r of the deliverer of the Greeks from
the roll of the senate.

Police Reform

This warfare directed against individuals, and the various attempts to
repress the spirit of the age by means of justice and of police,
however deserving of respect might be the sentiments in which they
originated, could only at most stem the current of corruption for a
short time; and, while it is remarkable that Cato was enabled in spite
of that current, or rather by means of it, to play his political part,
it is equally significant that he was as little successful in getting
rid of the leaders of the opposite party as they were in getting rid
of him. The processes of count and reckoning instituted by him and by
those who shared his views before the burgesses uniformly remained,
at least in the cases that were of political importance, quite as
ineffectual as the counter-accusations directed against him. Nor was
much more effect produced by the police-laws, which were issued at
this period in unusual numbers, especially for the restriction of
luxury and for the introduction of a frugal and orderly housekeeping,
and some of which have still to be touched on in our view of the
national economics.

Assignations of Land

Far more practical and more useful were the attempts made to
counteract the spread of decay by indirect means; among which, beyond
doubt, the assignations of new farms out of the domain land occupy the
first place. These assignations were made in great numbers and of
considerable extent in the period between the first and second war
with Carthage, and again from the close of the latter till towards the
end of this epoch. The most important of them were the distribution
of the Picenian possessions by Gaius Flaminius in 522;(51) the
foundation of eight new maritime colonies in 560;(52) and above all
the comprehensive colonization of the district between the Apennines
and the Po by the establishment of the Latin colonies of Placentia,
Cremona,(53) Bononia,(54) and Aquileia,(55) and of the burgess-
colonies, Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and Luna(56) in the years
536 and 565-577. By far the greater part of these highly beneficial
foundations may be ascribed to the reforming party. Cato and those
who shared his opinions demanded such measures, pointing, on the
one hand, to the devastation of Italy by the Hannibalic war and the
alarming diminution of the farms and of the free Italian population
generally, and, on the o