[Sidenote: Reactionary legislation.] But they soon assailed measures as well as men. The Lex Baebia appears to have secured those who had actually established themselves at Carthage in their allotments; but the Senate annulled the colonies which Caius had planned in Italy, and, with one exception, Neptunia, broke up those already settled. [Sidenote: The agrarian law annulled.] Then by three successive enactments it got rid of the agrarian law, and plunged Italy again into the decline from which by the help of that law she was emerging. 1. The occupiers were allowed again to sell their land. Tiberius had expressly forbidden this, and now the rich at once began to buy out the small owners, whom they often evicted by means more or less foul. 2. A tribune named Borius, or Thorius, prohibited any further distribution of land, thus knocking on the head the permanent commission. These two laws were tantamount to handing over to the rich in the city and the country the greater part of the public land, giving them a legal title to it instead of the possession on sufferance with which the Gracchi had interfered. The mouths of the farmers were stopped by the pernicious but tempting permission to sell their land. The people were cajoled by the vectigalia, which Drusus had abolished, being reimposed, and the proceeds divided among them. 3. Encouraged by the general acquiescence in these insidious aggressions they induced a tribune, whose name is conjectured to have been C. Baebius, to do away with the vectigalia altogether. [Sidenote: Lex Thoria.] The date of this law, usually called the Thorian law, was 111 B.C. The real Thorian law was probably carried in 118 B.C. Between these dates the rich would have been getting back the land from the poor occupiers, and so, when the Senate abolished the vectigalia, it was really pocketing them, and once for all and by a legal form turning the public into private land. This law, which is here called the Baebian law, Cicero ascribes to Spurius Thorius, who, he says, freed the land from the vectigal. But as Appian says that Spurius Borius imposed the vectigal, it is assumed that Cicero confused names, that the Spurius Borius of Appian was Spurius Thorius, and that the tribune whom Cicero calls Thorius was really quite another person. However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which had been specially assigned to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state as before his legislation; that is to say, the Senate did not give the occupiers an indefeasible title, but it did not meddle with them. Moreover, it amply indemnified the Socii and Latini who had surrendered land for the colonies of Caius, while some compensation