No ancient writer says anything about the condition of
these people. Cicero, in his second speech upon the land bill of Rullus,
when speaking of the consequences that would follow its enactment, declared
that if the Campanian cultivators were ejected they would have no place
to go, and he truly says that such a measure would not be a settlement of
plebeians upon the land, but an ejection and expulsion of them from it.[16]
Did it pay to send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers[17] who, for two
generations, had been fed at the public charge from the corn-bins of Rome,
simply in order that a like number of honest peasants, who had been not
only self-supporting but had paid a large part of the Roman revenue, should
be compelled to sacrifice their goods in a glutted market and become
debauched and idle?
[Footnote 1: Livy, _Epit._, 103.]
[Footnote 2: Momm., IV, 244.]
[Footnote 3: App., _Bell. Civ._, II, c. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Compare Dio Cassius, Bk., XXXVIII, c. 1: "[Greek: Taen de
choran taen de koinaen hapasan plaen taes Kampanidos eneme, tautaen gar en
to daemosio ezaireton dia taen aretaen synebouleusen einai.]"]
[Footnote 5: Compare Suetonius' _Caesar_, c.
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