Rousseau_contrat-social

ought up against them, it is proved, whatever the Squittinio della
libertà veneta may say of them, that they were in no sense sovereigns.
A case certain to be cited against my view is that of the Roman
Republic, which, it will be said, followed exactly the opposite course,
and passed from monarchy to aristocracy and from aristocracy to
democracy. I by no means take this view of it.
What Romulus first set up was a mixed government, which soon
deteriorated into despotism. From special causes, the State died an
untimely death, as new-born children sometimes perish without reaching
manhood. The expulsion of the Tarquins was the real period of the birth
of the Republic. But at first it took on no constant form, because, by
not abolishing the patriciate, it left half its work undone. For, by
this means, hereditary aristocracy, the worst of all legitimate forms of
administration, remained in conflict with democracy, and the form of the
government, as Machiavelli has proved, was only fixed on the
establishment of the tribunate: only then was there a true government
and a veritable democracy. In fact, the people was then not only
Sovereign, but also magistrate and judge; the senate was only a
subordinate tribunal, to temper and concentrate the government, and the
consuls themselves, though they were patricians, first magistrates, and
absolute generals in war, were in Rome itself no more than presidents of
the people.
From that point, the government followed its natural tendency, and
inclined strongly to aristocracy. The patriciate, we may say, abolished
itself, and the aristocracy was found no longer in the body of
patricians as at Venice and Genoa, but in the body of the senate, which
was composed of patricians and plebeians, and even in the body of
tribunes when they began to usurp an active function: for names do not
affect facts, and, when the people has rulers who govern for it,
whatever name they bear, the government is an aristocracy.
The abuse of aristocracy led to the civil wars and the triumvirate.
Sulla, Julius Caesar and Augustus became in fact real monarchs; and
finally, under the despotism of Tiberius, the State was dissolved. Roman
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