# CHAPTER 40 — The Creation of the Decemvirate in Rome and What Is Noteworthy About It; Including, Among Many Other Matters, the Consideration of How the Same Circumstances May Either Save or Destroy a Republic

Since I wish to discuss in detail the circumstances that arose in Rome with the creation of the decemvirate, it does not seem superfluous to recount, first, all the similar creations that followed and, then, to discuss those elements that are worthy of note in these actions, which are numerous and of great significance, both for those who wish to maintain a free republic and for those who are planning to take one over. In such a discussion we shall observe the many errors committed by the senate and by the plebeians that were detrimental to liberty, as well as the many errors committed by Appius, leader of the decemvirate, that were detrimental to the tyranny he had planned to establish in Rome.

After the many quarrels and disputes that occurred between the people and the nobility, in order to establish new laws in Rome which would strongly reinforce the liberty of that government, they both agreed to send Spurius Postumius with two other citizens to Athens for copies of the laws that Solon gave to that city in order that they might base Roman laws upon them. * After they had gone and returned, the men who were to examine and decide on these laws were then chosen, and they appointed ten citizens for the period of a year, among whom was Appius Claudius, a shrewd but restless man. * Because these men were able to create such laws without any constraints, all the other magistrates of Rome, and in particular the tribunes and the consuls, were eliminated, as was the right of appeal to the people, with the result that this magistracy came to be the absolute ruler of Rome. Through the favour Appius gained with the plebeians, all the authority of his other associates came to be concentrated in his hands, for he had made himself so popular through his behaviour that it seemed amazing for him so quickly to have acquired a new character and a new talent, having previously been considered a cruel persecutor of the plebeians.

These decemvirs governed without resorting to tyrannical methods, never keeping more than twelve lictors who marched before the man they had chosen as their leader. * Although they enjoyed absolute authority, nevertheless, when they had to punish a Roman citizen for homicide they would summon him forth to appear before the people and had the people judge him. They wrote their laws on ten tablets, and before confirming them they placed them on public view, so that everyone could read and discuss them, and so that they would know if some defect were found in them, in order to amend them before they were confirmed. Regarding these tablets, Appius had a rumour spread throughout Rome that if to these ten tablets another two were added, they would be complete, and this opinion gave the people an opportunity to reappoint the decemvirs for another year; they agreed to do this willingly, whether because the consuls would not be reappointed or because they thought they could do without tribunes, given the fact that they were acting as judges in trials, as was said above. After they had made the decision to reappoint the decemvirs, all of the nobility, therefore, made an effort to obtain this office, and among the foremost was Appius, and he showed such humanity toward the plebeians in asking for support that he began to arouse the suspicions of his associates: ‘such excessive affability to inferiors could hardly be without some ulterior motive.’ * Hesitant to oppose him directly, they resolved to do so with cunning, and although he was the youngest of them all, they gave him the power of proposing future decemvirs to the people, believing he would observe the custom that others had observed by not nominating himself, since in Rome this was considered an unthinkable and disreputable practice. ‘He then proceeded to turn his disability to his own advantage’, and he named himself among the first, to the amazement and displeasure of all the nobles: he then nominated nine other men to suit himself. This new reappointment, made for another year, began to show the people and the nobility how they had erred. Immediately ‘Appius threw off his mask’ and began to show his inborn arrogance, and in a few days time he passed his own habits on to his associates. And in order to terrify the people and the senate, instead of twelve lictors he appointed 120.

Both sides were equally afraid for several days, but the decemvirs then began to engage in discussions with the senate and to oppress the plebeians, and if anyone who was treated badly by one of the decemvirs made an appeal to another, he was treated worse in the appeal than in the original sentence. Thus, once the plebeians had recognized their mistake, full of distress, they began to look to the nobles, ‘hoping to catch some breath of liberty even from their one-time enemies and dreaded masters, by terror of whose tyranny they had brought the country to its present pass’. This distress of theirs was pleasing to the nobility, ‘till in utter desperation they came to wish the old days back again, with two consuls’. The days that marked the end of the year arrived: the two tablets of laws were drawn up but not made public. In this way the decemvirs took the opportunity of continuing their magistracy, and they began to hold on to the government with violence and to make themselves some supporters out of the young nobles, to whom they gave the property of those they condemned: ‘with such gifts the young men were corrupted, preferring as they did the licence granted them to liberty for all.’ * At this time, it happened that the Sabines and the Volscians * began to wage war against the Romans, and in their fear the decemvirs began to recognize the weakness of their situation, because without the senate they could not prepare for war, and they thought they would lose the state by calling the senate into session. Driven by necessity, however, they chose this second alternative, and once the senators assembled many of them, in particular Valerius and Horatius, * spoke out against the arrogance of the decemvirs; and their authority would have been completely extinguished had the senate, out of animosity towards the plebeians, not wished to demonstrate its own authority, believing that if the decemvirs renounced their authority voluntarily, it might happen that the tribunes of the plebeians would not be reappointed. They decided, therefore, upon going to war; two armies set out, led by some of these same decemvirs; Appius remained to govern the city. And so, it happened that he fell in love with Virginia, and that her father, Virginius, discovering that he wished to take her by force, killed her in order to free her; whence followed disturbances in Rome and inside the armies: the armies joined together with the remainder of the Roman plebeians and they marched to the Mons Sacer, * where they remained until the decemvirs relinquished their magistracy and the tribunes and the consuls were appointed, and Rome was restored to the form of its ancient liberty.

It is therefore to be noted from this text that, in the first place, the disadvantage involved in creating this tyranny arose in Rome from the same causes that give rise to most tyrannies in cities: that is, from an excessive desire on the part of the people to be free, and from an excessive desire on the part of the nobles to rule; and when they do not agree to establish a law that favours liberty but, instead, one of the parties rushes to support a single man, it is then that tyranny quickly arises. The people and the nobles of Rome agreed to establish the decemvirs and to establish them with so much authority on account of the desires of each faction—one hoped to abolish the office of consul and the other to abolish the tribunate. Once the decemvirs were established, the people, believing Appius had become their supporter and would oppress the nobility, turned to support him. When a people is led to commit the error of respecting a man because he might oppose those they despise, and when this man is shrewd, it will always happen that he will become tyrant of that city, because he will wait for the support of the people to destroy the nobility, and he will never turn to oppress the people before he has destroyed it: at the point where the people realize that they have been enslaved, they will have nowhere to take refuge. All those who have founded tyrannies in republics have employed this method. If Appius had employed this method, this tyranny of his would have had a longer life, and it would not have so quickly come to an end, but he did exactly the opposite. Nor could he have acted more imprudently, for in order to maintain his tyranny he made himself the enemy of those who had given it to him and who could have saved it for him, as well as the friend of those who had not joined forces to give it to him and who would not have been able to save it for him; and he lost those who were his friends while he sought to have as his friends those who could not become his friends. Whereas the nobles may wish to play the tyrant, the part of the nobility excluded from the tyranny is always unfriendly to the tyrant: the tyrant can never win them over completely because of their great ambition and greed, and the tyrant can never possess enough wealth or honours to satisfy them all. And so, when Appius abandoned the people and drew closer to the nobles he committed a very obvious error, for the reasons outlined above and also because in wishing to hold something by force, the one who uses coercion must be more powerful than the one who is being coerced. Whence it happens that those tyrants who have the masses as their friends and the nobles as their enemies are more secure, since their power is upheld by greater forces than the power of those who have the people as their enemy and the nobility as their friend. With this kind of support, internal forces are sufficient for survival, just as they sufficed for Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, * when all of Greece and the Roman people attacked him; once Nabis had assured himself of the support of a few nobles, having the people as his friend, he defended himself with the people’s support, something he could not have done had they been his enemy. In that other situation, since few friends remain within, internal forces are insufficient, and it is useful to seek them outside. And this assistance must be of three kinds: first, hiring foreign henchmen to serve as bodyguards; second, arming the countryside, which will assume the duties the plebeians would have performed; and third, allying yourself with powerful neighbours who will defend you. Anyone who follows these methods and observes them well, even if he has the people as his enemy, could save himself in one way or another. But Appius was not able to use this method of winning over the countryside, since the countryside and Rome were one and the same thing, and whatever he was capable of doing he did not know how to do, so that he came to ruin at his very beginning.

The senate and the people committed the greatest errors in creating the decemvirate, for although it was said above in the discourse treating the dictator that self-appointed magistrates and not those created by the people are harmful to liberty, the people must, nevertheless, in establishing magistrates, appoint these in such a way that they will hesitate before acting wickedly. Whereas the Romans should have put a safeguard in place in order to keep them good, they removed it, establishing the decemvirate as the sole magistracy in Rome and annulling all the others, as we stated above, because of the senate’s excessive desire to eliminate the tribunes and the plebeians’ to abolish the consuls; this excessive desire blinded them in such a way that they both contributed to this disorder. As King Ferdinand * used to say, men often act like certain minor birds of prey who have such a strong desire to pursue their prey, being prompted by nature to do so, that they do not hear another larger bird flying above them who is about to kill them. Through this discourse it is possible, therefore, as I proposed in the beginning, to recognize the error the Roman people committed in wishing to save their liberty and the errors Appius committed in wishing to establish a tyranny.