This work, a revised version of R.'s Ph.D. thesis (University of Leiden, January 2009), is an investigation of the ager publicus populi Romani, ‘a kind of public land specific to the Roman Republic: owned by the state, it could be made available in various ways to Roman citizens’ (p. 1). The book focusses solely on the land in Italy because the legal conditions concerning the land of the conquered Mediterranean varied from that of the ager publicus in Italy. Public land also played drastically different roles in the history of each province. The scope of the book is limited by the nature of the sources, allowing the most in-depth study of ager publicus only for the second century b.c.
The book comprises six chapters, a substantial appendix, references and an index. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter consists of a short description of ager publicus in the regal period and the early Republic; an account of Rome's acquisition of ager publicus beginning with estimations of the amount of confiscated land and colony sizes; a description of the acquisition divided by region (Latium, Etruria, etc.). The chapter concludes with a helpful description of the role of ager publicus in relations between Rome and the Latin allies. The fourth chapter discusses the expansion of Rome in the second century from a city-state to an empire. R. examines the economic, social and historical context of the second century for Rome and the impact of population, commercial agriculture and privatisation of land. She discusses the use of the ager publicus by small farmers and the survival strategies implemented after the pressures of the new economy forced many of them to sell their land. The fifth chapter covers the Gracchi and the privatisation of the ager publicus. She divides the chapter into four sections: the agrarian reforms of the Gracchi; the post-Gracchan legislation; ager publicus after 111; and a conclusion.
A discussion of the role of ager publicus in the economy and society of the Roman Republic must first answer the question of the extent of ager publicus (Chapter 2). It remains impossible to establish with any certainty the amount of ager publicus based on the sources at our disposal. R. takes to task the previous work of Beloch (1926) and Afzelius (1942) in an attempt to calculate the amount of confiscated land (pp. 31ff.). She makes a plausible case, contra D. Rathbone, that the amount of ager publicus confiscated was much larger and that much more of it remained ager publicus for long after its confiscation.
Chapters 4 and 5 are the most interesting. Chapter 4 discusses economic issues in the second century as they relate to ager publicus. The number of people vying for the scarce resources of central Italy escalated. Small farmers owning land were swayed to sell their land by such high demand (= high prices) and opportunities for wage labour elsewhere. However, the sources of alternative income began drying up and there was, to some extent, a proletarianisation of the Roman free citizen. R. argues that this picture of the declining social and economic well-being of the Roman free citizen drawn by the sources, Appian and Plutarch primarily, is limited to central Italy. Therefore, the social problems identified by the Gracchi were indeed real, but they were limited to central Italy, where the demand for arable land exceeded what was available. Further, contrary to the widely held view that the elite amassed available ager publicus, R. argues that they largely bought up the private land held by small farmers. Thus, the real problem was always a lack of access to land. The economic and social problems of the latter part of the second century directly resulted in the privatisation of ager publicus, the subject of Chapter 5.
In Chapter 5 R. investigates the Gracchan agrarian laws and their consequences. She demonstrates the links between the socio-economic issues presented in Chapter 4 and the measures taken by the Gracchi. The radical change in the legal conditions of possession of arable ager publicus ushered in the eventual disappearance of ager publicus altogether.
R. contends that the results of the Gracchan reforms were quite impressive (p. 252). This is demonstrated by examining the size of the centuriations they created and the Liber Coloniarum. The Gracchi recognised that public land was not a sustainable system of landholding for their time due to a growing population and growing competition for land. They granted private ownership of land to the small farmers, but the ueteres possessores were likewise acknowledged with secure tenure on a maximum of 500 iugera of land. This encouraged them to invest in land that they could now own. These changes in land distribution brought about serious consequences for the allies, who had been, as previously mentioned, working land that belonged to the Romans by right of occupatio for many years at this point. The resulting tensions led to the Social War.
In a c. 30-page appendix, ‘The Location of Ager Publicus’, R. attempts to present a systematic overview of the land acquired by the Romans classified as ager publicus. She then indicates, as far as possible, how much land they privatised by colonisation or viritane distribution within five years. However useful this is, it must be highlighted how speculative much of the ‘data’ is. This is not R.'s fault, but a result of the available sources.
Unfortunately, the most important categories for this study are those most ambiguous. The year, place and circumstances are well-founded, while the rest are in many cases only guesses. For example, the following are sample descriptions from the listings under the sub-section concerning the amount of confiscated land: ‘apparently the whole territory was confiscated’; ‘some land was confiscated’; ‘unknown’; ‘there is great confusion … it is unclear’; ‘much land was confiscated’. While a general picture may be gleaned from this layout of the data, extreme caution should be used when basing any claims on it. Even to discuss an order of magnitude in relation to these categories in the appendix must be tentative.
R.'s book is a welcome addition to the discussion of the Roman use of land and ager publicus in particular. It will surely be the standard work on ager publicus. With that said, the book might have gained more if there were at the end some comparative discussion with the Roman preoccupation with land in the provinces. How exactly did the approach differ, and why? In this way, the ager publicus in Italy could be better placed in the larger context of Roman expansion. R. takes a reasonable position regarding population counts, recognising the downfalls of the ‘high count’ as well as the ‘low count’, and instead remains open to other models, including the ‘middle count’ (pp. 191–200). The list of references is helpful and includes a great deal of non-English material.
Since the publication of this book R. has written several articles (all of which were forthcoming at the time this review was written). In e-mail correspondence R. confirms that none of the articles alter the thesis. Rather, they add further detailed research at certain points of the present work. The articles include, ‘The Role of Italians in Local Economies of the Late Roman Republic’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'histoire (2012); ‘Italian Allies and Ager Publicus in the Roman Republic’, in A. Bertrand & Y. Rivière (edd.), Espropriazioni e confische in Italia e nelle province: la colonizzazione durante la Repubblica e l'Impero (2012); and her edited volume: Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic (2012).
