CHAPTER XLIX

A REPUBLIC WANTING TO MAINTAIN ITSELF FREE HAS SOME NEED OF NEW PRECAUTIONS, AND IT WAS BY SUCH METHODS THAT Q. FABIUS WAS CALLED MAXIMUS

Of necessity (as we mentioned other times) it happens that in a great City incidents arise every day which have need of a doctor, and according as they are more important, a wiser doctor must be found. And if such strange and unforeseen incidents ever arose in such a City, they arose in Rome; as was that where it seemed that all the Roman women had conspired against their husbands to kill them, so that many were found who had [actually] poisoned them, and many who had prepared the poison to poison them; and as also was the conspiracy of the Bacchanals which was discovered at the time of the Macedonian war, where many thousands of men and women were implicated; and if it had not been discovered, it would have been dangerous for that City, and if the Romans had not been accustomed to punish the great number of guilty men. For, if the greatness of this Republic and its power of execution had not been seen from infinite other signs, it is seen from the kind of penalty imposed on those who erred. It did not hesitate through a judicial decision to put to death an entire legion at one time, or [to destroy] an entire City, and to exile eight or ten thousand men with such extraordinary conditions as could be observed, not by one man alone, but by many; as happened to those soldiers who fought unhappily at Cannae, who it exiled in Sicily, and imposing on them that they not live in towns and should eat standing. But the most terrible of all other executions was the decimation of the army, where by lot, one out of ten in the army was put to death. Nor in punishing a multitude could a more frightening punishment than this be found, for when a multitude errs, and where the author is not certain, everyone cannot be punished because they are too many: to punish a part and leave a part unpunished, would be wrong to those who would be punished, and the unpunished would have a mind to en another time. But to put to death part by lot when all merited it, those who are to be punished will complain of their lot, those who are not punished fear that another time the lot might fall to them, and will guard themselves from error. The Poisoners and the Bacchanals, therefore, were punished according as their crimes merited.

And although these maladies in a Republic have a bad effect, they are not fatal, for there is always time to correct them; but there is no time for those that affect the State, which, if they are not corrected by a prudent man, ruin the City. Because of the liberality which the Romans showed in giving their civil privileges to foreigners, many new people sprung up in Rome, and these begun to have a part in the elections; so that the government began to change and depart from those institutions and principles of those men who had been accustomed to direct it. When Quintus Fabius, who was Censor, became aware of this, he put all the new people, from whom this disorder derived, into four Tribes, so that they should be unable (reduced to such small a space) to corrupt all Rome. This was well recognized by Fabius, and put into effect a suitable remedy, which without change, was so well accepted by the Society [Republic], that he merited being called Maximus.