Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 27

_Scipio._ You desire, then, that all the faculties of the mind should submit to a ruling power, and that conscience should reign over them all?

_Laelius._ Certainly, that is my wish.

_Scipio._ How, then, can you doubt what opinion to form on the subject of the Commonwealth? in which, if the State is thrown into many hands, it is very plain that there will be no presiding authority; for if power be not united, it soon comes to nothing.

x.x.xIX. Then Laelius asked: But what difference is there, I should like to know, between the one and the many, if justice exists equally in many?

And Scipio said: Since I see, my Laelius, that the authorities I have adduced have no great influence on you, I must continue to employ you yourself as my witness in proof of what I am saying.

In what way, said Laelius, are you going to make me again support your argument?

_Scipio._ Why, thus: I recollect, when we were lately at Formiae, that you told your servants repeatedly to obey the orders of more than one master only.

_Laelius._ To be sure, those of my steward.

_Scipio._ What do you at home? Do you commit your affairs to the hands of many persons?

_Laelius._ No, I trust them to myself alone.

_Scipio._ Well, in your whole establishment, is there any other master but yourself?

_Laelius._ Not one.

_Scipio._ Then I think you must grant me that, as respects the State, the government of single individuals, provided they are just, is superior to any other.

_Laelius._ You have conducted me to this conclusion, and I entertain very nearly that opinion.

XL. And Scipio said: You would still further agree with me, my Laelius, if, omitting the common comparisons, that one pilot is better fitted to steer a s.h.i.+p, and a physician to treat an invalid, provided they be competent men in their respective professions, than many could be, I should come at once to more ill.u.s.trious examples.

_Laelius._ What examples do you mean?

_Scipio._ Do not you observe that it was the cruelty and pride of one single Tarquin only that made the t.i.tle of king unpopular among the Romans?

_Laelius._ Yes, I acknowledge that.

_Scipio._ You are also aware of this fact, on which I think I shall debate in the course of the coming discussion, that after the expulsion of King Tarquin, the people was transported by a wonderful excess of liberty. Then innocent men were driven into banishment; then the estates of many individuals were pillaged, consuls.h.i.+ps were made annual, public authorities were overawed by mobs, popular appeals took place in all cases imaginable; then secessions of the lower orders ensued, and, lastly, those proceedings which tended to place all powers in the hands of the populace.

_Laelius._ I must confess this is all too true.

All these things now, said Scipio, happened during periods of peace and tranquillity, for license is wont to prevail when there is little to fear, as in a calm voyage or a trifling disease. But as we observe the voyager and the invalid implore the aid of some one competent director, as soon as the sea grows stormy and the disease alarming, so our nation in peace and security commands, threatens, resists, appeals from, and insults its magistrates, but in war obeys them as strictly as kings; for public safety is, after all, rather more valuable than popular license. And in the most serious wars, our countrymen have even chosen the entire command to be deposited in the hands of some single chief, without a colleague; the very name of which magistrate indicates the absolute character of his power. For though he is evidently called dictator because he is appointed (dicitur), yet do we still observe him, my Laelius, in our sacred books ent.i.tled Magister Populi (the master of the people).

This is certainly the case, said Laelius.

Our ancestors, therefore, said Scipio, acted wisely.[312] * * *

XLI. When the people is deprived of a just king, as Ennius says, after the death of one of the best of monarchs,

They hold his memory dear, and, in the warmth Of their discourse, they cry, O Romulus!

O prince divine, sprung from the might of Mars To be thy country's guardian! O our sire!

Be our protector still, O heaven-begot!

Not heroes, nor lords alone, did they call those whom they lawfully obeyed; nor merely as kings did they proclaim them; but they p.r.o.nounced them their country's guardians, their fathers, and their G.o.ds. Nor, indeed, without cause, for they added,

Thou, Prince, hast brought us to the gates of light.

And truly they believed that life and honor and glory had arisen to them from the justice of their king. The same good-will would doubtless have remained in their descendants, if the same virtues had been preserved on the throne; but, as you see, by the injustice of one man the whole of that kind of const.i.tution fell into ruin.

I see it indeed, said Laelius, and I long to know the history of these political revolutions both in our own Commonwealth and in every other.

XLII. And Scipio said: When I shall have explained my opinion respecting the form of government which I prefer, I shall be able to speak to you more accurately respecting the revolutions of states, though I think that such will not take place so easily in the mixed form of government which I recommend. With respect, however, to absolute monarchy, it presents an inherent and invincible tendency to revolution. No sooner does a king begin to be unjust than this entire form of government is demolished, and he at once becomes a tyrant, which is the worst of all governments, and one very closely related to monarchy. If this State falls into the hands of the n.o.bles, which is the usual course of events, it becomes an aristocracy, or the second of the three kinds of const.i.tutions which I have described; for it is, as it were, a royal--that is to say, a paternal--council of the chief men of the State consulting for the public benefit. Or if the people by itself has expelled or slain a tyrant, it is moderate in its conduct as long as it has sense and wisdom, and while it rejoices in its exploit, and applies itself to maintaining the const.i.tution which it has established. But if ever the people has raised its forces against a just king and robbed him of his throne, or, as has frequently happened, has tasted the blood of its legitimate n.o.bles, and subjected the whole Commonwealth to its own license, you can imagine no flood or conflagration so terrible, or any whose violence is harder to appease than this unbridled insolence of the populace.

XLIII. Then we see realized that which Plato so vividly describes, if I can but express it in our language. It is by no means easy to do it justice in translation: however, I will try.

When, says Plato, the insatiate jaws of the populace are fired with the thirst of liberty, and when the people, urged on by evil ministers, drains in its thirst the cup, not of tempered liberty, but unmitigated license, then the magistrates and chiefs, if they are not utterly subservient and remiss, and shameless promoters of the popular licentiousness, are pursued, incriminated, accused, and cried down under the t.i.tle of despots and tyrants. I dare say you recollect the pa.s.sage.

Yes, said Laelius, it is familiar to me.

_Scipio._ Plato thus proceeds: Then those who feel in duty bound to obey the chiefs of the State are persecuted by the insensate populace, who call them voluntary slaves. But those who, though invested with magistracies, wish to be considered on an equality with private individuals, and those private individuals who labor to abolish all distinctions between their own cla.s.s and the magistrates, are extolled with acclamations and overwhelmed with honors, so that it inevitably happens in a commonwealth thus revolutionized that liberalism abounds in all directions, due authority is found wanting even in private families, and misrule seems to extend even to the animals that witness it. Then the father fears the son, and the son neglects the father. All modesty is banished; they become far too liberal for that. No difference is made between the citizen and the alien; the master dreads and cajoles his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters. The young men a.s.sume the gravity of sages, and sages must stoop to the follies of children, lest they should be hated and oppressed by them.

The very slaves even are under but little restraint; wives boast the same rights as their husbands; dogs, horses, and a.s.ses are emanc.i.p.ated in this outrageous excess of freedom, and run about so violently that they frighten the pa.s.sengers from the road. At length the termination of all this infinite licentiousness is, that the minds of the citizens become so fastidious and effeminate, that when they observe even the slightest exertion of authority they grow angry and seditious, and thus the laws begin to be neglected, so that the people are absolutely without any master at all.

Then Laelius said: You have very accurately rendered the opinions which he expressed.

XLIV. _Scipio._ Now, to return to the argument of my discourse. It appears that this extreme license, which is the only liberty in the eyes of the vulgar, is, according to Plato, such that from it as a sort of root tyrants naturally arise and spring up. For as the excessive power of an aristocracy occasions the destruction of the n.o.bles, so this excessive liberalism of democracies brings after it the slavery of the people. Thus we find in the weather, the soil, and the animal const.i.tution the most favorable conditions are sometimes suddenly converted by their excess into the contrary, and this fact is especially observable in political governments; and this excessive liberty soon brings the people collectively and individually to an excessive servitude. For, as I said, this extreme liberty easily introduces the reign of tyranny, the severest of all unjust slaveries.

In fact, from the midst of this unbridled and capricious populace, they elect some one as a leader in opposition to their afflicted and expelled n.o.bles: some new chief, forsooth, audacious and impure, often insolently persecuting those who have deserved well of the State, and ready to gratify the populace at his neighbor's expense as well as his own. Then, since the private condition is naturally exposed to fears and alarms, the people invest him with many powers, and these are continued in his hands. Such men, like Pisistratus of Athens, will soon find an excuse for surrounding themselves with body-guards, and they will conclude by becoming tyrants over the very persons who raised them to dignity. If such despots perish by the vengeance of the better citizens, as is generally the case, the const.i.tution is re-established; but if they fall by the hands of bold insurgents, then the same faction succeeds them, which is only another species of tyranny. And the same revolution arises from the fair system of aristocracy when any corruption has betrayed the n.o.bles from the path of rect.i.tude. Thus the power is like the ball which is flung from hand to hand: it pa.s.ses from kings to tyrants, from tyrants to the aristocracy, from them to democracy, and from these back again to tyrants and to factions; and thus the same kind of government is seldom long maintained.

XLV. Since these are the facts of experience, royalty is, in my opinion, very far preferable to the three other kinds of political const.i.tutions. But it is itself inferior to that which is composed of an equal mixture of the three best forms of government, united and modified by one another. I wish to establish in a commonwealth a royal and pre-eminent chief. Another portion of power should be deposited in the hands of the aristocracy, and certain things should be reserved to the judgment and wish of the mult.i.tude. This const.i.tution, in the first place, possesses that great equality without which men cannot long maintain their freedom; secondly, it offers a great stability, while the particular separate and isolated forms easily fall into their contraries; so that a king is succeeded by a despot, an aristocracy by a faction, a democracy by a mob and confusion; and all these forms are frequently sacrificed to new revolutions. In this united and mixed const.i.tution, however, similar disasters cannot happen without the greatest vices in public men. For there can be little to occasion revolution in a state in which every person is firmly established in his appropriate rank, and there are but few modes of corruption into which we can fall.

XLVI. But I fear, Laelius, and you, my amiable and learned friends, that if I were to dwell any longer on this argument, my words would seem rather like the lessons of a master, and not like the free conversation of one who is uniting with you in the consideration of truth. I shall therefore pa.s.s on to those things which are familiar to all, and which I have long studied. And in these matters I believe, I feel, and I affirm that of all governments there is none which, either in its entire const.i.tution or the distribution of its parts, or in the discipline of its manners, is comparable to that which our fathers received from our earliest ancestors, and which they have handed down to us. And since you wish to hear from me a development of this const.i.tution, with which you are all acquainted, I shall endeavor to explain its true character and excellence. Thus keeping my eye fixed on the model of our Roman Commonwealth, I shall endeavor to accommodate to it all that I have to say on the best form of government. And by treating the subject in this way, I think I shall be able to accomplish most satisfactorily the task which Laelius has imposed on me.

XLVII. _Laelius._ It is a task most properly and peculiarly your own, my Scipio; for who can speak so well as you either on the subject of the inst.i.tutions of our ancestors, since you yourself are descended from most ill.u.s.trious ancestors, or on that of the best form of a const.i.tution which, if we possess (though at this moment we do not, still), when we do possess such a thing, who will be more flouris.h.i.+ng in it than you? or on that of providing counsels for the future, as you, who, by dispelling two mighty perils from our city, have provided for its safety forever?

FRAGMENTS.

XLVIII. As our country is the source of the greatest benefits, and is a parent dearer than those who have given us life, we owe her still warmer grat.i.tude than belongs to our human relations. * * *

Nor would Carthage have continued to flourish during six centuries without wisdom and good inst.i.tutions. * * *

In truth, says Cicero, although the reasonings of those men may contain most abundant fountains of science and virtue; still, if we compare them with the achievements and complete actions of statesmen, they will seem not to have been of so much service in the actual business of men as of amus.e.m.e.nt for their leisure.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND BOOK,

BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.