Now, it had happened that, in various ways, the greater part of the public
lands had fallen into the hands of the wealthy. They alone had the capital
necessary to stock and work them to advantage; hence the possessions of
the small proprietors were gradually absorbed by the large landholders.
These great proprietors, also, disregarding a law which forbade any person
to hold more than five hundred jugera of land, held many times that
amount. Almost all the lands of Italy, about the beginning of the first
century B.C., are said to have been held by not more than two thousand
persons; for the large proprietors, besides the lands they had secured by
purchase from the government, or had wrested from the smaller farmers,
claimed enormous tracts to which they had only a squatter's title. So long
had they been left in undisturbed possession of these government lands
that they had come to look upon them as absolutely their own. In many
cases, feeling secure through great lapse of time,--the lands having been
handed down through many generations,--the owners had expended large sums
in their improvement, and now resisted as very unjust every effort to
dispossess them of their hereditary estates. Money-lenders, too, had, in
many instances, made loans upon these lands, and they naturally sided with
the owners in their opposition to all efforts to disturb the titles.

These wealthy "possessors" employed slave rather than free labor, as they
found it more profitable; and so the poorer Romans, left without
employment, crowded into the cities, especially congregating at Rome,
where they lived in vicious indolence. The proprietors also found it to
their interest to raise stock rather than to cultivate the soil. All Italy
became a great sheep-pasture.

Thus, largely through the workings of the public land system, the Roman
people had become divided into two great classes, which are variously