citizenship, although it is probable that some modest type of urban settlement did grow up outside the ruined walls of Carthage to satisfy the most necessary requirements of the surrounding residents. The benefits conferred by the Gracchi on the poorer members of the proletariate were also respected. The corn law may have been left untouched for the time being[768]--a natural concession, for the senate could only hope to rule by its influence with the urban mob, and, in the case of so simple an institution, any modification would have been so patent an infringement of the rights of the recipients as to have immediately excited suspicion and anger. With the agrarian law it was different. Its repeal was indeed impossible; but the land-hunger of the dispossessed capitalists might to some extent be appeased by a measure that was not only tolerable, but welcome; and modifications, so gradual and subtle that their meaning would be unintelligible to the masses, might subsequently be introduced to remedy observed defects, to calm the apprehensions of the allies, and perhaps to secure the continuance of large holdings, if economic causes should lead to their revival. The agrarian legislation of the ten years that followed the fall of Caius Gracchus, seems to have been guided by the wishes of the senate; but much of it does not bear on its surface the signs which we might expect of capitalistic influence or oligarchic neglect of the poor. Large portions of it seem rather to reveal the desire of banishing for ever a harrowing question which was the opportunity of the demagogue; and the peculiar mixture of prudence, liberality, and selfishness which this legislation reveals, can only be appreciated by an examination of its separate stages.