for his genius and virtue, Lucius
Brutus, dashed from his fellow-citizens this unjust yoke of odious
servitude; and though he was but a private man, he sustained the
government of the entire Commonwealth, and was the first that taught
the people in this State that no one was a private man when the
preservation of our liberties was concerned. Beneath his authority and
command our city rose against tyranny, and, stirred by the recent grief
of the father and relatives of Lucretia, and with the recollections of
Tarquin's haughtiness, and the numberless crimes of himself and his
sons, they pronounced sentence of banishment against him and his
children, and the whole race of the Tarquins.

XXVI. Do you not observe, then, how the king sometimes degenerates into
the despot, and how, by the fault of one individual, a form of
government originally good is abused to the worst of purposes? Here is
a specimen of that despot over the people whom the Greeks denominate a
tyrant. For, according to them, a king is he who, like a father,
consults the interests of his people, and who preserves those whom he
is set over in the very best condition of life. This indeed is, as I
have said, an excellent form of government, yet still liable, and, as
it were, inclined, to a pernicious abuse. For as soon as a king assumes
an unjust and despotic power, he instantly becomes a tyrant, than which
nothing baser or fouler, than which no imaginable animal can be more
detestable to gods or men; for though in form a man, he surpasses the
most savage monsters in ferocious cruelty. For who can justly call him
a human being, who admits not between himself and his
fellow-countrymen, between himself and the whole human race, any
communication of justice, any association of kindness? But we shall
find some fitter occasion of speaking of the evils of tyranny when the
subject itself prompts us to declare against them who, even in a state
already liberated, have affected these despotic insolencies.

XXVII. Such is the first origin and rise of a tyrant. For this was the
name by which the Greeks choose to designate an unjust king; and by the
title king our Romans universally understand every man who exercises
over the people a perpetual and undivided domination. Thus Spurius
Cassius, and Marcus Manlius, and Spurius Maelius, are said to have
wished to seize upon the kingly power, and lately [Tiberius Gracchus
incurred the same accusation].[324] * * *

XXVIII. * * *