sextu law on the size of land modified custom for the first time
The Gracchus Brothers' land reform a few years after the Licini-Sextu Act, which banned private occupation of communal land after land allocation, effectively abolished the previous practice of judging the size of land that each person could occupy based on his current and expected cultivation capacity
Including the 111 BC inscription land law, which can be regarded as "the summary and curtain call of the land reform of the Gracchus brothers"247, except for the privatization of a large number of commons, the institutional design is basically the same as the Sembroni law
At this point, it basically means that "the enactment law abolished and replaced custom in all aspects"
Therefore, we can think that starting with the Licinies-Sextu law in 367 BC, with the introduction of various land laws from the Gracchus land reform to the end of the Republic, and the "victory of the movement of equalization of the plebeians in all fields, the enactment represented by the resolutions of the plebeians council replaced custom in all aspects and became an important source of law in the civil law (iuscivile)