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A39837
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The imperfection of most governments taken out of the Epitomy of the Roman history written by Lucius Annæus Florus : where it plainly appears that the liberty of the most flourishing common-wealth of the Romans destroyed written by Roger Trusty.; Epitomae de Tito Livio bellorum omnium annorum DCC libri II. English. Selections
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Florus, Lucius Annaeus.; Trusty, Roger.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing F1381A; ESTC R3394
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7,338
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6
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and his dispairing Party in Rome commit new slaughters not sparing the Temples Sylla returns and perseveres in Cruel Slaughters when the War was ended they were numberless whose Throats were Cut in the Town till Fursidius told Sylla that he must leave some alive to be Commanded Sylla then made a Roll of two thousand of the flower of Senators and Knights which with several sorts of torturing Deaths finished the Cruelry at Rome but not in other miserable Cities of Italy Spain had also a share of this Confusion in a long War under Sertorius proscribed by Sylla The next ill effect of this Dissention was Catalines Conspiracy to have burnt Rome who was hardly destroyed in a great Battel after the Discovery Notwithstanding the Romans Victory over the Usurping Cataline which seemed to have resetled their Common-wealth by the good Conduct of Cicero the wise and Eloquent Consul Cato and other bold Senators yet the World was grown so weary of their weak and factious Government with the bloody mischiefs it produced that there was a continued succession of Usurpers on it For the second Chapter of the fourth Book of Florus tells us That Pompey Caesar and Crassus uniting themselves together did so over-awe the Jealous Senate and People of Rome that without any Bloodshed they Governed as three Princes for ten years together but Crassus being slain in the Parthian War and Julia the Daughter of Caesar and Wife of Pompey dying also the Link of the Triumvirat was broken and Caesar and Pompey who both aimed at Soveraign Power were now to dispute for the great Stake of the World together Caesar had fewer Nations and less numerous Forces to follow him but having made only the difficult Conquest of Gaul and Germany for the Romans he knew those Nations united to his invincible Courage Conduct and Fortune might give a bold Defiance to all the rest of the World his success answerred his expectation for he beat Pompeys Lieutenant in Spain and subdu'd it drove him and the Senate together out of Italy and at Pharsalia made the Victorious Pompey fly his Fury and by his personal Valour got more difficult Victories of his Warlike Enemy in Africk and Spain and returned Triumphant to Rome But Brutus and Cassius ambitious to restore their Common-wealth cut down Caesar the greatest and gallantest Usurper that ever lived in the Senate and Pompey being Dead before him one would have thought that the Common-wealth of Rome must have been restored But the dead Caesar had more Friends than the living Senate The People of Rome were grown so weary of the Miseries of their own exorbitant Power that Brutus and Cassius were forced to fly from Rome to other Nations to raise an Army to recover their last Common-wealth But the Major part of the Romans fought against them and their Old Government and beat them under their Conduct of Augustus Caesar and Anthony and so ended this prodigious Common-wealth Augustus Anthony and Lepidus afterwards set up a most Bloody Triumvirat destroying by Proscription all the adverse Faction and all that had Power or Wealth to hurt them and Augustus was the Cruellest of the three whilst he could lay the Faults upon his Colleagues but when he prevailed upon them both and became sole Emperour He prov'd a Wise Just and Merciful Prince which is a Note to me that the Absolute Government of many Interests or Rulers in an Aristocracy is a greater Tyranny and Oppression then single Persons commonly are But some wicked Emperours succeeded and at last the Armies Usurped upon them sold and murdered them at Pleasure till their Variety of Elections brought the Empire to decay but the great Constantine Victorious over them all though he advanced Christianity quite Ruined the Empire by dividing it into Eastern and Western By all which it appears That Elective Empires Usurping Powers and Factious Common-wealths will be Governed and ruined by their or Forraign Armies which makes the World affect Hereditary Crowns And now I shall add some brief Comments of my own on this Historical Pamphlet or Epitomy of the Roman Government When they threw off Kings they made the most careful Provision against Oppression and Cruelty that a most Ingenious People could do for they chose two Consuls lest one should Usurp or Tyranize and lest time should give them too much power to Combine together they made a yearly Relation or Change of those two chief Magistrates and yet farther to serve all on that side they made Appeals from their Sentences to the People as the supream Power But they could not make such an Annual Rotation or Alteration in the whole Body of the Senate or Council of State for if that Power be not fixed in known wise Persons improved by Practice and Experience no Treaties of War and Peace could go on no private Leagues of weaker Nations against a stronger or Intelligence from Forrain Counsels could be had for it cannot be thought where Mens Lives and Fortunes depends upon Secrecy that they will trust new Ministers of State every year who come in ignorant of the past Correspondances and Transactions nor can the Executive power of a Nation betray Secrets by giving a publick Account to the Legislative power and if the Romans had not Lodg'd the Supream Power and last Appeals to themselves they had set up an Aristocracy or Confederacy of many interressed Families with their Kindred Friends and Relation to them But they did not consider that the poorest sort of the people is the greatest number and that they must necessarily turn Levellers for two weighty Reasons The first is because they want what other Men have And the other because none can Usurp their Government but Rich men And therefore all Industrious men that have gotten Estates must be taken down to the destruction of all Traffick and Industry for who will Labour for others to take their gains from them This having been the practise of the Roman Common-wealth and the reasons seeming apparent that all great Nations replenishment with poor People will doe the same by themselves or Trustees I must Conclude as I began with deploring the Insufficiency with most or all Governments and wishing we may all agree to strengthen our old fabrick since we may be knocked on the Head in the pulling it down but shall never agree on a new Building though Our potent Enemies should let us alone And this was too evident in Our own Government in 1641. where the Lords and Commons deposed the King the peoples Trustees the Commons deposed the Lords House and then deposed of men Lives and Fortunes by their Votes as a perpetual standing Aristocratical Tyranny despising the Last foâ— a Triennial Succession of Parliaments as much as the other Laws of the Land till after many years sitting they were first Weeded and then Rooted out by their own Army by which it appears that the Peoples Trustees can destroy Liberty and Poverty as well as the People themselves the more to confirm the Imperfection of all Governments when once the Rule of the Law is broken This Popular Army Governed as the Romans Army did and used the Name of a Common-wealth somtimes but were setled in nothing but their own Divisions till the Major part of them and the people agreed to return to the ancient Law and Government of the Nation FINIS LONDON Printed for Langley Curtiss
all this while the Comunes being Warlike well Arm'd and disciplined prospered in their VVars though slowly for they were five hundred years in subduing Italy But their next quarel being with the great Cathaginian Common-VVealth those effiminate Affricans were worsted by Sea and Land and justled out of Sicily Sardinia and almost all Spain till the great Hannibal General of the Carthaginians entertaining great Bodys of Gaules and Spanish Horse beat them in four set Battails and had ruin'd them if his factious Common-wealth had not retarded his supplys to pursue his Victory whilst the Romans were dejected but they recovered and beat his supplys and then invading Affrick Hannibal was forced to ship his Foot and leave his Victorious Horse and was beaten in Affrick and Carthage subdued So that Affrica fell into their Hands as easily as the Effeminate Asiatiques afterwards did so that the Conquest of those two parts of the World in two hundred years with some pieces in Europe was not so strange as Florus would have it for Alexander the great did almost the same in ten years But I pretend not to VVrite their History but only for a Hint that there great VVars kept the more united at Home For to return to my Undertaking the thirteenth Chapter of the third Book of Florus tells us plainly that the Power of the Tribunes of the People was the sourse and cause of the Seditions of the Multitude For they being well designed as Orators and Advocates for their Preservation sought to increase their Authority and Favour by proposing plausible Laws in their behalf 1. As for the dividing of Lands and Inheritances for their Use 2. The giving away Corn to the poorer Citizens 3. And the reducing of Causes Publick and Private to their Judicature All these had shews of Justice for what could seem more equitable then that the People slould recover their Original Rights from the incroachment of the Senators And that they injoying the Government of Provinces the Knights might sustain their Dignities by the Profits of Causes and Judgments yet these things says my Author tended to the Ruin of the Common-Wealth for it seems that the transferring the Judicature soon brought the Publick Tribute or Revenue to nothing and the charging the Corn of the Poor on the publick Treasure and wasted that also and as Florus sayeth weakned the very Nerves of the Common-Wealth and how says he could one give back to the People their ancient Lands without Ruining those who possest them and who were a part of the People also and injoyed those Lands as the Inheritances of their Ancestors by proscription of time And now the fourteenth Chapter of the third Book tells us of Tiberius Bracchus an eioquent and graceful Tribune of the People who mounted the Tribunal and proposed a Law to pass by Votes of the People for taking away Lands from the owners and by three Comissioners than appointed to give them to such Levellers as most wanted them the Nobility the owners and some of his Fellow Tribunes opposed him But he caus'd Eneus Octaivus his Fellow Tribune to be thrown of the Tribunal threatned him with Death and made him quit his Office but though he prevailed then He Mounted another day and then the Nobility and Owners fell to Blows with him made him flye to the Capital where touching his Head to move the People to defend him one Scipio Nasica animated the people against him with pretence that he wanted a Diadem upon which supposition his expected Protectors turned his immediate destroyers for they gave him no Audience before they killed him In the next Chapter his Brother Caius Gracchus pursued the same hopes with larger promises to the People But one of the Tribunes opposed him and they first killed his Friends and the Consul Opinius Massacred him The sixteenth Chapter third Book tells us that notwithstanding this Aprielus Saturninus supported by the General Marius always an Enemy of the Nobility renewed the quarrel of the Gracchi Marius caused Annius the Compeditor of Saturninus to be publickly Murdered they forcibly substituted a new Tribune another Gracchus a mean Man but Saturninus forced the Senate to pass the Laws of the Gracchi threatning to deprive the Opposers the use of Fire and Water This Saturninus continued his Usurpation three years was chosen Consul caused his Collogue Caius Memmius to be Murdered to substitute one Glaucias an instrument of his Civility in his Room but the Senate at last was so Ivitated at his Outrages and Marius forsaking him and Bandying against him their Forces made him flye to the Capitol but beleaguering him there and cutting off his Water he Capitulated Submitted and seemed Penitent and was admitted into the Senate House where the people whose Laws he had asserted broke in forcibly upon him and after an assault with Cudgels and other Instruments of Indignation they Tore and Cut him to pieces But at last the Laws of the Gracchi were established by new Violencies the power of the Senate abated and that of the Knights so exalted tbat they had the Lives and Fortunes of the Senate People and Nobility at their despose seized the publick Revenues and all Italy fell into Rebellion which the Romans at last with much Blood and hazard quenched as appears in the 17th and 18th Chapters of the third Book and it also appears tbat these Divisions between Senate and Tribunes gave Courage to the very Slaves to Rebel against their Masters in the following Chapter And this was the natural Corruption and Club-Law of this Free-Comman-wealth mixt Government where my Lords the People could never agree with their own Trustees longer than their Common Enemies obliged them but these were the beginnings of their Miseries the People had Liberty and a free Common-wealth was designed to preserve property but I fear that in any great Kingdome or Empire it does necessarily destroy it For now in the 21 Chapter of the third Book of Florus Marius a Popular General of high Reputation assisted by Sulpitious the Tribune of the People procured his own Election by them to go fight Mitridates though Sylla had the Commission and was succesfully imployed before him by the general Votes of the Senate But Sylla not able to indure this injury returns with his Army and enters Rome with Fire and Sword Slaughters and proâ—ribes Marius his Party and he hardly escaped in the Disguise of a Slave But Cinna and Octavius being Consuls they divided one being for Marius and his Party and the other for Sylla and the Senate but though both were Arm'd Cinna was chaced away to the banished But Marius returning out of Africk his Party flocked to him breaks open Prisons and making up an Army Marches to Ostia and sacks it his Army then enters Rome and spilt more Blood says my Author of the Senators and chief of the Citizens than was shed at the Sack of Carthage But Sylla returns again by long Marches from Asia was again Victorious Young Marius