319,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms, whereas six years afterwards (629) in place of the previous falling-off(2) the number rises to 395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase--beyond all doubt solely in consequence of what the allotment-commission did for the Roman burgesses. Whether it multiplied the farms among the Italians in the same proportion maybe doubted; at any rate what it did accomplish yielded a great and beneficent result. It is true that this result was not achieved without various violations of respectable interests and existing rights. The allotment-commission, composed of the most decided partisans, and absolute judge in its own cause, proceeded with its labours in a reckless and even tumultuary fashion; public notices summoned every one, who was able, to give information regarding the extent of the domain-lands; the old land-registers were inexorably referred to, and not only was occupation new and old revoked without distinction, but in various cases real private property, as to which the holder was unable satisfactorily to prove his tenure, was included in the confiscation. Loud and for the most part well founded as were the complaints, the senate allowed the distributors to pursue their course; it was clear that, if the domain question was to be settled at all, the matter could not be carried through without such unceremonious vigour of action. Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus But this acquiescence had its limit. The Italian domain-land was not solely in the hands of Roman burgesses; large tracts of it had been assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied with or without permission by Latin burgesses. The allotment- commission at length attacked these possessions also. The resumption of the portions simply occupied by non-burgesses was no doubt allowable in formal law, and not less presumably the resumption of the domain-land handed over by decrees of the senate or even by resolutions of the burgesses to the Italian communities, since thereby the state by no means renounced its ownership and to all appearance gave its grants to communities, just as to private persons, subject to revocation. But the complaints of these allied or subject communities, that Rome did not keep the settlements that were in force, could not be simply disregarded like the complaints of the Roman citizens injured by the action of the commissioners. Legally the former might be no better founded than the latter; but, while in the latter case the matter at stake was the private interests of members of the state, in reference to the Latin possessions the question arose, whether it was politically right to give fresh offence to communities so important in a military point of view and already so greatly estranged from Rome by numerous disabilities de jure and de facto(3) through this keenly-felt injury to their material interests.