Ab Urbe Condita, Book 2 Titus Livius

1.Henceforward I am to treat of the affairs, civil and military, of a free people, for such the Romans were now become; of annual magistrates and the authority of the laws exalted above that of men. What greatly enhanced the public joy on having attained to this state of freedom, was, the haughty insolence of the late king: for the former kings governed in such a manner, that all of them, in succession, might deservedly be reckoned as founders of the several parts at least, of the city, which they added to it, to accommodate the great numbers of inhabitants, whom they themselves introduced. Nor can it be doubted, that the same Brutus, who justly merited so great glory, for having expelled that haughty king, would have hurt the public interest most materially, had he, through an over hasty zeal for liberty, wrested the government from any one of the former princes. For what must have been the consequence, if that rabble of shepherds and vagabonds, fugitives from their own countries, having, under the sanction of an inviolable asylum, obtained liberty, or at least impunity; and uncontrolled by dread of kingly power, had once been set in commotion by tribunitian storms, and had, in a city, where they were strangers, engaged in contests with the Patricians, before the pledges of wives and children, and an affection for the soil itself, which in length of time is acquired from habit, had united their minds in social concord? The state, as yet but a tender shoot, had, in that case, been torn to pieces by discord; whereas the tranquil moderation of the then government cherished it, and, by due nourishment, brought it forward to such a condition, that its powers being ripened, it was capable of producing the glorious fruit of liberty. The origin of liberty is to be dated from that period, rather on account of the consular government being limited to one year, than of any diminution made of the power which had been possessed by the kings. The first consuls enjoyed all their privileges, and all their ensigns of authority; in this respect, only, care was taken, not to double the objects of terror by giving the fasces to both the consuls. Brutus, with the consent of his colleague, was first honoured with the fasces, and the zeal which he had shown as the champion of liberty in rescuing it from oppression, was not greater than that which he afterwards displayed in the character of its guardian. First of all, while the people were in raptures at their new acquisition of freedom, lest they might afterwards be perverted by the importunities or presents of the princes, he bound them by an oath, that they would never suffer any man to assume the authority of king at Rome. Next, in order that the fullness of their body might give the greater weight to the senate, he filled up the number of the senators, which had been diminished by the kings murders, to the amount of three hundred, electing into that body the principal men of equestrian rank; and hence the practice is said to have taken its rise of summoning to the senate those who are fathers, and those who are conscripti; for they called those who were elected into this new senate conscripti. This had a wonderful effect towards producing concord in the state, and in attaching the affection of the commons to the patricians.