# 49. A Republic that would preserve its Freedom, ought daily to make Fresh Provisions to this End, and what Quintus Fabius did to earn for himself the title Maximus73

As we have remarked several times, in every large city there inevitably occur unfortunate incidents which call for the physician, and the more important the incidents the wiser should be the physician one looks for. If there was any city in which such incidents occurred, it was in Rome, where they were both curious and unexpected. For instance, on one occasion all the ladies of Rome had conspired to kill their husbands. Quite a number were found actually to have been poisoned, and for quite a number poison had been prepared.

Another instance was the conspiracy of the Bacchanals, which was discovered during the Macedonian war. In it so many thousands of men and women were involved that, if it had not been discovered, or if it had not actually been the custom in Rome to punish multitudes when they erred, it would have spelt danger for the city. For even if the greatness of that republic and its power of administration were not betokened in a thousand other ways, it is to be seen in the nature of the punishment inflicted on the evil-doer. Thus Rome did not hesitate to pronounce judicial sentence of death on a whole legion at a time, or on a city; not yet to banish eight or ten thousand men and to impose on them extraordinary conditions, which had to be observed not by one man alone but by so many; as she did in the case of the soldiers who had fought unsuccessfully at Cannae, and who were banished to Sicily, where they were forbidden to reside in towns and had to eat standing up.

But of all her administrative acts the most terrible was the practice of ‘decimating’ an army, i.e. of choosing by lot every tenth man, and putting him to death. No more terrifying punishment than this could possibly be devised for the purpose of chastising a multitude. For when a great number of people have done wrong, and it is not clear who is responsible, it is impossible to punish them all, since there are too many of them; and to punish some, and leave others unpunished, would be unfair to those who are punished, and the unpunished would take heart and do wrong at some other time. But by killing the tenth part, chosen by lot, when all are guilty, he who is punished bewails his lot, and he who is not punished is afraid to do wrong lest on some other occasion the lot should not spare him.

The poisoners and the Bacchanals, therefore, were punished for their sins as they deserved. And, although maladies of this kind do great harm to a republic, they are not fatal, for there is generally time to correct them. But there is no time as a rule when they affect the state, and, unless some wise man corrects them, the city is ruined.

Owing to the generous way in which the Romans used to grant citizenship to foreigners, there came to be in Rome such a cosmopolitan crowd of newcomers that they began to play an important part in the voting, with the result that the government began to change and to depart from those ways and from those men it had been accustomed to follow. Quintus Fabius, when he was censor, noticing this, allocated this cosmopolitan collection of newcomers to whose presence the trouble was due, to four ‘tribes’, and by restricting in this way the scope of their activities, prevented them from corrupting all Rome. Thus, having taken due cognizance of the trouble, Fabius, without altering the constitutions, applied an appropriate remedy and so acceptable was this to that city that he came deservedly to be called ‘Maximus’.