on their office (10 Dec. 690), and one of them,
Publius Servilius Rullus, immediately proposed an agrarian law,
which was designed to procure for the leaders of the democrats
a position similar to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence
of 2the Gabinio-Manilian proposals. The nominal object
was the founding of colonies in Italy. The ground for these, however,
was not to be gained by dispossession; on the contrary all existing
private rights were guaranteed, and even the illegal occupations
of the most recent times(17) were converted into full property.
The leased Campanian domain alone was to be parcelled out
and colonized; in other cases the government was to acquire
the land destined for assignation by ordinary purchase. To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain-land was successively
to be brought to sale; which was understood to include the former
royal hunting domains in Macedonia, the Thracian Chersonese,
Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and also the territories of the cities
acquired in full property by right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily,
Hellas, and Cilicia. Everything was likewise to be sold
which the state had acquired in moveable and immoveable property
since the year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus. For the same purpose
all subject communities, with the exception of the towns with Latin
rights and the other free cities, were burdened with very high
rates of taxes and tithes. Lastly there was likewise destined
for those purchases the produce of the new provincial revenues,
to be reckoned from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty
not yet legally applied; which regulations had reference
to the new sources of taxation opened up by Pompeius in the east
and to the public moneys that might be found in the hands of Pompeius
and the heirs of Sulla. For the execution of this measure decemvirs
with a special jurisdiction and special -imperium- were to be nominated,
who were to remain five years in office and to surround themselves
with 200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the election
of the decemvirs only those candidates who should personally
announce themselves were to be taken into account, and,
as in the elections of priests,(18) only seventeen tribes to be fixed
by lot out of the thirty-five were to make the election. It needed
no great acuteness to d