of some law whereby the members of the society are brought to an
account; or else by some man of rare worth arising among them,
whose virtuous life and example have the same effect as a law. In a
Commonwealth, accordingly, this end is served either by the virtues of
some one of its citizens, or by the operation of its institutions.

The institutions whereby the Roman Commonwealth was led back to its
starting point, were the tribuneship of the people and the censorship,
together with all those laws which were passed to check the insolence
and ambition of its citizens. Such institutions, however, require fresh
life to be infused into them by the worth of some one man who fearlessly
devotes himself to give them effect in opposition to the power of those
who set them at defiance.

Of the laws being thus reinforced in Rome, before its capture by the
Gauls, we have notable examples in the deaths of the sons of Brutus, of
the Decemvirs, and of Manlius Frumentarius; and after its capture, in
the deaths of Manlius Capitolinus, and of the son of Manlius Torquatus
in the prosecution of his master of the knights by Papirius Cursor, and
in the impeachment of the Scipios. Such examples as these, being signal
and extraordinary, had the effect, whenever they took place, of bringing
men back to the true standard of right; but when they came to be of
rarer occurrence, they left men more leisure to grow corrupted, and were
attended by greater danger and disturbance. Wherefore, between one and
another of these vindications of the laws, no more than ten years, at
most, ought to intervene; because after that time men begin to change
their manners and to disregard the laws; and if nothing occur to recall
the idea of punishment, and unless fear resume its hold on their minds,
so many offenders suddenly spring up together that it is impossible to
punish them without danger. And to this purport it used to be said