rness of the nobles to
govern. For when they cannot agree to pass some measure favourable to
freedom, one faction or the other sets itself to support some one man,
and a tyranny at once springs up. Both parties in Rome consented to the
creation of the decemvirs, and to their exercising unrestricted powers,
from the desire which the one had to put an end to the consular name,
and the other to abolish the authority of the tribunes. When, on the
appointment of the decemvirate, it seemed to the commons that Appius had
become favourable to their cause, and was ready to attack the nobles,
they inclined to support him. But when a people is led to commit this
error of lending its support to some one man, in order that he may
attack those whom it holds in hatred, if he only be prudent he will
inevitably become the tyrant of that city. For he will wait until, with
the support of the people, he can deal a fatal blow to the nobles, and
will never set himself to oppress the people until the nobles have
been rooted out. But when that time comes, the people, although they
recognize their servitude, will have none to whom they can turn for
help.

Had this method, which has been followed by all who have successfully
established tyrannies in republics, been followed by Appius, his power
would have been more stable and lasting; whereas, taking the directly
opposite course, he could not have acted more unwisely than he did. For
in his eagerness to grasp the tyranny, he made himself obnoxious to
those who were in fact conferring it, and who could have maintained him
in it; and he destroyed those who were his friends, while he sought
friendship from those from whom he could not have it. For although it be
the desire of the nobles to tyrannize, that section of them which finds
itself outside the tyranny is always hostile to the tyrant, who can
never succeed in gaining over the entire body of the nobles by reason of
their greed and ambition; for no tyrant can ever have honours or wealth
enough to satisfy them all.

In abandoning the people, therefore, and siding with the nobles, Appius
committed a manifest mistake, as well for the reasons above given,
as because to hold a thing by force, he who uses force must needs be
stronger than he against whom it is used. Whence it happens that those
tyrants who have the mass of the people for their friends and the nobles
for their enemies, are more secure than those who have the people for
their enemie