# 40. The Appointment of the Decemvirate in Rome and what is Noteworthy about it; in which will be considered, among other Things, how such an Incident may lead either to a Republic’s Salvation or to its Subjection

Since I am proposing to discuss in detail the events which led to the appointment of the Decemvirate in Rome, it will not be amiss, I think, first to state all that followed on such an appointment, and then to discuss such points as are noteworthy in the behaviour of those concerned; and there are many worthy of a careful consideration alike by those whose aim is to maintain the freedom of a republic and by those who plan to bring it into subjection. For such a discussion will bring to light many mistakes made by the senate and people which were prejudicial to liberty, and many mistakes made by Appius, the head of the Decemvirate, which were prejudicial to the tyranny which he was proposing to set up in Rome.

After many disputes and much conflict between the senate and the populace in Rome in regard to the drawing up of new laws whereby the freedom of that state might be the better stabilized, it was agreed to send Spurius Postumius with two other citizens to Athens for copies of the laws which Solon had given to that city, so that upon them they might base the Roman laws. After their return from this journey, the next step was to appoint men for the purpose of examining and codifying these laws. Ten citizens were appointed for a year; among them Appius Claudius, a sagacious man, but restless. That they might draw up these laws without reference to anyone else all other magistrates in Rome were suspended, in particular the tribunes and the consuls. The right of appeal to the people was also suspended, with the result that his magistracy came to all intents and purposes to be a princedom in Rome. Whereupon, so favoured was Appius by the plebs that the whole authority of his colleagues came to be vested in him; for so popular had he made himself by the attitude he adopted that it looked as if in some extraordinary way he had suddenly acquired a new nature and a new character, for up to this moment he had been a cruel persecutor of the plebs.

The Ten governed at first with due decorum, and had no more than twelve lictors who marched in front of the Decemvir who was acting as president. And, although they had absolute authority, when they had to punish a citizen for homicide they cited him to appear before the people, and left it to them to pronounce judgement. Their laws they wrote on ten tables, and, before they were confirmed, they set them before the public so that everyone might read and discuss them to see if there were any defects, with a view to their being amended before the laws were ratified.

Apropos of this Appius caused a rumour to spread through Rome to the effect that, if to these ten tables two more were added, it would make the codex complete. This suggestion provided the populace with an opportunity to re-appoint the Ten for another year; to which they readily agreed, because consuls would not in that case be re-appointed, and because they thought they could get along without tribunes now that they themselves were judging causes, as has been said above. When, then, the decision had been taken to re-appoint the Ten, all the nobility were keen on getting these honours, with Appius among the foremost, and such was the goodwill he displayed towards the plebs during his election-campaign that his colleagues began to grow suspicious of him. ‘They thought that in view of his great arrogance this hail-fellow-well-met attitude could scarce be genuine.’ Hesitating to oppose him openly, they decided to do it by artifice so, though he was junior to all in point of time, they authorized him to propose the future Ten to the people, thinking that, like others, he would observe the conventions and not propose himself, since in Rome this was not done and was looked on as not quite the thing. ‘Appius, however, seized what was meant to be an obstacle as an opportunity’, and put his own name at the head of the list, to the astonishment and consternation of all the nobility; and after it placed nine other names suited to his purpose.

This fresh appointment, made for another year, began to show the people and the nobility the error of their ways. For at once ‘Appius dropped the disguise he had been wearing’, and began to display his innate arrogance. Nor was it long before his colleagues took up the same line. To overawe the people and the senate they appointed a hundred and twenty lictors instead of the usual twelve.

Fear at this juncture was shared by all alike. Then the Ten began to play up to the senate and to ill-treat the plebs; and, should anyone who had been ill-treated by the one appeal to the other, he was treated worse on appeal than in the first instance. So that the plebs, realizing their mistake, began in their sore affliction to look to the nobles in the hope ‘of regaining a breath of liberty from the source from which they had so dreaded servitude that they had brought the state to this pass’. But to the nobility their affliction was a pleasing sight, for it was likely ‘that, disgusted with the present situation, they would want the consuls back’.

When the second year came to an end, the two tables of laws were ready but had not been published. This provided the Ten with an excuse for continuing their magistracy, and they began to act with violence in order to maintain their status. They made youthful nobles their satellites, and bestowed on them the goods of those they had condemned. ‘With which gifts the youth were corrupted, and preferred licence for themselves to liberty for all.’

It happened at this juncture that the Sabines and the Volsci started to make war on the Romans, and the fear which resulted was such that the Ten began to realize the weakness of their status; for without the senate they could not make preparations for war, and, if they summoned the senate, it looked as if they would lose their position. Actually necessity drove them to adopt this latter course. When the senators had assembled many of them spoke against the arrogance of the Ten, particularly Valerius and Horatius; and there would have been an end altogether to their authority if the senate out of envy for the plebs had not wanted to show its power, for they thought that, if the Ten resigned the magistracy of its own accord, they might be able to prevent the reappointment of tribunes of the plebs. They decided, therefore, on war. Two armies set out, led in part by members of the Ten. Appius remained behind to govern the city. It thus came about that he fell in love with Virginia, whom he was intending to seize by force, but her father, Virginius, killed her in order to save her from this. Disturbances followed alike in Rome and in the armies; which joined with what was left of the Roman plebs, and retired to Mons Sacer, where they remained until the Ten gave up their magistracy and tribunes and consuls were appointed and Rome recovered the form of her ancient liberty.

In the incidents here related it should, therefore, be noticed first of all that the inconvenience involved in the establishment of this tyranny was due to the same causes as are most tyrannies that are set up in cities, namely to the excessive demand of the people for freedom and to the excessive demand to dominate on the part of the nobles. For, when they fail to agree in making a law conducive to liberty, and, instead, one or other of the parties uses its weight to support a particular person, tyranny at once arises. The populace and the nobility in Rome agreed to appoint the Ten, and to invest them with such great authority, owing to the desire which each party had, one to get rid of consular rank and the other to get rid of the tribunate. When they had been appointed and it seemed to the plebs that Appius had become a demagogue and was out to down the nobility, the populace turned to him and gave him its support. But when a people is induced to make the mistake of holding someone in high esteem because he is down on those whom they hold in detestation, and that someone has his wits about him, it will always happen that a tyranny will arise in that city. For he will wait until, with the support of the populace, he has got rid of the nobility, and will not begin to oppress the people until he has got rid of it, by which time the populace will have come to realize that it is a slave and will have no way of escape.

This method has always been adopted by those who have established tyrannies in republics; and, if Appius had kept to it, his tyranny would have had a longer lease of life and would not have collapsed so soon. But he did just the opposite, and could not have behaved more unwisely. For in order to maintain his tyranny he made enemies of those who had given it to him and were able to maintain him in it, and enemies of those who had not been ready to give it to him and who would not have been able to maintain him in it. In this way he lost those who had been his friends, and tried to make friends with those who could not be his friends. For though nobles desire to tyrannize, that part of the nobility which finds itself left out in a tyrannical regime, is always the tyrant’s enemy. Nor can he win them all over, for so great is the ambition and the avarice with which they are imbued, that no tyrant can have enough riches and enough honours to satisfy all. Hence Appius in deserting the populace and courting the nobles made a very obvious mistake, alike for the reasons given above and because an attempt to hold anything by sheer force postulates that he who uses force be more powerful than those upon whom force is used.

It follows that those who have the public as a whole for their friends and the great ones for their enemies are the more secure, in that their violence is backed by a greater force than it is in the case of those who have the populace for an enemy and the nobility for a friend.27 For, if the people be friendly, internal forces suffice for their preservation, as they sufficed in the case of Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, when the whole of Greece and the Roman people attacked him; for Nabis, having made sure of the few nobles, and having the people as his friend, with their help defended himself, which he would not have been able to do had they been enemies. But in the alternative case in which one has but few friends at home, internal forces do not suffice, and one has to seek outside help. This has to be of three kinds: first, foreign satellites to protect your person; secondly, the arming of the countryside to do what should be done by the plebs; and, thirdly, a defensive alliance with powerful neighbours. He who adopts these precautions and does it well, even if his people are hostile, should in some fashion be able to look after himself. But Appius could not manage to make sure of the countryside, for the countryside was the same thing as Rome; and he didn’t know what to do, so that he was done for from the very start. The senate and the people also made a very great mistake in appointing the Decemviri, for, in spite of what has been said earlier in the discourse which dealt with dictators, to the effect that self-appointed magistrates, not those appointed by the people, are prejudicial to liberty, the people should, none the less, in appointing magistrates, create them so that they hesitate to turn to evil ways. And, whereas they should have appointed guardians to see that they behaved properly, the Romans took the guardians away, for they made the Decemvirate the sole magistracy in Rome, and annulled all others, owing, as we have said above, to the excessive desire of the senate to get rid of tribunes and of the plebs to get rid of consuls, a desire so strong that it blinded them, and caused them to cooperate in the disorderly procedure. For men, as king Ferdinand used to say, resemble certain little birds of prey in whom so strong is the desire to catch the prey which nature incites them to pursue, that they do not notice another and a greater bird of prey which hovers over them ready to pounce and kill. This discourse should make plain, as I promised at the start, the mistake the Roman people made in their endeavour to save their freedom, and the mistakes that Appius made in his endeavour to set up a tyranny.