Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
Beyond doubt
these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the
revolution to which they owed their existence. Still more significant
and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded
to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories
of the state.
He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood
6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from Roman burgesses but
also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia
the rights of a Roman burgess-colony. The foundation was important,
but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration
thereby laid down.
It opened up for the Italian proletariate a
permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional; but
it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force,
by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the
provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.
