GET THE REPUBLICAN LIBERTY RIGHT AND THE REST FOLLOWS:

Cicero set De Re publica in the year 129 BC, a dramatic moment when Romans, for the first time in centuries, had begun to confront the consequences of political violence. In 133 BC, a mob had killed the tribune Tiberius Gracchus after he used a combination of threats and extra constitutional measures to push through a series of land reforms. Four years later, the damage from Tiberius's recklessness had become clear, but Rome still had a chance to mitigate it. So Cicero chose this moment to stage a dialogue in which the age's most prominent politicians, jurists, and thinkers debated the nature of an ideal constitution and questioned what would become of their Republic after "the death of Tiberius Gracchus had divided one people into two factions."

Cicero emphasized that Tiberius's tactics of intimidation and his willingness to disregard law set Rome on a very dangerous course. "If this habit of lawlessness begins to spread," he explained, it "changes our rule from one of justice to one of force." This made Cicero "anxious for our descendants and for the permanence of our Republic."

Cicero's fear grew in part out of what he believed the Republic to be: community property of Romans, who were bound together not by race or ethnicity but by a shared sense of justice and fidelity to law. Law, Cicero wrote, provided the foundations for just interaction between citizens. It established the channels through which political decisions passed. And, because Rome was a representative democracy in which citizens elected leaders and voted on the legislation they proposed, Cicero argued that the Roman Republic could last forever if it remained governed by law and administered vigorously by its citizens.

A state governed by violence had much dimmer prospects. At best, such a state might sometimes "seem as if it was at peace" because "men feared each other ... but no one was confident enough in his own strength" to challenge his adversaries. A sort of stable anarchy emerged, and a balance of fear was the only thing that held back citizen violence. Such a polity was no longer governed by laws. It could not be considered a republic.

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