[The History of Rome, Book V by Theodor Mommsen]@TWC D-Link bookThe History of Rome, Book V CHAPTER XI 82/110
The plans of Caesar for great works also, which were not at all limited to the capital, were intended to tell in this respect; the construction, for instance, of a convenient high-road from Rome through the passesof the Apennines to the Adriatic was designed to stimulate the internal traffic of Italy, and the lowering the level of the Fucine lake to benefit the Marsian farmers.
But Caesar also sought by more direct measures to influence the state of Italian husbandry.
The Italian graziers were required to take at least a third of their herdsmen from freeborn adults, whereby brigandage was checked and at the same time a source of gain was opened to the free proletariate. Distribution of Land In the agrarian question Caesar, who already in his first consulship had been in a position to regulate it,( 72) more judicious than Tiberius Gracchus, did not seek to restore the farmer-system at any price, even at that of a revolution--concealed under juristic clauses--directed against property; by him on the contrary, as by every other genuine statesman, the security of that which is property or is at any rate regarded by the public as property was esteemed as the first and most inviolable of all political maxims, and it was only within the limits assigned by this maxim that he sought to accomplish the elevation of the Italian small holdings, which also appeared to him as a vital question for the nation.
Even as it was, there was much still left for him in this respect to do.
Every private right, whether it was called property or entitled heritable possession, whether traceable to Gracchus or to Sulla, was unconditionally respected by him.
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