ld not make use of that murder to annul
the Sempronian agrarian law; the law itself had been far more
strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury.
The party of the aristocracy friendly towards reform, which openly
favoured the distribution of the domains--headed by Quintus Metellus,
just about this time (623) censor, and Publius Scaevola--in concert with
the party of Scipio Aemilianus, which was at least not disinclined to
reform, gained the upper hand for the time being even in the senate;
and a decree of the senate expressly directed the triumvirs to begin
their labours. According to the Sempronian law these were to be
nominated annually by the community, and this was probably done: but
from the nature of their task it was natural that the election should
fall again and again on the same men, and new elections in the proper
sense occurred only when a place became vacant through death. Thus in
the place of Tiberius Gracchus there was appointed the father-in-law
of his brother Gaius, Publius Crassus Mucianus; and after the fall of
Mucianus in 624(1) and the death of Appius Claudius, the business of
distribution was managed in concert with the young Gaius Gracchus by
two of the most active leaders of the movement party, Marcus Fulvius
Flaccus and Gaius Papirius Carbo. The very names of these men are
vouchers that the work of resuming and distributing the occupied
domain-land was prosecuted with zeal and energy; and, in fact, proofs
to that effect are not wanting. As early as 622 the consul of that
year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of
the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that
he was "the first who had turned the shepherds out of the domains and
installed farmers in their stead"; and tradition otherwise affirms that
the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly
existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented--for
it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer-
class not by the founding of new communities, but by the strengthening
of those already in existence. The extent and the comprehensive effect
of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements
in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan
assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones
so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called
into existence by the