of its object because it did not provide any adequate machinery for the resumption by the state of land held in excess of the prescribed amount, and was therefore easily evaded. The next agrarian law we hear of was a more special measure dealing with lands conquered from the Senones and Picentines. In 232 B.C. C. Flaminius, then tribune of the plebs, proposed to resume these lands for the state, although they were already occupied by large landholders, and to distribute them in allotments to poor citizens. The measure met with much opposition from the richer classes, and did not gain the sanction of the senate; but C. Flaminius ignored constitutional usage and brought it direct before the council of the plebs, by which it was made law. In 133 B.C. the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (q.v.) re-enacted the earlier measure of Licinius and Sextius, with the additional provisions that each owner might occupy 250 jugera for each son, in addition to the original 500, and that a commission of three (iii. viri agris dandis adsignandis) should be appointed to carry out the terms of the law. He also enacted that the land occupied in excess of the prescribed amount, and on that account resumed for the state by the land commission, should be distributed in inalienable lots to poor citizens. Subsequent modifications of those provisions which dealt with the powers of the land commission led to a re-enactment of the whole by C. Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, tribune in 123 B.C. But within 15 years from the tribunate of C. Gracchus the whole of his law had been rendered null by three further enactments. The first of these permitted the sale of land allotted under the law, which thus tended to return into the hands of its former occupiers as private property, which the state had no longer any right to resume. The second abolished the commission appointed to carry out the terms of the law, thus putting a stop to further resumption and distribution, and also transformed existing occupiers into owners of the land they occupied, paying only a small due to the treasury. The third (probably the surviving Lex Agraria, Bruns, loc. cit.) abolished the payment. This law belongs to the year 111 B.C. The dates of the two former laws are uncertain, but it is probable that the first was passed in 121, the second in 119 or 118. From this time forward a change comes over land legislation. The ordinary public land in Italy, in the hands of occupiers, which had given rise to all the agrarian legislation between 376 and 111, had practically ceased to exist. The Campanian land still remained, but the same reasons which led to its exemption from the Gracchan legislation seem to have continued to protect its holders until 63 B.C. In the meantime several agrarian laws were passed which provided for the distribution of land placed in some other way at the disposal of the state. In 100 B.C. Appuleius Saturninus (q.v.), tribune of the plebs, proposed the allotment of lands recently taken from the Cimbri in Gaul. This law was passed, but eventually declared null by the senate, with the rest of Saturninus’s laws. A more dangerous precedent was set by Sulla in his dictatorship (82–81 B.C.) He was the first to confiscate the lands of his political foes, and of communities which had resisted him, and treating them as ager publicus, assign them to his veterans as a prize. This example was followed by Octavian (Augustus) and Antony (M. Antonius) after their proscriptions in 43 B.C. A third method of providing land for distribution was that adopted by Servilius Rullus (q.v.) in 63 B.C. His bill enacted that land should be purchased in Italy with money gained by the sale of Roman territories abroad, and allotted to citizens. A commission of ten (x. viri agris dandis adsignandis), annually elected by 9 out of the 35 tribes, was to carry out the terms of the law. Rullus also ventured to propose the distribution of the Campanian land, which had hitherto been respected by all agrarian reformers. It was chiefly on this ground that Cicero in his three speeches on the Agrarian law succeeded in exciting such a general feeling against it that it was eventually withdrawn. In 60 B.C. the tribune L. Flavius brought forward a bill for the distribution of lands to Pompey’s veterans. The Campanian land was certainly to be included in the distribution, and it is clear from Cicero that the bill in some way dealt violently with the rights of private owners. It also, however, enacted that land should be purchased by the state with the wealth which Pompey’s conquests had brought into the treasury. The last proposal was supported by Cicero, but the bill seems to have been dropped, only to reappear in more moderate form in the following year. A consular bill, the lex Julia Campana, was passed by Julius Caesar in 59 B.C., which provided for the settlement of Pompey’s veterans on the Campanian land, and other lands purchased by the state from private owners in Italy with the full consent of the latter. In its original form, the bill omitted all reference to the Campanian land, which seems to have been included by Caesar in the distribution only when the continued and unreasoning opposition of the senate had goaded him to extreme measures. A commission of twenty was to be appointed to carry out the law, from which Caesar himself was expressly excluded. This measure finally settled the question of the Campanian land, which now passed out of the category of ager publicus. The last agrarian law of the republic was that passed in 44 B.C. on the proposal of the consul M. Antonius, or of his brother L. Antonius. We have no detailed account of the measure, but it seems to have provided grants of land for veterans, and was to be administered by seven commissioners. The law was afterwards cancelled by decree of the senate, probably on the ground of some technical flaw. The emperor Vespasian attempted to reclaim for the state small oddments of land (subseciva) which were held by neighbouring owners to whom they had never been definitely assigned. The attempt met with violent opposition, and though resumed by Titus, was finally crushed by Domitian, who issued an edict recognizing all oddments of land thus held to be private property.
Authorities.—Niebuhr, History of Rome (English translation), ii. p. 129 foll. (Cambridge, 1832); Becker, Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer, iii. 2, p. 142 (Leipzig, 1843); Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i. p. 96 foll. (Leipzig, 1881); Madvig, Verfassung und Verwaltung des römischen Staates, ii. p. 364 foll. (Leipzig, 1882), (See also Rome, History.) (A. H. J. G; A. M. Cl.)
AGREDA, MARIA FERNANDEZ CORONEL, Abbess of, known in religion as Sor (Sister) Maria de Jesus (1602–1665), was the daughter of Don Francisco Coronel and of his wife Catalina de Arana. She was born at Agreda, on the borders of Navarre and Aragon, on the 2nd of April 1602. All her family were powerfully influenced by the ecstatic piety of Spain in that age. Her biographer, Samaniego, records that even as an infant in arms she was filled with divine knowledge. Her stupidity as a child is piously accounted for by extreme humility. From childhood she was favoured by ecstasies and visions. When she was fifteen the whole family entered religion. The father, now an old man, and the two sons entered the Franciscan house of San Antonio de Nalda. Maria, her mother and sister established a Franciscan nunnery in the family house at Agreda, which, when Maria’s reputation had extended, was replaced by the existing building. She began it with one hundred reals (one pound sterling) lent her by a devotee, and it was completed in fourteen years by voluntary gifts. Much against her own wish, we are told, she was appointed abbess at the age of twenty-five. In 1668, four years after her death, the Franciscans published a story that at the age of twenty-two she had been miraculously conveyed to Mexico, to convert a native people, and had made five hundred journeys through the air for that purpose in one year. Though the rule required the abbess to be changed every three years, Maria remained the effective ruler of Agreda till her death. The Virgin was declared abbess, and Maria acted as her locum tenens. In her later years she inclined to the “internal prayer,” and neglect of the outward offices of the church, which was usual with the “alumbrados” or Quietists. The Inquisition took notice of her, but she was not proceeded against with severity. Maria’s importance in religion and Spanish history is based on two grounds. In the earlier part of her life, while the Franciscan, Francisco Andres de la Torre, was her confessor, she wrote an Introduction to the History of the Most Blessed Virgin. It was destroyed by the direction of another confessor. Later on, by the order of her superiors, and under the guidance of her Franciscan confessor, Andres de Fuen Mayor, she wrote The Mystic City of God. It is an extraordinary book, full of apocryphal history,
