this nature, was Lycurgus, who so framed the laws of Sparta as to assign
their proper functions to kings, nobles, and commons; and in this way
established a government, which, to his great glory and to the peace and
tranquility of his country, lasted for more than eight hundred years.
The contrary, however, happened in the case of Solon; who by the turn he
gave to the institutions of Athens, created there a purely democratic
government, of such brief duration, that I himself lived to witness the
beginning of the despotism of Pisistratus. And although, forty years
later, the heirs of Pisistratus were driven out, and Athens recovered
her freedom, nevertheless because she reverted to the same form
government as had been established by Solon, she could maintain it for
only a hundred years more; for though to preserve it, many ordinances
were passed for repressing the ambition of the great and the turbulence
of the people, against which Solon had not provided, still, since
neither the monarchic nor the aristocratic element was given a place in
her constitution, Athens, as compared with Sparta, had but a short life.

But let us now turn to Rome, which city, although she had no Lycurgus to
give her from the first such a constitution as would preserve her long
in freedom, through a series of accidents, caused by the contests
between the commons and the senate, obtained by chance what the
foresight of her founders failed to provide. So that Fortune, if she
bestowed not her first favours on Rome, bestowed her second; because,
although the original institutions of this city were defective, still
they lay not outside the true path which could bring them to perfection.
For Romulus and the other kings made many and good laws, and such as
were not incompatible with freedom; but because they sought to found a
kingdom and not a commonwealth, when the city became free many things
were found wanting which in the interest of liberty it was necessary to
supply, since these kings had not supplied them. And although the
kings of Rome lost their sovereignty, in the manner and for the causes
mentioned above, nevertheless those who drove them out, by at once
creating two consuls to take their place, preserved in Rome the regal
authority while banishing from it the regal throne, so that as both
senate and consuls were included in that republic, it in fact possessed
two of the elements above enumerated, to wit, the monarchic and the
aristocratic.