The proletaires, in short, demanded that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered.

This demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to.

Buying as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS.

Upon this land they employed their slaves.

The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and property.
Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude.
"The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property.