# CHAPTER 8 — Anyone Wishing to Alter a Republic Must Consider Its Basic Material

It has been discussed above how a wicked citizen cannot do evil in a republic that is not corrupted, and that conclusion is strengthened, beyond the reasons that were then set forth, with the examples of Spurius Cassius * and Manlius Capitolinus. * Being an ambitious man, this Spurius wanted to seize extraordinary authority in Rome and to gain the support of the plebeians by doing them many favours (such as dividing among them the lands the Romans had taken from the Hernici), and his ambition was exposed by the city fathers, who brought it so clearly under suspicion that, when Spurius spoke to the people and offered to give them the money that had been obtained from the grain imported by the state from Sicily, they absolutely refused, in the belief that Spurius was trying to give them the price of their liberty. But if that people had been corrupt, they would not have refused such a price, and they would have opened up the path to tyranny that they closed off to him. A much more important example of this is Manlius Capitolinus, for his case shows how great strength of mind and body and how many good works done for the benefit of one’s own city can be later cancelled out by an evil passion to rule; it is evident that this desire arose in Manlius because of the envy he felt at the honours bestowed upon Camillus, and his mind became so blinded that, failing to consider the city’s way of life, or to examine its basic material, which was not yet receptive to a wicked form of government, he began to create disturbances in Rome against the senate and against the laws of the city. This event reveals the perfection of that city and the goodness of its social fabric, for in his case, no one from the nobility, even though they were extremely fierce supporters of one another, did anything to assist him; none of his relatives did anything on his behalf: for other accused men they usually appeared in mourning, dressed in black and full of sorrow in order to seek compassion for the accused, but with Manlius not one of them was seen. The tribunes of the plebeians, who always used to encourage matters that seemed likely to result in the people’s benefit and who pushed them forward all the more when they were directed against the nobility, in this case united with the nobles to suppress a common plague. The people of Rome, extremely eager for their own gain and lovers of policies that opposed the nobility, did Manlius many favours, but nevertheless, when the tribunes summoned him and submitted his case to the judgement of the people, that people, transformed from defender to judge, without any hesitation condemned him to death. For this reason, I do not believe that there is an example in Livy’s history more apt to demonstrate the goodness of all the institutions of that republic than this one, seeing that no one in that city made a move to defend a citizen full of exceptional abilities, who had publicly and privately done many praiseworthy deeds. For, love of their native city was stronger than anything else in all of the people, and they gave more consideration to the present dangers for which he was responsible than to his past merits, to the extent that with his death, they set themselves free. And Livy declares: ‘Such was the end of a man who would have been memorable had he not been born in a free state.’ *

In relation to this, two things are to be considered: the first is that different methods of seeking glory have to be used in a corrupted city than in one still living according to the rule of law; and the second (which is almost the same as the first) is that, in their conduct and even more in their great actions, men ought to consider the times and adapt to them.

Those who, through bad choices or by natural inclination, are out of tune with the times live unhappy lives in most cases and their actions have a bad outcome; the opposite happens to those who are in harmony with the times. And without any doubt, based upon the previously cited words of the historian, it can be concluded that if Manlius had been born in the times of Marius or of Sulla, when the social fabric was already corrupted, and upon which he would have been able to imprint the form of his ambition, he would have enjoyed the same results and successes as Marius and Sulla and the others who after them aspired to tyrannical power. Likewise, had Sulla and Marius lived in the times of Manlius, they would have been crushed during their first undertakings. A man, with his methods and his wicked actions, can easily begin to corrupt the people of a city, but it is impossible for him in one lifetime to corrupt the city to such an extent that he can derive any benefit from it; and even if it were possible for him to do so, given the length of time, it would be impossible due to the way in which men conduct themselves, since they are impatient and cannot long hold off their desires. Eventually, they deceive themselves in their affairs and especially in those that they desire above all else, so that either for a lack of patience or through deceiving themselves, they will undertake an enterprise at odds with the times and will end up very badly. It is necessary, then, in order to seize authority in a republic and imprint an evil form upon it, to find that the social fabric has broken down over time, and that little by little and from generation to generation, it has been thrown into disorder; this will come about by necessity, as was discussed above, * when it is not often renewed by good examples or by new laws to bring it back to its beginnings. Thus, Manlius would have been a rare and memorable man had he been born in a corrupt city. Citizens who carry out some undertaking in republics either in favour of liberty or of tyranny should, then, consider the basic material of their society and should judge by that the difficulty of their undertakings, because it is as difficult and as dangerous to try to liberate a people that wishes to live in slavery as it is to try to enslave a people that wishes to live in freedom. And because it was said above that men in their activities must consider the condition of the times and proceed accordingly, we shall speak at length about this in the following chapter.