dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate, and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law, had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of its value were now to be deprived.[350]