Livy enumerates these propositions, but almost wholly
without detail and without comments upon their tendencies or points of
difference from one another or from the law of Cassius. As this law failed
of its object by being disregarded, we may safely conclude that the most of
these propositions were but a reproduction of the law of Cassius.
In 484, and again in 483, the tribune proposed agrarian laws but what their
nature was, Livy, who records them, does not tell us. From some vague
assertions which he makes we may conclude that the point of the law was
well known, and was but a repetition of that of Cassius.[1] The consul
Caeso Fabius, in 484, and his brother Marcus in the following year, secured
the opposition of the senate and succeeded in defeating their laws.
Livy (II, 42,) mentions very briefly a new proposition brought forward
by Spurius Licinius in 482. Here we are able to complete his account by
reference to Dionysius,[2] who says that, in 483, a tribune named Caius
Maenius had proposed an agrarian law and declared that he would oppose
every levy of troops until the senate should execute the law ordaining the
creation of decemvirs to determine the boundaries of the domain land and,
in fine, forbid the enrolment of citizens.
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