These decemvirs conducted themselves very properly, never keeping more than twelve lictors who marched in front of the leader of the Ten. And although they had absolute authority, whenever they had to punish a Roman citizen for homicide they would call him up before the people and allow them to judge him. They wrote their laws on ten tablets, and before they confirmed them they put them in view of the public for everyone to read and discuss so that if some defect were found in them it could be amended before their promulgation. Appius let it be known throughout Rome that if two tablets were to be added to the original ten they would be perfect, and this opinion gave the people the opportunity to reelect the decemvirs for another year; they agreed to do this partly because they would not have to reappoint the consuls and partly because they felt they could do without tribunes, since they themselves were acting as the judges in legal matters, as was mentioned above. When the decision was taken to reappoint them, all the nobility sought to obtain these positions, and Appius was among the foremost; he showed such kindness toward the people in requesting it that he began to arouse the suspicion of his colleagues: “For, after such arrogance, they felt that such affability could not exist without an ulterior motive.”35 Since they were hesitant to oppose him openly, they decided to do so artfully; and although he was the youngest of them all, they gave him the power of proposing the future decemvirs to the people, thinking that he would observe the limitations which others had observed by not proposing himself, for in Rome this was considered an unusual and disgraceful practice. “However, he converted the impediment into an opportunity”36 and named himself among the first, to the amazement and displeasure of all the nobles; then he nominated nine others to suit his plans. This new selection, made for another year, showed the people and the nobility their mistake, for immediately “Appius put aside his feigned character“37 and began to reveal his innate pride; and in a few days he had tainted his colleagues with his own habits. And in order to intimidate the people and the senate, in place of the usual twelve lictors he appointed one hundred and twenty.
For several days both sides were equally afraid; but then the decemvirs began to favor the senate and to mistreat the plebeians; and if anyone who was mistreated by one of the decemvirs appealed to another, he was treated worse after his appeal than he had been in his initial sentence. And so, recognizing their mistake and griefstricken, the people began to look to the nobility “to find a breath of liberty there where they had feared servitude so strongly that they had reduced the republic to its present condition.”38 This grief of theirs was pleasing to the nobility “since, disgusted by the present state of affairs, they might wish for the return of the consuls.”39 The day that ended the year’s term came to a close, and the two tablets of laws had been drawn up but not made public. From this fact the decemvirs took the opportunity of continuing their magistracy, and they began to conduct the government with violence and to make the young noblemen their dependents by giving them the goods of those whom they had condemned. “With such gifts the young men were corrupted, preferring as they did the license granted them to liberty for all.”40
At that time it happened that the Sabines and the Volscians began to wage war against Rome, the fear of which forced the decemvirs to realize the weakness of their government, for without the senate they could not organize the war, and if they called the senate together they felt that they would lose their control of the government. Driven by necessity, they nevertheless chose the second alternative, and when the senators gathered, many of them, Valerius and Horatius in particular, spoke against the arrogance of the decemvirs; their power would have been completely abrogated if the senate, in its hatred of the people, had not wished to demonstrate its authority, since the senators thought that if the decemvirs resigned their authority voluntarily, the tribunes of the people would be reappointed. Hence, they decided upon waging war. Two armies set forth, commanded in part by the said decemvirs; Appius remained behind to rule the city. At that time he happened to fall in love with Virginia, and since he was lusting to take her by force, her father, Virginius, killed her in order to free her. This provoked violent disturbances in Rome and in the armies: the soldiers and the people together marched to the Mons Sacer, where they remained until the decemvirs abdicated their authority and the consuls and the tribunes were reestablished, and Rome was restored to the form of her ancient liberty.
And so, one first observes from this account that in Rome the evil involved in establishing this tyranny arose from those same causes which give rise to most tyrannies in cities: that is, from too much desire on the part of the people to be free and too much desire on the part of the nobles to command. And when they do not agree in creating a law which favors liberty, but instead one of the factions throws its support in favor of one man, then tyranny is quick to arise. The people and the Roman nobles agreed to establish the decemvirs and to grant them such authority because of the desire each faction had: the people hoped to abolish the office of consul and the nobles that of the tribunate. When they were established in office, the plebeians gave their support to Appius, whom they felt had become one of them and might attack the nobility. And when a people is led to make this error—to bestow on one man the power to attack those they despise—and if that one man is shrewd, he will always turn out to be a tyrant in that city, for, with the people’s support, he will wait until he has done away with the nobility, never moving to oppress the people until he has rid himself of the nobles, and by the time the people see themselves enslaved they will have no one to whom they can turn. All those who have founded tyrannies in republics have used this method; and if Appius had followed this system, that tyranny of his would have taken on more life and would not have collapsed so quickly. But he did just the opposite; he could not have conducted himself less prudently, for in order to maintain his tyranny he made himself the enemy both of those who had given it to him and who could have preserved it for him and of those who had not agreed to give it to him and who would not have been capable of maintaining it; he lost those who were his friends and sought as his friends those who could not be friends. For while nobles wish to rule as tyrants, that part of the nobility which is excluded from the tyranny is always opposed to the tyrant; nor can the tyrant ever win all their support for himself, since, owing to the great ambition and greed of the nobility, the tyrant cannot possess so much wealth or enough offices to satisfy all of them. And thus, when Appius abandoned the people to take the side of the nobles, he committed the most obvious mistake, both for the reasons explained above and because, wishing to hold something with force, the one who employs force must be more powerful than the one upon whom that greater force is being employed.
Thus, it follows that those tyrants who have the people as a friend and the nobles as enemies are most secure, since their force is maintained by greater strength than that of those tyrants who have the people as an enemy and the nobility as a friend. With this type of support internal forces are enough for survival, as they were for Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, for when all of Greece and the Roman people attacked him, having the support of just a few nobles but the friendship of all of the people, he defended himself with their aid—something he would not have been able to accomplish if they had been his enemy. In the other case, internal forces do not suffice when the tyrant has few friends in the city, and he must seek aid from outside. This aid requires three measures: first, employing foreign attendants as your bodyguards; second, arming the countryside so that it may undertake the duty that the people should have performed; third, allying yourself with powerful neighbors who will defend you. Anyone who follows these methods and observes them well, even if he has the people as his enemy, will be able in some way to save himself. But Appius was not able to use the method of gaining the support of the country people since Rome and the countryside were not divided, and what he was able to do he did not know how to do, and so he came to ruin at the very beginning.
The senate and the people committed the grav
est of errors in establishing the decemvirate, for although (as was stated above in the section treating of the dictator) those magistrates who are self-appointed, and not those whom the people create, are harmful to liberty, when the people organize the magistrates they ought nevertheless to do so in such a way that they force them to be cautious about becoming wicked. And where they should have set up a guard over magistrates to keep them good, the Romans removed it, establishing the decemvirate as the sole magistracy in Rome, annulling all others because of the excessive desire of the senate (as was explained above) to do away with the tribunes and that of the plebeians to do away with the consuls. This blinded them to the extent that they agreed to such an evil. As King Ferdinand41 used to say: men often act like certain small birds of prey who have such a great desire to pursue their victims, as Nature prompts them to do, that they do not sense that some other larger bird is flying above them and is preparing to kill them. From this discourse, therefore, one can, as I proposed in the beginning, discover the error the Roman people committed in wishing to save their liberty as well as the errors Appius committed in wishing to maintain his tyranny.
CHAPTER XLI. TO LEAP FROM HUMILITY TO ARROGANCE AND FROM MERCY TO CRUELTY WITHOUT APPROPRIATE STAGES IN BETWEEN IS AN IMPRUDENT AND UNPROFITABLE AFFAIR
Among the other ill-advised methods which Appius employed in order to maintain his tyranny, that of leaping too soon from one attitude to another was of no little importance. For his shrewdness in deceiving the people by pretending to be a man of the populace was well employed; also well employed were the methods he used to have the decemvirs reappointed, as was his audacity in getting himself nominated, contrary to the expectation of the nobility; well employed, too, was his appointment of colleagues suited to his purpose. Not at all well employed, however, once he had accomplished all this, was his sudden change of nature, as I said above, from being a friend of the people to showing himself as their enemy, from being humane to becoming arrogant, from being easy to reach to becoming inaccessible—and he changed so quickly and without any excuse that everybody saw the falseness of his intent. For anyone who has appeared to be good for a time and intends, for his own purposes, to become bad must do so in appropriate stages and in such a way as to be governed by circumstances, so that before your altered nature deprives you of old supporters it will have provided you with so many new ones that your authority will not be diminished; otherwise, finding yourself unmasked and without friends, you will be ruined.
CHAPTER XLII. HOW EASILY MEN CAN BE CORRUPTED
[On the topic of the decemvirate, it is to be noted how easily men are corrupted, even when they are good and well trained—the young nobles who supported Appius in his tyranny were such men. Lawmakers should bear this in mind when they make laws to restrain human passions and to remove the possibility of evildoing with impunity.]
CHAPTER XLIII. THOSE WHO FIGHT FOR THEIR OWN GLORY ARE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SOLDIERS
[There is a great difference between a happy army, fighting for its own glory, and one which is poorly organized, fighting to further the ambition of others. Roman armies were usually victorious under the consuls and were vanquished under the decemvirs; this example demonstrates, in part, the uselessness of mercenary soldiers who fight only for the salary you give them. Since love and devotion sufficient to resist a brave enemy are found only in your own subjects, an army must be composed of your own citizens in order to obtain good results. After the rule of the decemvirate was abolished, Roman armies fought again as free men and were again victorious, as they had formerly been.]
CHAPTER XLIV. A MULTITUDE WITHOUT A LEADER IS INEFFECTIVE; AND HOW ONE SHOULD NOT MAKE THREATS FIRST AND THEN REQUEST AUTHORITY
Because of the incident with Virginia, the Roman people went armed to the Mons Sacer. The senate sent its ambassadors to ask by what authority they had abandoned their leaders and gone to that place. And so highly regarded was the authority of the senate that, since the people did not have their leaders among them, no man dared to reply. And Livy declares that it was not that they lacked a reason to reply but rather that they lacked only someone to make the reply. This clearly demonstrates the ineffectiveness of a multitude without a leader.
Virginius understood this confusion, and on his orders twenty military tribunes were established to act as leaders in answering and negotiating with the senate. When they asked that Valerius and Horatius be sent to them so that they could explain their demands, the two men refused to go unless the decemvirs first abandoned their magistracy. And when they arrived at the Mons Sacer, where the populace had gathered, they were asked to agree that tribunes of the people should be established, that there should be the right of appeal to the people from every magistrate, and that the decemvirs should be handed over to them, for it was their intention to burn them all alive. Valerius and Horatius praised the first of their demands but condemned the last one as impious, saying: “You who condemn cruelty now are abandoning yourselves to it”;42 and they advised them to say nothing about the decemvirs and to wait until they regained their own authority and power, for then they would not lack a means of getting satisfaction. Here one clearly sees how much stupidity and lack of prudence there is in first saying, before asking for something, “I wish to do such and such an evil with this”; for one should not reveal one’s intentions but instead should try to get what he wants anyway, because it is enough to ask for a man’s weapons without saying, “I wish to kill you with these.” When you have the weapon in hand, then you can satisfy your desire.
CHAPTER XLV. IT IS A BAD EXAMPLE NOT TO OBSERVE A LAW THAT HAS BEEN PASSED, ESPECIALLY ON THE PART OF ITS LEGISLATOR; AND IT IS MOST HARMFUL TO THE RULER OF A CITY TO COMMIT NEW OFFENSES EVERY DAY
When the agreement had been made and Rome had been returned to her ancient form of government, Virginius summoned Appius before the people to defend his case. The latter appeared, accompanied by many nobles, and Virginius ordered that he be put in prison. Appius began to cry out in an appeal to the people. Virginius declared that he was unworthy of that right of appeal which he had destroyed, or to have as a defender the people whom he had offended. Appius replied that the right of appeal which they had been so eager to enact should not be violated. He was, however, imprisoned, and before the day of his trial he killed himself. And although Appius’s wicked life merited the greatest punishment, it was nevertheless against good governmental procedure to violate the laws, especially one that had just recently been enacted; for I believe that there is no worse example in a republic than to enact a law and then not to observe it—even more so when it is not observed by the one who created it.
After 1494, Florence reorganized her government with the aid of Brother Girolamo Savonarola, whose writings demonstrate his learning, prudence, and mental ability; and among the other provisions he had enacted to protect the citizens was a law permitting appeal to the people from the sentences of the Eight and the Signoria in cases involving the government (a law he had advocated for a long time and had obtained with the greatest difficulty); and it happened that shortly after the enactment of this law five citizens were condemned to death by the Signoria on behalf of the government, but when they wished to make an appeal they were not allowed to do so, and thus the law was not observed. This diminished much of the Brother’s influence, more so than any other incident, for if the right of appeal was useful, it should have been observed, and if it was not useful, then he should not have had it approved. This event was even more notorious because the friar preached many sermons after this law had been broken yet never condemned those who broke it, nor did he try to excuse them—he did not wish to condemn something which suited his purposes, but, on the other hand, he could not excuse it either. This revealed his ambitious and partisan spirit, thus depriving him of much of his influence and causing him a great deal of difficulty.
A government also does great damage when it arouses and renews each day in the minds of its citizens ill feelings over fresh injuries done to one pers
on or another, as occurred in Rome after the decemvirate: all of the decemvirs and other citizens were, at various times, being accused and condemned to such an extent that there arose a great fear among the nobility, who felt that such condemnations would never end, not until all the members of the nobility had been destroyed. And it would have caused great trouble in the city if the tribune Marcus Duellius had not taken measures against it: he issued an edict stating that for one year it would be unlawful for anyone to cite or accuse any other Roman citizen; this reassured the entire nobility. This demonstrates how damaging it is to a republic or to a prince to hold the spirit of subjects in fear and suspense with continuous punishments and penalties. And, without a doubt, there is nothing more injurious to a government, for when men start suspecting that they are about to suffer some evil they protect themselves from dangers at any cost and become more audacious and less cautious in planning a revolution. Therefore, it is necessary either not to injure anyone or to inflict the injuries all at once, and then to reassure men and give them a chance to calm down and settle their spirits.
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