# 28. What made the Romans less ungrateful to their Citizens than were the Athenians?

Whoever reads of the doings of republics will find in all of them some sort of ingratitude in the way in which they deal with their citizens, but in Rome will find less than in Athens, and perhaps than in any other republic. If one inquires how this comes about in the case of Rome and Athens, I believe that it was due to Rome’s having less ground for mistrusting her citizens than had Athens. For in Rome one sees that from the expulsion of the kings to the time of Sulla and Marius, she was never deprived of liberty by any of her citizens so that in her case there was no great reason to be suspicious of them, and, in consequence, rashly to give them offence.

The contrary was noticeably the case in Athens, for it was deprived of liberty by Pisistratus during its most flourishing period owing to its mistaken notion of what was good for it. Thus, when it again became free, mindful of the injuries done to it and of its past servitude, it very quickly became vengeful, not only when its citizens made mistakes, but even the semblance of mistakes. Hence the banishment and execution of so many of its best citizens. Hence the institution of ostracism and other forms of violence used at various times in that city against its upper class. Quite rightly do writers on civic government say that peoples bite more savagely when they have just recovered their liberty than when they have had it for some time.

In view, therefore, of what has been said, one can neither blame Athens nor praise Rome for what happened, but should ascribe it simply to necessity, a necessity that was brought about in these cities by events which differed in kind. For if one looks into things closely, one will see that, if Rome had been deprived of her liberty as Athens was, she would not have shown more respect for her citizens than did Athens. This becomes highly probable if we bear in mind what occurred, after the expulsion of the kings, in the case of Collatinus and Publius Valerius; of whom the first, although he was one of those who had helped to liberate Rome, was banished simply because he bore the name of Tarquin, while the second narrowly escaped being made an exile merely because he became suspect on account of a house he had built on the Caelian hill. The mistrust and the severity which Rome displayed against these two men leads one to think that Rome would have shown the same ingratitude as Athens, had she, like Athens, in her early days and before she grew, been injured by her own citizens. That there may be no need to return to this question of ingratitude, I shall make such further remarks as are necessary in the next chapter.