who, though invested with
magistracies, wish to be considered on an equality with private
individuals, and those private individuals who labor to abolish all
distinctions between their own class and the magistrates, are extolled
with acclamations and overwhelmed with honors, so that it inevitably
happens in a commonwealth thus revolutionized that liberalism abounds
in all directions, due authority is found wanting even in private
families, and misrule seems to extend even to the animals that witness
it. Then the father fears the son, and the son neglects the father. All
modesty is banished; they become far too liberal for that. No
difference is made between the citizen and the alien; the master dreads
and cajoles his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters. The
young men assume the gravity of sages, and sages must stoop to the
follies of children, lest they should be hated and oppressed by them.
The very slaves even are under but little restraint; wives boast the
same rights as their husbands; dogs, horses, and asses are emancipated
in this outrageous excess of freedom, and run about so violently that
they frighten the passengers from the road. At length the termination
of all this infinite licentiousness is, that the minds of the citizens
become so fastidious and effeminate, that when they observe even the
slightest exertion of authority they grow angry and seditious, and thus
the laws begin to be neglected, so that the people are absolutely
without any master at all.

Then Laelius said: You have very accurately rendered the opinions which
he expressed.

XLIV. _Scipio._ Now, to return to the argument of my discourse. It
appears that this extreme license, which is the only liberty in the
eyes of the vulgar, is, according to Plato, such that from it as a sort
of root tyrants naturally arise and spring up. For as the excessive
power of an aristocracy occasions the destruction of the nobles, so
this excessive liberalism of democracies brings after it the slavery of
the people. Thus we find in the weather, the soil, and the animal
constitution the most favorable conditions are sometimes suddenly
converted by their excess into the contrary, and this fact is
especially observable in political governments; and this excessive
liberty soon brings the people collectively and individually to an
excessive servitude. For, as I said, this extreme liberty easily
introduces the reign of tyranny, the severest of all unjust sl