Roman History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Roman History - Essay Example He opposed against Terentilius to draw laws and codes for the plebeians and aristocracy to benefit the plebeians. Therefore the agrarian question represents the basis of Roman history. When the Romans started to expand their territory, due to the greed of the land, the Romans were at war with neighbors. They built more new settlements on the captured land because the Senate was anxious about it. The agrarian law was a sore point for the republican and imperial Rome, for them the profession of the land surveyor (agrimeusor) was a national science. OR WAS WHAT THEY DIT BEST Thanks to allotment of public land colonies were turning into cities. The number of the Roman citizens was constantly growing and Rome was getting larger and stronger. Around 150 BC the empire was at the height of its power. Before the land property was undermined in Rome since the most ancient times. As well as in Greece, by a dangerous disaster namely debts. We can judge about the enormous value of promissory notes but not by means of historians, who used it to describe as dramatic scenes. The basis of Leges duodecim tabularum (The Law of the Twelve Tables), the most archaic fragments, defines the destiny of the poor debtor. The law Leges Liciniae Sextiae (the law of Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus) limited the size of land ownership in the public land fund that could be owned by patricians. These actions expanded access of plebeians to land funds. The law lex Poetelia Papiria that passed in 326 B.C. cancelled the debt servitude, as stated in The Law of the Twelve Tables. The Roman wars with the barbarians to expand the territory undermined the basis of the Roman peasantry even more directly. Assuming more and more to increase the scale of Rome, the soldiers where moving away from Rome due to long wars, to fight and tore the soldier off from his land near Rome. The known balance between a decrease from war and gain of the settled country population was sustained when Romans had the possibility to make allotments in Northern Italy. By the middle of the 2nd century the stock of the free public land was exhausted and therefor the dispossession of land among the Roman citizens went even faster. This period in Roman history witnessed the changes in the Roman agriculture which had a fatal importance for small land ownership. Under Roman power, owing to expand territory, the trading intercourses of the Mediterranean Sea changed drastically. Bread for example began to be brought not only from Sicily, but also from Numidia and Egypt. The competition in agriculture with Italy destroyed the income and forced land owners to forget arable land and get cattle. We know most about these changes by the words of Marcus Porcius Cato, an excellent farmer who was asked: what is the most favorable way of economy. His answer was - bene pascere (good cattle breeding), bad cattle breeding, and then arable farming (arare). The peasants who were not able to find earnings at landowners and without having the possibility to change to cattle breeding due to insignificance of land suffered the first of all. They had to sell their lots, and that turned out as source of latifundia. Pliny the Younger explains this as that it has ruined Italy. In the