DEDUCTIO COLONIAE and ADSIGNATIO VIRITIM 393 B. C.-134 B. C.

This paper deals with the Roman policy of colonization from 393 B. C. to 134 B. C. First of all, the author considers the first half of the third century B. C. as the turning point of the policy and divides the period in question into two stages, the former from 393 B. C. to 269 B. C. and the latter from 268 B. C. to 134 B. C. Then, he points to two types of Roman colonizations, that is, establishment of a colony(deductio coloniae)and viritane distribution(adsignatio viritim). In the former system, individual Romans, receiving parcels of land in private ownership, were organized as self-governing communities with their own civic centers and apparatus of administration, which, further, fell into two classes, coloniae civium Romanorum and coloniae Latinae, according to the political rights of the settlers and the status of the colony. In the latter, settlers likewise received parcels of land, but were not organized on their new holdings into self-administering communities. Finally, he argues these four points: 1. As to Rome's activity to establish colonies, we cannot distinguish one stage from another. The active attitude of the Roman senate or the Nobiles toward the policy to plant settlers in the colonies, civium Romanorum or Latincrum, continued before and after 268 B. C. 2. As to the viritane distribution, we can point to the diminution of the activity after 268 B. C. This is the main difference between these two stages. 3. Between two systems of the Roman colonization, the viritane distribution is more favourable to Roman Plebs, because of their easier participation in this system, than the establishment of a colony, and yet more troublesome to the Roman ruling class to keep the equilibrium between members of each tribus. 4. As Fraccaro suggested perceptively in his excellent paper, Lex Flaminia de agro Gallico et Piceno viritim dividundo (Opuscula, II, Pavia 1957), the change of the Roman policy of colonization was brought about by the transformation of the citystate which Republican Rome underwent during a series of political events in the first half of the third century B. C. so much that the tribus became the most important institution in the Republican constitution. It was the tribus institution that the Nobiles depended on in exercising their political power at Rome. Thus, the Nobiles could not but change the policy of colonization to defend the city-state constitution, that is, the tribus institution and themselves