As early as 622 the consul of that year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that he was "the first who had turned the shepherds out of the domains and installed farmers in their stead"; and tradition otherwise affirms that the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented--for it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer- class not by the founding of new communities, but by the strengthening of those already in existence.

The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and the land- distributions.

But the numbers on the burgess-rolls give the clearest evidence.

The census, which was published in 623 and actually took place probably in the beginning of 622, yielded not more than 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.