Citation: 34 Cardozo L. Rev. 879 2012-2013

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"KEEP THE PUBLIC RICH, BUT THE CITIZENS POOR":ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INEQUALITY INCONSTITUTIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN

John P. McCormickt

Economic inequality is perhaps the greatest threat to the civicliberty that republics, ancient and modern, promise to citizens. Libertydepends first and foremost on political equality: every citizen ought toinfluence law and policy-making in a relatively equal way. At the veryleast, government ought to be responsive and accountable to all citizenson a fairly equal basis. 1 Yet the freedom so prevalent in republicsinvariably allows those citizens who accumulate greater materialresources (and in the long term, the cultural capital of family andpersonal reputation) to enjoy such advantages at the expense of lessprivileged citizens. Put simply, economic inequality inevitablyundermines political equality, and, hence, liberty itself.2 This fact oughtto be especially alarming today as socio-economic inequality risesprecipitously in contemporary democracies like the United States and inothers throughout the world.

Civic liberty permits wealthy citizens to bring their economicresources directly to bear on politics; various forms of clientelism andbribery are ubiquitous within all republican contexts. Marginally-legalinfluence-buying or favor-peddling, as well as blatantly illegal politicalcorruption, enables a republic's few, richest citizens to exert excessiveinfluence over the formulation of laws that are supposed to benefit themajority of citizens.3 Moreover, wealth enables certain citizens tocultivate greater reputation, a more distinctive appearance, and betterpublic speaking skills. Consequently, both audiences within ancient

t Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago; BA Queens College, CUNY (1988);MA CUNY Graduate Center/University of Chicago (1989-1990); Ph.D. University of Chicago(1995).

1 See CHARLES R. BEITZ, POLITICAL EQUALITY: AN ESSAY IN DEMOCRATIC THEORY (1989).

2 See LARRY M. BARTELS, UNEQUAL DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NEW

GILDED AGE (2010).3 See ROBERT A. DAHL, DEMOCRACY AND ITS CRITICS (1989).

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assemblies and voters within modern electoral contests have tended tobestow disproportionate favor on wealthy individuals.4

My remarks today sketch the attempts made by various ancientrepublics-specifically, Athens, Sparta, and Rome-to confront,constitutionally, the threat posed to liberty by economic inequality.Spoiler alert: none of these constitutions were remarkably successful atdefending civic liberty from the corrosive and corrupting influence ofeconomic inequality.5

Subsequently, I will turn to Niccol6 Machiavelli's analysis of theRoman Republic for clues that might tell us how ancient republicsperhaps ought to have better contained the corrupting influence ofwealth.6 In particular, I hope that Machiavelli's engagement with thecrisis associated with Rome's Agrarian laws will prompt us to thinkmore creatively about how to protect, in his words, "the free and civilway of life" from the "avarice and ambition of the few."7

How did ancient republics attempt to mitigate the threat posed toliberty by economic inequality? Democratic Athens established thefollowing informal truce between rich and poor citizens: the demoswould not "soak the rich" through democratic institutionalarrangements that favored the poor, so long as the wealthy did not usetheir vast economic resources and public prominence to compromisepolitical equality, or isonomia.8 As Demosthenes famously exclaimed:"[The elite] have great wealth... which no one keeps them fromenjoying; therefore they must not keep us ... from enjoying thesecurity... which is our common possession-the laws."9 The laws ofthe Athenian constitution politically empowered poor citizens in threeprimary ways:

1) a legislative assembly open to all citizens;2) executive offices distributed by lottery; and3) political courts comprised of large subsets of randomlyselected citizens.

In the Athenian assembly, the ekklesia, every citizen was entitled toinitiate and discuss law, ultimate decisions over which were decided bymajority vote. Furthermore, any citizen who was willing and able tostand for executive or judicial office could submit their name forinclusion in the political lotteries that appointed magistrates and jurors.

4 See BERNARD MANIN, THE PRINCIPLES OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT (1997).

5 See JEFFREY A. WINTERS, OLIGARCHY (2011).6 See NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, in OPERE

(Corrado Vivanti ed., Einaudi 1997) (1517).7 Id. bk. 1, ch. 40.8 See JOSIAH OBER, MASS AND ELITE IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS: RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND

THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE 74-75 (1991).9 Id. at 198 (quoting Demosthenes).

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When public funding subsidized these forms of politicalparticipation, Athenians distributed political power among a greaterproportion of its citizenry than any government in history. Of course,property qualifications, slavery, and the political exclusion of freewomen are unavoidable issues to consider in this context. Nevertheless,Athens, at its most democratic, empowered a greater number of the poorto participate in actual rule than any other political regime, before orsince.

The Athenian demos jealously guarded the border between socio-economic and political power-that is, between economic inequalityand political equality-through the large citizen juries and the practiceof ostracism. Former magistrates and, indeed, any citizen at all, could beindicted by any other citizen, and be tried before the large citizen juriesfor behavior deemed threatening to the democracy. Moreover, ifwealthy or prominent citizens were suspected of exerting excessiveinfluence in assembly, in the regime's few elected offices, or in anymanner whatsoever, the demos might ostracize them; effectively exilingsuch individuals for as long as a decade.

Aristocratic Sparta, by contrast, attempted to secure its own idealof civic liberty by substituting economic equality for political equality. oSparta's reputed founder, Lycurgus, established strict economic equalityat the outset, for which he compensated prominent families andindividuals with fairly insulated political authority. Although denyingthem traditional economic advantages, Lycurgus entrusted the city'saristocracy with preeminent political power. Sparta's two oldest, mostesteemed families shared joint rule in the Republic's dual monarchy.Other prominent families were granted dominance over the Republic'smost important political body, the senate. Moreover, the Republic'shighest magistrates, the ephors, were appointed, not through lottery, butthrough election in Sparta's popular assembly-which itself was muchweaker than popular assemblies in either Athens or Rome.

Lycurgus purportedly established economic equality bydistributing land equally among all citizens, by banning foreign trade,and by imposing strict sumptuary laws. Under such circumstances,Spartan citizens could plausibly claim that they were ruled, not by awealthy few, but by the most experienced and wisest among thecitizenry. This conclusion ought not appear as foreign to us as it mightfirst seem: after all, a powerful strand of modern republican politicalthought identifies true liberty, not with equal distribution of access toself-rule among citizens, but rather with rule by the best citizens.

10 See PAUL CARTLEDGE, THE SPARTANS: THE WORLD OF THE WARRIOR-HEROES OF

ANCIENT GREECE, FROM UTOPIA TO CRISIS AND COLLAPSE (2003).

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Modern republics, however, make no effort whatsoever to ensure thatthese "few best" are not, in fact, simply the rich or their clients."

Thus, while Athens was an economically inegalitarian politicaldemocracy, and Sparta an economically egalitarian political oligarchy,we might conclude that ancient Rome was a combination of both. TheRoman republic was both politically oligarchic and democratic; andwhile Roman society was economically inegalitarian in profound ways,Roman citizens enjoyed extensive-indeed, almost unprecedented-opportunities for upward socio-economic mobility.

Polybius famously depicted the Roman constitution as a compositeof parts affiliated with other, more "simple" regimes: the Roman's mixedregime contained a tamed monarchical power in its chief magistrates,the consuls; a contained aristocratic power in the Roman senate; and afairly constrained popular power in the tribunes of the plebs and thecitizen assemblies.12 When the political role of wealth is taken intoaccount, it is clear that Rome's richest, most prominent familiesdominated, at first formally and then informally, the consulship and thesenate.

Assemblies in which votes were weighted in favor of wealthiercitizens annually elected Rome's two consuls. The consuls, originallydrawn exclusively from the patrician class, were charged with thehighest administrative and military duties. The senate, ostensibly just adeliberative and advisory body, nevertheless enjoyed substantialinfluence over the Republic's fiscal and foreign policies. Senatorialmentoring of consuls, plus the prospect of former consuls joining thesenate, ensured that this body, comprised of the Republic's wealthiestcitizens, exercised exorbitant sway over the Republic's suprememagistrates.

Rome's armed poor, the plebeians, responded to the politicalmonopoly enjoyed by Rome's nobility in two ways: first, by instigatingthe establishment of the tribunate, a magistracy for which the verywealthiest citizens were ineligible; and second, by increasing theimportance of citizen assemblies governed by majority rule over those inwhich voting was weighted in favor of the wealthy.

The ten tribunes of the plebs, annually elected exclusively fromplebeian ranks, were charged with popular advocacy. As bearers of vetopower over most of the workings of Roman government, and as thechief agents of public indictments for political crimes, the tribunespossessed the means to block policy proposals and punish magistratesand prominent citizens for violating the liberty of the citizenry or forcorrupting the republic's civic life. Furthermore, over the course of the

1n see MAURIZIO VIROLI, REPUBLICANISM (2002).12 See POLYBIUS, THE RISE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (Ian Scott-Kilvert tras., 1979); see also

ANDREW LINTOTT, THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 16-17 (2002).

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republic's history, legislative and judicial power shifted from theoligarchically structured centuriate assembly to assemblies where thetribunes presided, where patricians were excluded, and/or where theycould be outvoted by a majority of poorer citizens.13

Thus, we might understand the Roman Republic to sit on a socio-political continuum somewhere between Athens and Sparta: somepolitical institutions directly empowered the wealthy, while othersdirectly empowered the poor. Moreover, upward socio-economicmobility, exemplified by the careers of notable "new men," allowedRomans to insist that their republic was not dominated by ahermetically-sealed wealthy caste of senatorial families.

As I mentioned at the outset, none of these republics' efforts toblock, mitigate, or forestall the corrosive influence of economicinequality upon civic liberty worked very well-or at least, they did notwork effectively for very long. Even though Athenians permitted thewealthy full enjoyment of their economic advantages, democraticAthens nevertheless proved particularly susceptible to oligarchic coups.The people's harsh political treatment of the wealthy, whether real ormerely perceived, motivated Athenian oligarchs to overthrow thedemocracy-although, usually on the pretext that the demos was guiltyof egregious political or military mismanagement.

When analyzing these coups, and what they say about the stabilityof Athenian democracy, it is very difficult to disaggregate two factors:on the one hand, the unprecedented pressure placed upon Athens by thePeloponesian War, and, on the other, the Athenian elites longstandingresentment toward the democracy that severely curtailed their politicalpower. I leave this issue to the experts to debate.

In any case, history has been quite kind to the enemies and thecritics of Athenian democracy. The vast majority of philosophical andhistorical accounts consistently deride the Athenian demos for unjustlyordering the execution of roughly half a dozen citizens: specifically andnotoriously, Socrates and the commanders of the battle of Arginusae.The Western Great Books tradition focuses far less extensively on thethousands of Athenian democrats murdered by the oligarchs, more orless in collusion with foreign enemies, during the city's two principaloligarchic coups in 411 and 404 B.C.E. 14

As for the Spartans, despite the severity of Lycurgus's proscriptionson wealth acquisition, economic inequality greatly expanded in theLacedaemonian republic. The royal and noble families, who were meantto enjoy only political authority, soon amassed fabulous wealth, withwhich they progressively marginalized and oppressed common Spartan

13 see FERGUS MILLAR, THE CROWD IN ROME IN THE LATE REPUBLIC (2002); FERGUS

MILLAR, THE ROMAN REPUBLIC IN POLITICAL THOUGHT (2002).14 See M.I. FINLEY, DEMOCRACY ANCIENT AND MODERN 93-94 (1973).

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citizens. In response, Agis, ineffectually, and Cleomenes, with somesuccess, attempted to reinstitute Lycurgus's laws. However, these reformefforts aimed at restoring economic equality resulted in violent, bloodyintra-elite conflict within the republic; conflict that arguably contributedto Sparta's military and political decline.

Indeed, as Michael Flower and Melissa Lane have suggested,Spartan laws aimed at achieving economic equality may have originatedwith Cleomenes himself, and may have been only mythically attributed,after the fact, to Lycurgus, in order to legitimate such policies.15 In anycase, the controversies and instability that emerged as a result of theirintroduction accentuate how difficult it is to peacefully legislateeconomic equality within republics.

In the Roman Republic, economic inequality, already quitepronounced, was wildly exacerbated by the expansion of Rome'sempire, with dire consequences for its citizens' liberty at home. AsRome's army spent ever greater periods of time farther away from thecity and, eventually, the Italian peninsula, its citizen soldiers becameincreasingly impoverished and its commanders increasingly powerful. Iwill discuss this critical trend in greater detail in a few moments.

To conclude this section of my remarks: for various reasons, theconstitutional arrangements of Athens, Sparta, and Rome unsuccessfullyprevented those republics' wealthiest citizens from corrupting civicliberty and from undermining the free status of their polities. Forfurther insight into and more penetrating analyses of these ancientconstitutions, I highly recommend the writings of the many scholarswho are with us today: especially, the participants on our wonderful firstpanel this morning.

I turn now to Machiavelli's analysis of economic inequality andcivic liberty in the Roman context. Machiavelli's account offersintriguing counterfactuals that might help us think more fruitfully aboutthe problem of wealth and freedom in republics more generally. Inparticular, I focus on Machiavelli's treatment of the Brothers Gracchus,Roman tribunes whose efforts to enact economic reforms representedthe last stand of Roman civic liberty in the face of oligarchic predationand corruption.

In the Discorsi, Machiavelli famously defies consensus amongcommentators on the Roman Republic: unlike his predecessors,Machiavelli attributes the flourishing of Rome's freedom and greatness

15 See Michael A. Flower, The Invention of Tradition in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta, in

SPARTA: BEYOND THE MIRAGE 191, 193-219 (Anton Powell & Stephen Hodkinson eds., 2002);

Melissa Lane, Founding as Legislating: The Figure of the Lawgiver in Plato's Republic, in

PROCEEDINGS OF THE IX SYMPOSIUM PLATONICUM (Feb. 7, 2011) (unpublished manuscript,

Univ. of Chi. Pol. Workshop., L. Brisson & N. Notomi eds.), available at http://ptw.uchicago.edu/Lanel l.pdf.

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to the tumults resulting from domestic conflicts between the wealthynobles and the common people. But he also concedes that class conflictultimately contributed to the ruin of Rome's free way of life after theGracchi attempted to institute redistributive economic reforms.16 TheAgrarian Laws, sponsored by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, limited theamount of public lands any citizen could hold, and redistributed to theplebeians public lands already held in custody by wealthy Romans. Inthe Discorsi, Machiavelli marks the reform efforts of these ill-fatedbrothers as a decisive moment in the history of the Republic.'1

On separate occasions, the Roman nobility infamously eliminatedeach of the brothers in a dramatically public fashion. In 133 B.C.E.,senators and their clients murdered Tiberius in the open air of theRepublic's civic space, after he successfully resisted their efforts to blockpassage of the laws and his reelection as tribune. A decade later, theydesecrated the body of his brother, Gaius, who had committed suicideafter his term as tribune failed to prevent a conservative rollback of hisbrother's agrarian and judicial reforms. Apparently taking these lessonsto heart, all future "reformers" would enter the Roman Forumaccompanied by armed legions.

It is worth noting that Machiavelli's description of Rome's declineafter these events invokes the "time of' the Gracchi, or the "scandals"and "contentions" that arose in response to their policies.18 Machiavelliattributes this decline neither to the brothers themselves, nor to thecontent of their land reform proposals. Actually, he concludes hisaccount by criticizing the brothers' prudence rather than theirintentions, and by validating the necessity of laws precisely like thosethey proposed and promulgated.19

In fact, Machiavelli argues that the cause of the Republic'scorruption and collapse was not the Agrarian Laws but rather the deeplyand increasingly inequitable circumstances to which the laws weremerely an inevitable and even necessary response. Machiavelli remarksexplicitly in this context, "well-ordered republics must keep the publicrich and citizens poor."20 This statement signals Machiavelli's preferencefor socio-economic conditions more egalitarian than those that emergedin his paradigmatically "perfect" republic, Rome.21

However, Machiavelli does remark, rather curiously, with respectto the Gracchan legislation: "there must have been a defect in this law."22

This "defect" seems to correspond with the time, the moment, when the

16 MACHIAVELLI, supra note 6, bk. 1, ch. 4.17 Id. bk. 1, ch. 37.18 See id. bk. 1, ch. 37, bk. 3, ch. 24.19 Id. bk. 1, ch. 37.20 Id.21 Id. bk. 1, ch. 3.22 Id. bk. 1, ch. 37.

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Agrarian Laws were ultimately promulgated: "Either [the legislation]was not enacted at the beginning so that it did not have to be addressedagain every day; or they delayed so much in making it because lookingback might be scandalous."23 In other words, agrarian legislation,although demanded by the plebeians early on in both Livy's andMachiavelli's accounts, was neither instituted at the start of the Republicnor, as a result, successfully preserved at some later point in time.

The fatal flaw therefore, according to Machiavelli, resides not in thelaws themselves, but in the fact that they were not instituted until it wastoo late for them to be passed without violent opposition, or too late tobe fully efficacious upon enactment. What, to Machiavelli's mind,accounts for the fact that the laws were promulgated only very late? Or,rather, who prevented the laws from being passed even though theywere discussed and proposed very early in the Republic's history?

There were good reasons for the plebeians to clamor for Agrarianlegislation from the earliest days of the Republic. As Livy reports, whileplebeian soldiers were in the field, senators and their clients foreclosedon their lands at home; consequently, the soldiers could no longer paytheir debts since they lacked yields from the farms they had leftuncultivated while defending the Republic. The senatorial class thenworked these lands with the cheap labor of slaves, such that increasinglyimpoverished and unemployed citizen-soldiers fell into debt bondageor, later, stopped having children who could repopulate the army.24

Moreover, the foreign territories that the citizen-soldiers conquered andthe riches that they yielded, which were supposed to become theproperty of all Romans, instead fell into the "custodial care" of Romannobles.

According to Machiavelli, the Roman nobility apparently refusedto recognize that the public good necessitated the limiting of economicinequality within the Republic.25 Moreover, he declares they wereangered at the prospect of losing new revenue sources, since agrarianreforms usually sought to distribute conquered lands among theplebeians, in actual practice rather than just in theory. Thus, inMachiavelli's account, the Senate began to send Roman armies "to thefarthest parts of Italy or outside of Italy" so that they might acquirelands that poor plebeians could not feasibly make profitable even if theywere to own them.26

23 Id.24 See generally 1-4 LIvY, HISTORY OF ROME, Books 1-10 (B.O. Foster trans., 1919-1926).

For a particularly relevant discussion, see id. 4.49, 4.51, 6.5, 6.35; cf 10 PLUTARCH, Tiberius andCaius Gracchus, in PLUTARCH's LIVES 145-241 (Bernadotte Perrin trans., 1921).

25 MACHIAVELLI, supra note 6, bk. 1, ch. 37.26 Id.

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These distant lands, in time, became an unlimited source ofrevenue for the few wealthiest Romans who could afford to maintainthem-a source of revenue that inevitably exacerbated the inequalitythat already existed at home between the nobles and the plebeians. Thisinequality, Machiavelli suggests, corrupted the functioning of Rome'sassemblies, as increasingly poor and vulnerable citizens stopped openlyquestioning, criticizing, and when necessary, actively opposinglegislation sponsored by increasingly rich, influential and self-interestedindividuals.27

Furthermore, the nobles' self-enriching policies made militarycommanders inordinately powerful. 28 According to Machiavelli,senatorially-driven acquisition of territory farther and farther afieldfrom Rome and Italy necessitated the prolongation of militarycommands, which undermined the Republic's "free way of life." TheSenate encouraged the creation of pro-consuls who required more thanthe customary, annual term of office to conquer and maintain thedistant lands that were the source of the nobility's steady streams ofrevenue.

This laid the groundwork for Caesarism: fewer captains receivedmilitary experience, hence necessitating reliance on a smaller andsmaller cadre of commanders. Moreover, the increasinglyproletarianized citizen-soldiers became economically dependent on thegenerals with whom they lived for years at a time away from the city.These circumstances generated the conditions for the civil wars thatwould destroy the Republic: warlords such as Marius and Sulla, Pompeyand Caesar, Antony and Octavian, would eventually confront each otherat the head of armies comprised of personal clients rather than Romancitizens.

Many interpreters suggest that Machiavelli understood the Romannobility to be driven primarily by a desire for glory or honor rather thanby the more base appetite for acquiring and preserving wealth.29 Yet,Machiavelli observes, when discussing the Agrarian Laws, that theRoman nobles, after protracted delays, "always yielded honors, offices tothe plebs without extraordinary scandals."3o However, when it came to"property," he declares quite explicitly that the nobility defended theirprivilege with the utmost "obstinance."31

Recall thqt this "property" the nobles considered their own wasactually won for Rome by the plebeians through the sweat and blood ofcombat. Moreover, this "obstinance" invoked by the Florentine is an

27 Id. bk. 1, ch. 18.28 Id. bk. 3, ch. 24.29 See, e.g., LEO STRAUSS, THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI 134, 169, 250 (1958).30 MACHIAVELLI, supra note 6, bk. 1, ch. 37.31 Id.

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explicit, if understated, reference to the butchery that the senatorsinflicted upon the Gracchi and their supporters in defense of economicinequality.

In short, Machiavelli places the blame squarely on the nobles forcausing the demise of the Republic: "so enormous is the ambition of thenobles that it soon brings a city to ruin if it is not beaten down byvarious ways and various modes."32 In other words, the nobles'aspirations are more damaging to a republic than that of the plebs, andthe latter need more than one means, such as the tribunate, to hold backthe insolence of the great. "If the contention over the Agrarian laws tookthree hundred years to make Rome servile, it would perhaps have beenled into servitude much sooner if the plebs had not always checked theambition of the nobles, both with this law and with its other appetites."33That is, in addition to the tribunate, the plebs were correct in seeking toreduce the nobility's material advantages through the Agrarian Laws,and by seeking to share in offices such as the consulship.34

But what exactly does Machiavelli mean when, as I mentionedpreviously, he expresses sympathy with the brothers' "intentions, if nottheir prudence?"35 He clearly does not besmirch the Gracchan cause.Therefore, he must reproach their methods. Machiavelli does notdenounce the Gracchi for pursuing redistributive policies, as such; heseems only to criticize them for their timing in reviving these laws.Machiavelli remarks: "To try to correct a disorder that has grown in arepublic through a law that looks very far back, is an ill-considered

policy."36This elusive statement seems to imply that retroactive law is

especially obnoxious to those it targets; one cannot expect to takeproperty away from those who have managed and benefited from it forsome time without provoking them into uncivil behavior. YetMachiavelli reports that the nobles were just as enraged by the law'sprohibition on their means of gaining more wealth in the future, as bythe law's redistributive impact on wealth that the senatorial orderalready controlled.

Perhaps Machiavelli had something else entirely in mind here:rather than reviving what he describes as a very old law, Machiavelliintimates that the Gracchi ought to have instituted a new law. That is,like lawgivers or founders such as Lycurgus, in order to make the publicrich and the citizens poor, they should have created their own law-onethat bore their own names. In order to do so without any compromise

32 Id. (emphasis added).33 Id.34 Id. bk. 1, ch. 60.35 Id. bk. 1, ch. 37.36 Id.

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of their political vision, the Gracchi, in all likelihood, would have beencompelled to intimidate, coerce or neutralize the most intransigentobstacle to their designs, namely, the Roman Senate.

Remember, the Gracchi merely pleaded with senators to acquiesceto their policies: they effectively asked the nobles for permission todistribute to the plebeians lands that enriched the nobles, and theyfollowed fairly strict procedural avenues in doing so. In response, theSenate liquidated the brothers. Again, Machiavelli insists that thenobility were willing to negotiate with the plebs a sharing of honors andoffices; but reforms aimed at economic equality require sternermeasures and more compelling leverage.

Perhaps, then, the "defect" in the Agrarian Laws that Machiavellimentions is actually the defect in the Gracchi's prudence that heexplicitly criticizes, if less than fully explains: they attempted to legislate,that is, to seek lawful compliance on the part of the nobility in a matterwhere straightforward compulsion is necessary. In The Prince,Machiavelli criticizes the Gracchi for failing to avail themselves of amilitarily-organized people.37 But in the Discorsi, he attributes theirdemise to the imprudent, that is, humane, course by which they pursueda domestic agenda against the nobles.

The two are not, of course, mutually exclusive. Machiavelli seemsto suggest that the Gracchi had neither the inclination to coerce theSenate, nor, even if they did, the command of armed citizens necessaryto do so.3 8 As tribunes, the Gracchi presided over the people collected intheir assemblies; but they lacked the formal, legal authority to commandthe people enrolled in legions. Machiavelli emphasizes on severaloccasions how such authority can be wielded effectively to eliminate anentire senate: most notably, by Agathocles the Sicilian39 and Clearchusof Heraclea.40 Consuls of Rome and praetors of other Italian republics-supreme magistrates publicly authorized with imperium and commandof armed citizenries-can more successfully institute pro-plebeianreforms than can tribunes, who are merely civic magistrates. Or, at least,Machiavelli hints, supreme, military magistrates can more successfullyinstitute controversial reforms than can tribunes who are faithfully-perhaps too faithfully-committed to observing established legalconventions, as were the Gracchi.

If I am correct that Machiavelli insinuates that the Gracchi, inpursuit of their redistributive agenda, should have violently eliminatedthe senate rather than allow themselves to be violently eliminated by it,

37 See NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, IL PRINCIPE (DE PRINCIPATIBUS) 168-69 (G. Inglese ed.,Turin, Einaudi 1995) (1513).

38 Id. at 225-26.39 Id. at 218.40 MACHIAVELLI, supra note 6, bk. 1, ch. 16.

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then the following becomes an inconvenient fact for Machiavelli'sconstitutional model. While Machiavelli insists, against his antagonistsamong the aristocratic literati, that the plebeian tribunate made Rome"more perfect,"41 it could not solve the fundamental problem that led tothe Republic's collapse.42

The episode of the Gracchi, and the socio-economic circumstancessurrounding the Agrarian Laws, demonstrate that the tribunate was anecessary, but ultimately insufficient institutional means of protectingRome's liberty. To be sure, he declares that without tribunes constantlypromoting Agrarian reform and exercising their other institutionalpowers on behalf of the plebeians, the Roman republic would havebecome corrupt and would have collapsed much sooner. But thetribunate could not definitively solve the problem of economicinequality and, thereby, forestall indefinitely the Republic's decline andfall.

There is another obvious problem with my interpretation ofMachiavelli's ultimate judgment of the Gracchi. Had the Gracchi indeedviolently neutralized the senate, what would have separated them fromthe Republic-destroying warlords, whose very rise the successful passageof Agrarian reforms was supposed to prevent in the first place?Wouldn't the Gracchi have become the moral and factual equivalent ofthe successful tyrants that followed them who did, in fact, destroyRoman liberty? Wouldn't the Gracchi have hastened, rather thandelayed the Republic's demise? Since Machiavelli emphasizes"intentions" in his account of the Gracchi, we should examine hisinvocation of intentions elsewhere in the Discorsi, when he discusses theneed to reform a republic in danger of becoming irredeemably corrupt.

In Discorsi, Machiavelli states: "Since the [healthy] reordering of arepublic presupposes a good man, and becoming prince of a republic byviolence presupposes a bad man, someone good only very rarely wishesto become prince by recourse to evil, even if his end is good."43 In otherwords, there exist real, albeit very rare, instances where a goodindividual, who wishes to reform a corrupt republic, will resort to extra-legal violence in order to do so. The Gracchi, on Machiavelli's account,were oriented by intention, if not by prudence, to fulfill such a role.Their intentions were good but their prudence was deficient. Had theybeen more prudent, had it occurred to them to resort to "evil" means, insupport of their "good" ends, according to Machiavelli, there is littlechance that they would have established a tyranny.

Moreover, not only were the Gracchi internally disinclined to betyrants, they faced external circumstances not yet conducive to tyranny:

41 Id. bk. 1, ch. 3.42 See JOHN P. MCCORMICK, MACHIAVELLIAN DEMOCRACY 7-8 (2011).43 MACHIAVELLI, supra note 6, bk. 1, ch. 18.

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at the moment when the Gracchi confronted the opportunity to crushthe senate, the Roman people were not yet corrupted clients, who fullydepended on their military-patrons for their economic well-being.Tiberius Gracchus, like, for instance, Agathocles the Sicilian, might haveeliminated his republic's nobility, instituted robust economic-militaryreforms, and died in his bed, leaving behind him a more egalitarian andcivically-vibrant republic.

However, as the Spartan example, mentioned before, makes clear,to Machiavelli's mind, unilateral executive action, aimed at institutingeconomic equality within a republic, is a recurrent necessity, not a one-time-only proposition. Machiavelli notes how Lycurgus's laws, howeversuccessful at the beginning, required violent re-establishment bysuccessors such as Agis and Cleomenes to be effective in the long term.44

Moreover, the results in the Spartan case, according to Machiavelli'sown account, were decidedly mixed. Even if the Gracchi had effectivelyacted, as Machiavelli hints they should have, other "Gracchi" wouldhave had to emerge in the future to guarantee the perpetual success oftheir reforms. This did not work in the Spartan context.

There is another possible route to reforms that would minimize thethreat to a republic's civic liberty posed by proliferating economic-inequality. This one is less explicitly violent and less potentiallythreatening to civic liberty than one in which a supposedly well-intentioned magistrate violently eliminates the aristocratic opponents ofhis pro-plebeian reforms. It is, however, one for which there is even lesssupport in Machiavelli's texts: a republic's wealthiest citizens could, ofcourse, prudently avoid pursuing policies that radically increaseinequality, and that, therefore, risk their own eventual politicalemasculation and/or economic expropriation by a tyrannical championof the plebs.

Indeed, rather than murdering fairly moderate economic reformerslike the Gracchi, as did the Roman senate, a republic's wealthy citizensperhaps ought to give away a few golden eggs rather than allow aprincely usurper to emerge and, effectively, kill the goose that lays them.At several points in his writings, Machiavelli notes how the nobles ofRome and Florence might have been more accommodating to thepeople, rather than pursue courses that jeopardize their polity's freestatus and their own privilege and prestige within it. In particular, hedemonstrates how Octavian and the Medici gained their respectiveprincipates by exploiting hubristic aristocratic overreaching in suchcircumstances.45

However, despite underscoring these opportunities for prudentjudgment on the part of a republic's wealthiest citizens, Machiavelli

44 Id. bk. 1, ch. 9.45 Id. bk. 1, ch. 52-53.

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provides no examples where such nobles actually do pursue a wiselyconciliatory strategy on the issue of economic inequality. Instead, theoligarchs invariably seek to maximize their economic advantages suchthat they inevitably undermine both the people's liberty and the veryconditions on which their own status and privilege depend.