# CHAPTER 3 — How Necessary It Is to Kill the Sons of Brutus in Order to Maintain a Newly Acquired Liberty

No less necessary than useful was Brutus’ severity in maintaining in Rome the liberty that he had acquired there, which is an example quite rare in all of recorded history: to see a father sit as judge and not only condemn his sons to death but to be present at their execution. Those who read ancient histories will always recognize that after the transformation of the state either from a republic into a tyranny or from a tyranny into a republic, a memorable action must be taken against the enemies of present circumstances. Anyone who creates a tyranny without killing Brutus, and anyone who creates a free government and does not kill the sons of Brutus, will not sustain himself for long. Since this subject has been discussed at length above, * I shall refer to what was said at that time; I shall add only one example to the argument which, in our own times and in our own native city, has been worthy of note. This is the example of Piero Soderini, who thought that he might overcome with his patience and goodness the desire of Brutus’ sons to return under a new government, and who deceived himself in this matter. * Although Soderini was a prudent man who recognized the necessity of doing this, and even though chance and the ambition of those who stood against him gave him the opportunity to defeat them, none the less, he never made up his mind to do so, because, besides believing that he could dissolve evil humours with his patience and kindness, and, with rewards for some of them, end part of their hostility toward him, he thought (and many times assured his friends of this) that in order to confront his opposition boldly and to strike down his adversaries, he would need to seize extraordinary authority and, by means of the laws, destroy equality among the citizens. Such a thing, even though he had not employed it later on in a tyrannical fashion, would have so terrified all the citizens that after it they would never have again agreed, after his death, to elect another standard-bearer for life, an institution he believed it would be good to strengthen and to maintain. His fear for this was wise and good; none the less, one must never allow an evil to continue on for the sake of a good, when that good can easily be destroyed by that evil. Since his undertakings and his intentions would be judged by their results, he should have believed that when fortune and life were in his company, he could have convinced anyone that what he had done was for the well-being of his native city and not because of his own ambition; and he could have settled things in such a way that his successor could not have done for a wicked reason what he had done for a good one. But he was deceived in the first opinion, failing to realize that wickedness is not subdued by time nor appeased by any gift. Thus, for not knowing how to be like Brutus, he lost, along with his native city, both the government and his reputation. And just as it is difficult to save a free state, so it is difficult to save a kingdom, as we shall show in the following chapter.