Note 726 — Chapter XI · THE STATE (B) STATE AND HISTORY (continued 2)

According to Roman law, the freed slave at once acquired citizenship, with some few limitations. As the slave-material came from all over the Mediterranean region and most of all from the East, it was a vast rootless mass that collected in the four urban tribes, alien from all the tendencies of the old Roman blood; and it quickly destroyed these when, after the Gracchan movement, it had succeeded in bringing its weight of numbers to bear with effect.