1

To appear in a Festschrift for Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann M. Blair, Anja Goeing and Urs Leu (Brill)

EUROPES FIRST DEMOCRAT?

CYRIAC OF ANCONA AND BOOK 6 OF POLYBIUS
(James Hankins)

Intellectual history is full of key terms that have changed their meanings dramatically
over time: words, for instance, like respublica, whose vicissitudes the present writer has
recently discussed.1 As they are highly relevant to the subject of this article, they will
need to be summarized here. In ancient Rome respublica meant, essentially, a good or
just state that respects constitutional traditions and the free status of its citizens, treating
them as equal under the law; its lexical opposite was tyranny, not monarchy. In antiquity
it did not, as today, refer to an historical period between the expulsion of the kings in
509 BC and the Battle of Actium in 31 BC nor was it used in the official names of states,
as it began to be in the Renaissance, for example, in the case of the Republic of Venice.
More importantly, it was only in the Renaissance, thanks in great part to new humanist
translations of Aristotles constitutional language, that respublica begins to be used to
specify a particular type of constitution, a non-monarchical constitution. Cicero did not
use the word that way; he applies the word respublica to all of the good constitutions in
the standard Greek analysis -- kingship, aristocracy or even popular government. They
are said to be good because they resist corruption, and because those who govern them
respect the common good. In this respect respublica is identical with res Romani populi,
the interests of the Roman people.2 But a comparison of William of Moerbekes

2
translations of Aristotles scheme of six constutions in Politics III with those of Leonardo
Bruni 170 years later illustrates how the word had began to migrate to new meanings in
the Renaissance:

ARISTOTLES CONSTITUTIONAL SCHEME IN POLITICS III (1279A),

AS TRANSLATED BY

WILLIAM OF MOERBEKE IN 1268 3

good politiae

corrupt politiae

one

regia potestas

tyrannia

few

aristocratia

oligarchia

many

politia

democratia

ARISTOTLES CONSTITUTIONAL SCHEME IN POLITICS III (1279A),

AS TRANSLATED BY

LEONARDO BRUNI CA. 14384

Rectae rerum publicarum

Transgressiones et labes

Unum:

regia potestas

tyrannis

Pauci:

optimatium gubernatio

paucorum potestas

Multi:

respublica

popularis status

For Bruni in 1438, respublica meant regime () in the generic, abstract sense and
also a virtuous popular regime ( for Aristotle), both meanings unexampled in
antiquity. The denotation of the term respublica eventually, by the end of the fifteenth
century, was extended to mean good polyarchic constitutions, i.e., any good regime that
involved power-sharing among the ruling group. Bartolomeo Scala, for instance,
distinguishes between an aristocratic and a popular republic,5 and Francesco Patrizi of
Siena, the most influential humanist authority on politics, classes oligarchy among the

3
good republican constitutions, an unusual step that reflects the influence of the famous
debate on constitutions in Herodotus (3.80-82).6 This shows, inter alia, that the
polyarchic criterion had begun to eclipse Aristotles distinction between sound and
corrupt constitutions, at least for some theorists.7 The use of respublica to indicate a
polyarchic constitution became particularly useful in Italy where the penisula was divided
politically between princely regimes and what we today call republican regimes, i.e.
oligarchies with greater or lesser degrees of popular participation. But the older usage
found in Cicero and other ancient authors lived on, and it remained possible to talk about
monarchical republics well into the eighteenth century.
The history of the word respublica shows how radically a Latin word could
change in meaning even in an age determined to model its linguistic usages as closely as
possible on antiquity, and above all on Cicero.
Yet even more striking are the key terms that have not so much changed in
meaning as undergone a complete reversal of their moral polarities. Well-known
examples are words like curiosity, innovation, ambition: words that once, in premodern
times, signified morally dubious phenomena but have come more recently to stand for
positive qualities. Such changes in moral valence are often signals of what Anthony
Appiah describes as moral revolutions relatively sudden changes in ethical attitudes.8
In our own times, moral revolutions in attitudes to women and gay people have led to
those rapid linguistic changes and reversals in the terms of moral approval and
disapproval with which we are all familiar though the twentieth century has introduced
the noxious practice of trying to coerce such linguistic changes via legal, administrative
and political devices rather than through simple social pressure, as in earlier times.

4
However that may be, the present essay aims to contribute to the history of a word
that has both changed dramatically in meaning and reversed its moral polarity:
democracy. As is well known, the word has undergone a remarkable transformation in
moral valence since the end of the eighteenth century.9 A political constitution that was
once widely regarded by the learned as rare or impossible -- and certainly undesirable -suddenly, within the decade 1789-99, acquired a positive significance, first for the
Jacobins, and in due course for many radical friends of the French Revolution. Over the
course of the following centuries, the word has come to signify a political system
regarded as the default setting of the human race, the form of government standing at the
end of history, and the only legitimate form of government. What was an inkhorn term in
the medieval and early modern periods became a battle cry in two world wars and is
today a word on the lips of reformers in many parts of the world.
To grasp just how radical this change was, we will need to sketch out an overview
of attitudes to the word democracy and the democratic constitution since antiquity.10
The desirability, practical and moral, of democracy was highly contested from the
moment of its emergence in late sixth century BC Athens under the reformer Cleisthenes
(who used the term , legal equality, rather than ). Though democracy
had many defenders in Athens from the sixth to the fourth century BC, most famously
Pericles in the Funeral Oration as related by Thucydides, political power in the hands
of non-elite citizens was still widely regarded by many, even in the Greek classical age,
as dangerous, destabilizing, and pernicious in its moral effects. It was regarded as such,
unsurprisingly, by elites in rival regimes such as oligarchies, kingdoms and tyrannies. But
its most important enemies were the philosophers, especially Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle

5
and later Polybius.11 For Plato, democracy was the worst constitution, the one that
brought out the worst aspects of human character.12 Aristotle regarded it as a bad
constitution in its pure form, but thought that certain democratic institutions like
assemblies could be incorporated into his preferred constitution what he called polity
in order to stabilize it. If oligarchic and democratic features could be balanced in this
mixed constitution, the main elements in the state could be satisfied and their interests
blended. With the help of good laws and virtuous citizens an aristocratic element
human political organization could reach its optimal state and thus maximize the
prospects for happiness.13
Polybius ideas were in some respects similar to Aristotles. 14 Writing in the
second century BC, he typologized constitutions following a similar six-fold scheme,
agreed that corrupt popular government was bad, and argued that mixed constitutions
were superior to their pure types. In his case the mixed constitution included
monarchical, oligarchical and democratic elements, not just oligarchic and democratic as
in Aristotles case.15
However, Polybian constitutional theory displayed some crucial differences from
Aristotelian. First, Polybius introduces the idea of anacyclosis, the idea that there is a
natural cycle of constitutional change, or rather degeneration and renewal.16
POLYBIUS CYCLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE (6.2-9):
Monarchy (brute, pre-civilized one-man rule)
Kingship (improved monarchy, accepted as just by the people)
Tyranny (corrupted kingship)
Aristocracy (good rule by the few)
Oligarchy (corrupted aristocracy)

6
Democracy (good popular rule)
Ochlocracy (mob rule, bad popular rule)
Monarchy (which begins the cycle all over again)
Polybius believed this pattern was so regular as to have predictive value. Equally
crucially, he used the term democratia where Aristotle had used politeia or timokratia,
i.e., for the uncorrupt popular regime.
POLYBIUS CONSTITUTIONAL SCHEME IN BOOK 6 OF HIS HISTORY OF ROME 17
(primitive kingship)
Good

Corrupt

One

Few

Many

This is the first and only surviving example we have from antiquity of the word
used in a positive sense by a political philosopher (as opposed to an historian
or orator). Polybius specifies that this is true democracy, a community where it is
traditional and customary to reverence the gods, to honor our parents, to respect our
elders, and to obey the laws, [and where] the will of the greater number prevails.18
Democrats set a high value on equality and freedom of speech.19 To distinguish true
democracy from bad, he coined the term ochlocratia, mob rule, rule by lawless people
who lack control of their appetites and passions and use government power to coerce
others and unjustly take their money. The term ochlocratia is used by Polybius himself
only twice, both in Book 6 of his universal history (6.4.7 and 6.57.9). It remained an
extremely rare term. According to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a modern electronic

7
lexicon based on the totality of ancient Greek and a vast number of Byzantine Greek texts
as well, the word can be found only 24 times, always in obscure late ancient and
Byzantine texts.20
As is well-known, Polybius was a major influence on Cicero,21 but despite that,
pure democracy never became a regime acceptable to the Romans, and the word
itself was never naturalized in Latin the way that many Greek terms,
tyrannis for example, was. It occurs in only a handful of cases in the Church Fathers,
usually as a transliteration of an obscure Greek term, and never in a way that shows
understanding of the concept of a democratic constitution.22 Romans saw their own state
or respublica as having a popular element but the term was only used to
describe aspects of Roman political institutions by Greeks writing in Greek, like Arrian,
Dio Cassius and Plutarch. All of these authors were hostile to democracy in its pure,
direct form; it was regarded by most Hellenistic and later Greeks as a corrupt, failed
constitution whose weakness and instability had led to the rapid downfall of Athens as a
Greek power. Among the Byzantines, knowledge of the political history of Athens further
declined, to the point where the most prominent meaning of the word in
medieval Greek was a street riot.23
Active use of the term was not revived until the thirteenth century, when,
following the translation of Aristotles Politics by William of Moerbeke (see above), the
word entered the vocabulary of political Aristotelians in the scholastic tradition,
beginning with Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas naturally used the term as Aristotle had, as the
name of a corrupt or unjust regime conducted by the many, glossing it as potentatus
populi or principatus multitudinis.24 Thomas regarded pure democracy as unjust but

8
shared Aristotles view that a democratic element in a mixed constitution could be a
useful stabilizing device.25 The word remained for the most part a learned term down to
the end of the eighteenth century, and democracy as a constitution continued to be
regarded as impractical and undesirable, except perhaps in certain very small
communities in Switzerland.26 It was only then that the word began to come back into
wider use among the literate middle classes, to describe radical opponents of monarchical
prerogative and aristocratic privilege; a democrat was an ideological enemy of
aristocracy. It also changed in meaning, no longer signifying direct democracy but rather
popular sovereignty and representative government. For Robespierre, in a famous speech,
democracy had become identical with la rpublique.27 After the 1790s both the word and
the thing it now denoted continued to be deeply contested, and was not generally
accepted in the Western world as a superior, modern form of government until the
twentieth century.

* * *

We are now in a position to appreciate the role played in the history of this word by
Cyriac of Ancona (1391-1452).28 Cyriac, the merchant-scholar now widely regarded as
the father of classical archeology, came late (aged 30) to the study of Latin and even later
to Greek (aged 37). He never quite mastered either language, which did not prevent him,
sometimes to the amusement of more accomplished humanists, from pouring out diaries,
letters, speeches and other compositions in idiosyncratic versions of both languages.
Cyriac was a great amateur (in the best sense) of the classical world, (lover

9
of antiquity) as he called himself, a tireless traveller, a civic dignitary in the town of
Ancona, a protg of Pope Eugenius IV, and a man who met and corresponded with many
leading political and cultural figures of his time. Yet, though he had a number of
followers in the later 400 who carried on his work of collecting classical inscriptions and
drawing the ruins of ancient buildings, he remained for the most part outside the
mainstream of humanist activity, marginalized by his lack of a fine educational pedigree
and the inelegance of his Latin style.29
The relevant point in the current context, however, is that Cyriac was the one
securely identifiable humanist of in the fifteenth century, to my knowledge, who uses the
term democratia as a legitimate Latin word, and in a positive sense.30 He is the one
person who regards democracy as a practical form of government and indeed praises it as
the actual form of government enjoyed by his own home town of Ancona, as well as by
Florence and (oddly) the town of Recanati near Ancona.
The source of Cyriacs positive use of the word democratia, it seems almost
certain, is his knowledge, apparently unique in his time, of Book 6 of Polybius. The chief
evidence for this is his use of the term ochlocratia in a short work written about 1440
called the Six Constitutions.31 As we have already seen, the word was coined by Polybius
and remained extremely rare. No later surviving source but Polybius uses the term as
part of an exposition of constitutional types, as we find it also used in Cyriacs Six
Constitutions.32 It does not exist either in ancient or medieval Latin.33 One can add too
that Cyriacs list of constitutions uses the same Greek terminology and follows the same
precise order as is found in Polybiuss discussion of anacyclosis or the constitutional
cycle.

10

POLYBIUS CONSTITUTIONAL SCHEME IN BOOK 6 OF HIS HISTORY OF ROME,

WITH THE TRANSLITERATIONS USED BY CYRIAC OF ANCONA
IN HIS SIX CONSTITUTIONS (CA. 1440)

(monarchia, primitive kingship)

One
Few
Many

Good

regnum

aristocratia

democratia

Corrupt

tyrannis

oligarchia

ochlocratia

There are also some other signs of a Polybian way of thinking about constitutional
change that will emerge in due course.
This is a surprising discovery. In Arnaldo Momiglianos classic article of 1974,
Polybius Reappearance in Western Europe, the great migr scholar claimed that Book
6 of Polybius was only recovered in the early sixteenth century, and first entered the
meme-pool of Western thought via Machiavellis Discorsi.34 Book 6, it should perhaps be
explained, constitutes the most important surviving work of Hellenistic political theory
and was well known as a key theoretical text during the early modern period, influencing
not only Machiavelli, but also thinkers like Guicciardini, James Harrington, Montesquieu
and the authors of the American constitution. Its constitutional theory, its account of the
Romans constitution and military organization as well as the explanation it offered for
Romes imperial success quickly made it into a canonical treatment of the relationship
between constitutional order and imperial power, once it finally began to be published
and translated around the middle of the sixteenth century.35

11
Momigliano found no evidence that any Western scholar before Machiavelli knew
of Book 6, and the manuscript and early printed evidence seemed to bear him out. Books
1-5, to be sure, the only part of the text to survive in complete form, were known to have
been available in Florence as early as 1419, and Leonardo Bruni produced in 1420 what
proved to be an immensely popular adaptation of Historiae 1.7-2.34 called the De primo
bello punico, intended to fill some of the gaps in Livys history.36 When Books 1-5 were
first properly translated by Niccol Perotti in 1454, Perotti stated explicitly in his preface
for Nicholas V that to his knowledge only Books 1-5 had survived.37 Other manuscripts
that we can connect with quattrocento humanists, men like Antonio Corbinelli, Francesco
Filelfo, and Cardinal Bessarion, also had only the five-book text.38 Janus Lascaris (14451535) translated Polybius 6.3-18, a key passage for the historians constitutional theory,
at an uncertain date, probably around 1500, but the excerpt survives only in two
manuscripts.39
Cyriac, however, judging by his demonstrable use of Polybius, must have had
access more than a half century before Lascaris to one of the rather numerous
manuscripts, mostly late, containing all or part of the so-called excerpta antiqua,
manuscripts in which long passages of Book 6 and later books (7-18) were preserved.40 It
must have been his special access to Polybius, his disinterest in scholastic political
literature, and his position out of the mainstream of humanist political discourse that led
him to commit the linguistic barbarism of treating the transliterated words democratia
and democraticus as Latin words, even more disgracefully, using those words in a
morally positive sense.

12
For most humanists of the Renaissance, such a usage would surely count as a
barbarism in the rhetorical sense of that word. Leonardo Bruni had attacked the medieval
translator of the Politics on precisely this point in his treatise On Correct Translation:

What shall I say of the words left in Greek, so numerous as to make the
translation seem half in Greek? And yet there has never been anything said in
Greek that cannot be said in Latin. Still, I will excuse him a few obscure and
strange words if they cannot be translated easily into Latin. But it is certainly a
very ignorant thing to leave words in Greek when we have perfectly good Latin
equivalents. Why, tell me, do you leave politeia in Greek, when you can and
ought to use the Latin words respublica? Why obtrude in a thousand places the
words democratia and oligarchia and aristocratia, and offend the ears of your
readers with outlandish and unfamiliar terms when we have excellent and widely
used terms for all of them in Latin?41
Good taste, as humanists understood it, dictated that a writer make use of equivalents in
his or her own language before importing an unfamiliar, odd-sounding foreign word,
especially when there was no ancient authority for doing so. We can see what a stylistic
faux pas this was if we look at the other example of Polybian influence known to the
present writer from the fifteenth century (also unknown to Momigliano), namely the
appearance of Polybius theory of anacyclosis in a text from 1490/91. This occurs in
Book 3 of Aurelio Lippo Brandolinis dialogue Republics and Kingdoms Compared.42

POLYBIUS CYCLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE (6.2-9)

WITH AURELIO LIPPI BRANDONLINIS LATIN EQUIVALENTS
Monarchy = unius principatum
Kingship = rex, regnum

13
Tyranny = tyrannis
Aristocracy = optimatum gubernatio
Oligarchy = paucorum potestas
Democracy = a Graecis politice, a nostris respublica
Ochlocracy = a nostris plebeius principatus, a Graecis
democratia
Monarchy
Although Polybius is not named as the source of Brandolinis theory of anacyclosis here
(which is placed in the mouth of the interlocutor King Mattias Corvinus), it is clear that
Polybius must have been the source when we compare Brandolinis cycle with the
accounts of constitutional degeneration in Plato and Aristotle:

CONSTITUTIONAL DEGENERATION IN PLATOS REPUBLIC,

BOOK 8 (UNI-DIRECTIONAL)
Aristocracy (the best, philosophical constitution, based on wisdom)
Timocracy (status based on honor and wealth)
Oligarchy (status based on wealth alone)
Democracy (equality and license)
Tyranny

CONSTITUTIONAL DEGENERATION IN ARISTOTLE

ETHICS 8.10 AND POLITICS 5 (NON-CYCLICAL)
Kingdom

Tyranny

Aristocracy

Oligarchy

Timocracy or Polity

Democracy

Tyranny

14
Here one may see that Brandolini, despite adopting Polybius theory, had the good sense
or good taste to use the standard Latin equivalents for Aristotles constitutional
terminology rather than the unfamiliar Polybian terminology, especially its outlandish use
of democratia as the name for a good constitution.

* * *

It would be tempting to conclude that Cyriac was open to using democratia in a positive
way because he himself had a preference for that kind of constitution. But in fact Cyriac
was a democrat only in a very limited and idiosyncatic sense. It is true that another littleknown work seems to show him as an enthusiastic democrat; but only after a fashion.
This work, called Anconitana Illyricaque Laus, was a letter-treatise addressed to an
ambassador from Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Marino deResti and dated 18 June 1440; it was
designed as an introduction to the text of a treaty between Ancona and Ragusa.43 In it
Cyriac praises his native city for its ancient democratic constitution which has allowed
her to flourish unica et alma civium democratica libertate, a citadel of freedom for
refugees from tyranny going back to the Doric Greeks. Thanks to its fostering democratic
liberty it has a political life marked by modesty, honor, tranquillity, peace, unity, concord,
security and piety. This description echoes, perhaps, Polybius description of the citizen
virtues present in a true democracy.44 Ancona is not, however, a sovereign democracy
but enjoys its liberty sub alma Dei vicarii potestate, beneath the kindly power of the
Vicar of God, i.e. the pope. It is Anconas liberty that makes it a natural sister-city of
Ragusa, also distinguished for its liberty. Ragusa, however, enjoys an aristocratic

15
constitution which Cyriac also praises for the great probity, resourcefulness, industry and
virtue of its citizens, as the uniquely honorable and best of the Illyrian polities,
flourishing in aristocratic liberty through the brilliant power of its noble and optimate
citizens.
Hearing this typically inflated praise one might suppose Cyriac to be a kind of
minor Leonardo Bruni, praising his citys regime and its free institutions. In fact,
however, Cyriac shows himself (like Biondo Flavio) an opponent of the republican
ideology elaborated by Salutati and Bruni in Florence, and a critic of the republican
narrative of Roman history the two Florentine chancellors had worked out decades
before.45 Unlike Bruni, who presents Florence in his political rhetoric as an independent,
sovereign state, Cyriac sees the city-states he mentions in a more typically medieval way,
as situated juridically beneath the authority of an emperor or a pope. The democracies
of central Italy Florence, Ancona and Recanati are protected and regulated by the
pope. They are all, in a juridical sense, papal states. Monarchy is in principle universal.
The supreme example of good monarchical power, defined as just kingship, is the Roman
Empire under Caesar and Augustus. Cyriac regards the imperial expansion of Alfonso of
Aragon in his own day as sanctioned by the approval of the best and greatest pontiff,
Eugene IV, who give holy commands to all Christians throughout the globe under the
order of divine law.46
In general, Cyriac sees universal monarchy, exemplified by Rome, as the best
form of government. His considered view is made clear in his longest work of political
theory if that is not too high a name for it the letter-treatise in praise of Julius Caesar
he addressed to Leonardo Bruni in 1436, a couple years after his visit to Florence.47 In

16
this treatise, known as the Caesarea Laus, Cyriac defends Julius Caesar against the slurs
of Poggio Bracciolini, who had compared the great dictator unfavorably with Scipio
Africanus. Here (cap. 17) Cyriac gives us an explicit hierarchy of constitutions.
Oligarchy and tyranny are set aside as bad forms of government; ochlocracy is not
mentioned. This leaves Polybiuss three good forms of government, which in ascending
order of dignity are democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. Following the usual argument,
monarchy has the most esteem because it most resembles the government of God in
heaven. And Roman monarchy was no arbitrary tyranny, dependent on the will of a single
man; nor was it absolute monarchy. Caesars rule and Augustus rule took care to
administer the provinces and kingdoms in accordance with law, decrees of the Senate or
by resolutions of the People and the tribunician power.48 In other words, it was a
constitutional monarchy, as that term was understood in the Renaissance and early
modern period.
So Cyriac, like Polybius, considers democracy a good form of government, to be
preserved in city-states with old traditions of democratic freedom. For Cyriac it is good in
part because it is an inherently mixed form. It is not mixed in Aristotles sense, i.e. a
mixture of institutional features taken from democracy and oligarchy, but mixed in an a
somewhat novel sense: i.e., it consists of a mixture of a citys populace (populus) and
other free townsmen (municipes),49 who on suitable occasions take the counsel of the
Areopagites, which introduces an aristocratic element to the regime.

Democracy: A mixed regime of the people (populus) and free townsmen

(municipes) in a city-state (civitas), such as we learn the Athenians maintained,
although they very often usefully used to employ the excellent counsel of the

17
Areopagites at suitable moments, just like an aristocratic regime. Today among
the Italians, Florence in Tuscany, Ancona in Picenum and the colony of Recanati
seem to maintain this [type of regime]. These indeed are protected and regulated
beneath the fostering pontifical power of the vicar of God.50

.
In any case, in his view, democracies had been sanctioned in recent times by the
divine, universal authority of the Pope and were therefore good. But they were still, in
principle, inferior to aristocracies like Venice and Dubrovnik and monarchies like those in
Germany, England, France and the Kingdom of Aragon. We should note that Cyriacs
limited defense of democracy is quite different from that found in the scholastic tradition
of political Aristotelianism. The scholastics did not place any value on the pure form
labelled democratic, but merely approved the inclusion of some democratic institutions
and customs as part of a mixed constitution. Democracy for them was synonymous with
mob rule. Cyriac sees a legitimate place for true democracy, with its commitments to
equality and free speech, in the overall scheme of things, but equality and free speech are
local privileges, justified by the virtue of local populations, rather than universal
entitlements or natural rights. In this sense his position is rather similar to that of the
scholastic republican Tolomeo Fiadoni (better known as Ptolemy of Lucca), in the early
fourteenth century.51
Cyriacs preference for monarchy is in part influenced by the traditions of
Christian historiography, which since the time of Eusebius had seen the pax Romana
instituted by Augustus as part of a divine plan to open the oecumene to Christian
conversion. Caesars monarchy was so pleasing to God, says Cyriac, that in the time of

18
Caesars son Augustus he sent his son Jesus to mingle with the human race; and just as
though he held joint command with Caesar over heaven and earth, [Jesus] agreed in a
sacred pronouncement that what is Caesars should be given to Caesar, and what is
Gods, to God.52 Here we have a position on the relationship between divine and human
government very similar to that of Eusebius in his Oration in Praise of Constantine.
Yet Cyriac could be a critic of the first Christian emperor as well. We see this in
the most historically and politically sophisticated part of the Caesarea Laus, where
Cyriac takes on Brunis famous argument, stated in Book 1 of his History of the
Florentine People, that Roman power and culture declined after the fall of the republic,
under the emperors and, moreover, directly as a result of their tyrannical rule.53 For Bruni,
republican government led to empire and cultural flourishing, while monarchy always
threatened to decline into tyranny. Cyriac in response admits that the growth of the
Roman empire was greatest under the consuls i.e., in the period that we moderns
anachronistically call the Roman Republic and poses the question why that was the
case if monarchy was the best form of government. The problem of the relationship
between empire and constitutional form, we should notice, is the central problem raised
by Polybius. Cyriac gives in effect two answers, a human and a divine one, which are not
fully compatible. The divine or theological answer was that fall of Rome was not the fault
of constitutions, but of the Fates. The divine powers actively willed the fall of Rome,
because if there should be any government that could last in perpetuity, there would then
be no difference between the gods and men. The emperor Constantine made things worse
by transferring the capital from Rome to Constantinople,54 but the fundamental reason

19
why Rome fell was that all human things are subject to decay. We are not gods, but men.
We die; and our governments die too. The body politic is mortal.55
The second reason Cyriac gives for why Rome eventually collapsed under the
emperors is much more Polybian in tone. Cyriac, in common with the tradition of
Christian historiography, argues that Rome was suffering a terrible crisis during the civil
wars of the late republic and in fact would have collapsed much more quickly under the
rule of the consuls if Caesar had not overturned it and established a monarchy instead.56
In other words, under the consuls in the late empire the natural cycle of constitutions had
come to an end in civil war. Caesars greatness was to begin the cycle anew, da capo as it
were, with the best form of government, monarchy. Caesar himself was the proof that this
was happening. Caesar displayed remarkable virtue, divine intelligence, foresight,
military skill, and inexpressible eloquence and mastery of the Latin language in his
literary works. Above all, there was his divine clemency, the royal virtue most needed to
compose the quarrels of the age. If he had not been murdered by the ambition and envy of
his fellow citizens, he would have adorned the city, enlarged the empire, subdued the
Parthians, reformed the laws, built libraries and patronized literature. His adopted son
Augustus later brought all these projects to fulfillment.57
In other words, though Cyriac does not say this explicitly, Caesar was exactly the
kind of man Rome needed to renew her constitution and begin her political life-cycle
anew. Together with his son Augustus, his rule was therefore the best model for the
revival of Italian greatness that Cyriac, along with all the other humanists of the
Renaissance, longed to bring into being. In praising democracy, Cyriac may have been

20
the voice crying in the wilderness, but when it came to the idea of the Renaissance, he
was singing with in chorus with the angels.

21

[NOTES TO HANKINS CONTRIBUTION]

James Hankins, Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic, Political Theory
38.4 (2010): 452-82.
2
Examples: Cicero, De republica 3.47: Nos autem de iniusto rege nihil loquimur nunc, cum de ipsa
regali re publica quaerimus. Quare cogitato Romulum aut Pompilium aut Tullum regem: fortasse non
tam illius te rei publicae paenitebit. (We are not talking now about an unjust king, since we are
inquiring about a royal respublica. So think about Romulus or Pompilius or King Tullus, and perhaps
you wont be so dissatisfied with that [kind of] respublica). At ibid. 1.42, Cicero explicitly states that
regnum is a status reipublicae, i.e. a constitutional form. See also Augustine, De civitate Dei 2.21,
where Augustine paraphrases a speech of Scipio (expressing what is clearly Ciceros own views) from
a now-lost portion Ciceros De republica, Book 1: Docet deinde quanta sit in disputando definitionis
utilitas, atque ex illis suis definitionibus colligit tunc esse rem publicam, id est rem populi, cum bene ac
iuste geritur siue ab uno rege siue a paucis optimatibus siue ab uniuerso populo. Cum uero iniustus est
rex, quem tyrannum more Graeco appellauit, aut iniusti optimates, quorum consensum dixit esse
factionem, aut iniustus ipse populus, cui nomen usitatum non repperit omnino nullam esse rem
publicam. (He teaches how useful it is to debate definitions, and from his definitions he determines
there exists a republic, i.e. the peoples business, when it is carried on well and justly by a single king
or by a few optimates or by the people as a whole. When there is an unjust king, whom he calls a tyrant
in the Greek manner, or unjust optimates, whose conspiracy he calls a faction, or when the people itself
is unjust, for which he cant find a name in common usage there is no republic.) Note
Cicero/Augustines difficulty in finding Latin equivalents for democrary and oligarchy.
3
Aristotle, Politicorum libri octo cum vestusta translatione Guilelmi de Moerbeke, ed. Franz Susemihl
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1872), 178-79.
4
Aristotle, Politicorum libri VIII, trans. Leonardo Bruni (Strassbourg: Johann Mentelin, 1469), [f.
118r]. For the date, see James Hankins, The Dates of Leonardo Brunis Later Works (1437-1443),
Studi medievali e umanistici 5-6 (2007-2008): 1-40.
5
Bartolomeo Scala, Essays and Dialogues, trans. Rene Neu Watkins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2008), 252-254 (6.17): Three types of constitution are the least subject to criticism.
In the first, which is called kingship, a sole ruler governs rightly. In the second, which is called a
republic, all who enjoy the rights of citizenship govern. In the third, those whose conduct is best are
chosen to rule. This kind of government the Greeks call aristocracy, and we imitate them by using our
word for best, and call it a republic of optimates [optimatium rempublicam].
6
Francesco Patrizi of Siena, De institutione reipublicae libri novem (Paris: Jehan Petit and Galeotto da
Parma, 1534), f. VIIv: Statum rerumpublicarum (siquidem de rege et tyranno nihil dicere
constituimus) triplicem principaliter ponimus. Una namque popularis est, altera in qua optimates
agunt, tertia quae in paucos diffunditur. (We posit three forms of republican regime (as weve decided
to say nothing of kings or tyrants). One is popular, the second is that in which the optimates take the
lead, and in the third rule is dispersed among the few.) Patrizi specifies on f. VIIIr that the few are the
rich, and that their government is not far from tyranny. Patrizis discussion of constitutions here
explicitly cites the constitutional debate in Herodotus 3.80-82, where is treated as a good
constitution; Patrizi is the first European political writer to my knowledge to make use of this source,
the earliest Greek discussion of constitutional theory. Lorenzo Valla had translated the text into Latin in
1452/56.
7
Hankins, Exclusivist Republicanism, 469; a clear example of this usage is found in Aurelio Lippo
Brandolini, Republics and Kingdoms Compared, ed. and trans. James Hankins (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2009), passim.
8
Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (New York: W. W. Norton,
2010).
9
See the classic article of R. R. Palmer, Notes on the Use of the Word Democracy, Political
Science Quarterly 68.2 (1953): 203-226. Add reference to J Israel here. For a comparison of ancient

and modern concepts of democracy, see Peter Liddel, Democracy Ancient and Modern, in Ryan K.
Balot, ed., A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009),
133-148.
10
See Christian Meier, Christian, Hans Leo Reimann and Werner Conze, Demokratie, in Otto
Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: historisches Lexikon
zur politischen-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1972-97), 1: 821-899. See
also the article by Wilfried Nippel, Democracy, in The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton,
Glenn W. Most and Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), 256-259.
11
For the political and philosophical opposition to democracy in Greek antiquity, see Jennifer Tolbert
Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), chapters 3 and 4.
12
See especially Book 8 of the Republic and Gorgias 515b ff., but anti-democratic sentiment is found
scattered throughout Platos dialogues.
13
A brilliant recent study in a huge literature is Mogens H. Hansens Reflections on Aristotles Politics
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), especially chapter 1, with further references.
14
On Polybius as a political thinker: David E. Hahm, Kings and Constitutions, in The Cambridge
History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Christopher Rowe et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 457-476; idem, The Mixed Constitution in Greek Thought, in Balot, A
Companion, 178-198, especially 190-196.
15
Platos mixed constitution, combining monarchy and democracy as opposites (see Laws 3.693d) had
few if any followers in the later Western tradition.
16
That Polybius invented this concept is argued by Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed
Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius Political Ideas (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1954.
17
Polybius 6.3-10.
18
Polybius 6.4.4-5 (Loeb translation).
19
Ibid. 6.9.4 (Loeb translation).
20
Thesaurus linguae Graecae: A Digital Library of Greek Literature (Irvine, CA: TLG, 2001-, with
updates). An exception is an occurrence of the word in Philos On the Confusion of Tongues, 23.108, a
text that was not known in the Latin West until the mid-sixteenth century; the Greek editio princeps,
edited by Turnbe, appeared in Paris in 1553.
21
See for example De republica 1.41-43, where Cicero states (through his interlocutor Scipio) that
kingship is the best of the simple constitutions, though a mixed government containing royal,
optimate and popular elements is the best constitution of all.
22
For example, Jeromes Interpretatio of the chronicle of Eusebius in Migne, Patrologia latina 29: 6c.
For the handful of other occurrences see the Thesaurus linguae latinae (=TLL) (Leipzig: Teubner,
1900-), 5: 498 (Servius on Aeneid 1.21) and TLL Onomasticon 3: 101 (inscriptions).
23
Roberts, Athens on Trial, 120.
24
Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum (De regno ad regem Cypri), 1.2: Si vero iniquum regimen
exerceatur per multos, democratia nuncupatur, id est potentatus populi. Elsewhere, in his commentary
on the Ethics (In librum 8, lectio 10) Thomas gives the more correct translation principatus
multitudinis. Thomas however shares Aristotles view that democracy is the least bad of the bad
regimes; see ibid. 1.4.
25
James M. Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), chapter 3. On political Aristotelianism, a tradition lasting well into
the modern period, see Christoph Horn and Ada Neschke-Hentschke, eds., Politischer Aristotelismus:
Die Rezeption der aristotelischen Politik von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B.
Metler, 2008).

26

For the interesting though rare cases of democratia and the adjective democraticus used by Catholics
as negatives to describe churches with Protestant tendencies in the early Reformation, see Ren Hoven,
Lexique de la prose latine de la Renaissance, 2nd edn. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 154; to the citations
there one may add the letter to Erasmus from Conrad Heresbach (1534/36), where it is used negatively
to describe radical Protestants; see Epistularium Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: Epistulae ad Erasmum
datae, ed. P. S. Allen, H. M. Allen and H. W. Garrod, 11 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 19061947), 11: 157, 160.
27
Palmer, Notes on the Use of the Word Democracy, 214-216.
28
For the literature on Cyriac of Ancona, see the bibliographies in Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, ed.
and trans. Edward W. Bodnar with Clive Foss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) and
idem, Life and Early Works, ed. and trans. Edward W. Bodnar and Clive Foss (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2015).
29
See, for example, the letter of Poggio to Bruni mocking Cyriacs learning and eloquence in ibid.,
Letter 6.
30
For an exception, see James Hankins, Leonardo Bruni on the Legitimacy of Constitutions (Oratio in
funere Johannis Strozze 19-23), in Christian Thorsten Callisen, ed. Reading and Writing History from
Bruni to Windshuttle: Essays in Honour of Gary Ianziti (Farnham, Surry, UK and Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2014), 73-86. On 80-82, I discuss an anonymous text, possibly an early work of Bruni, where
popularis status, said to be the Latin equivalent of the Greek democratia, is treated as the constitutional
form of contemporary Florence and is classified as a legitimate (as opposed to corrupt) constitution.
If the text is by Bruni, it is an early work and Bruni later abandoned both the use of the transliterated
word democratia and the meaning assigned to it of virtuous popular constitution. For the text, see
James Hankins, Unknown and Little-Known Texts of Leonardo Bruni, Rinascimento n.s. 38 (1998):
125-161, reprinted with additions in idem, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols.
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 2003-2004), 1: 19-62; the text in question is edited on 26-29. I
am more doubtful that the work is by Bruni than formerly. To the reservations expressed in ibid., 23-25,
one may add that, unusually for Bruni, none of the three MSS. can be dated to before 1445.
31
Cyriac of Ancona: Life and Early Works, appendix 4. The Latin text is there edited by James Hankins
and Ornella Rossi and translated by Clive Foss and James Hankins.
32
See note 20.
33
It does not occur in the Thesaurus linguae latinae, vol. 9, part 2, or in the online Brepols database of
medieval Latin dictionaries; nor does it appear in any searchable database of medieval and Latin texts
such as that based on J.-P. Mignes Patrologiae cursus completus series latina, 221 vols. (Paris: Migne,
1844-1891) or the online Library of Latin Texts published by Brepols.
34
Originally published in Polybe: neuf exposs suivis de discussions, ed. F. W. Walbank (VandoeuvresGenve: Fondation Hardt, 1974), 347-72; reprinted in Momiglianos Essays in Ancient and Modern
Historiography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), 79-98. For more recent work on Machiavelli and Polybius
see M.-R. Guelfucci, Anciens et Modernes: Machiavel et la lecture Polybienne de lhistoire,
Dialogues dhistoire ancien 34 (2008): 85-104. Momigliano (ibid. 87) follows Carlo Dionisotti in
stating that the first known reference to Book VI occurs in the De urbe Roma of Bernardo Rucellai,
which he dates to before 1505 on the grounds that it is mentioned by Petrus Crinitus, whose death he
places in 1505 (correctly 5 July 1507), in the latter authors De honesta disciplina (4.9). A better ante
quem, however, would be 1503/4, when the De honesti disciplina was completed and published; see
Roberto Ricciardi, Del Riccio Baldi, Pietro, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 38 (Rome:
Treccani, 1990) and online at: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ricerca/del-riccio-baldipietro/Dizionario_Biografico/
(However, from internal references it is clear that the composition of the book began in the mid-1490s.)
35
See the Fortuna in the article by Jeroen De Keyser, Polybius, forthcoming in Catalogus
Translationum et Commentariorum, vol. 11, ed. Greti Dinkova-Bruun with Julia Haig Gaisser and

James Hankins (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Press).

36
For the manuscripts, see James Hankins, Repertorium Brunianum: A Guide to the Works of Leonardo
Bruni, vol. 1 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1997).
37
Quoted from De Keyser, Polybius: Absolvi tandem aliquando delegatum mihi abs te munus,
pontifex maxime, conversis in Latinum sermonem quinque libris Polybii, qui soli nobis superstites ex
amplissima illius historia remansere. Verum tamen omnem hanc meam voluptatem atque hoc omne
solatium non parum ad extremum conturbavit imperfectio operis, quod ex quadraginta ab illo editis
voluminibus vix quinque prima nobis supersunt. For the 22 manuscripts and nine editions of this
translation, and for further bibliography, see De Keysers discussion.
38
John M. Moore, The Manuscript Tradition of Polybius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1965).
39
De Keyser, Polybius.
40
Moore, The Manuscript Tradition, Part II.
41
Leonardo Bruni, Sulla perfetta traduzione, ed. Paolo Viti (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2004), 120, cap.
43.
42
Brandolini, Republics and Kingdoms Compared, 238-240, caps. 85-86. Brandolini also takes his
constitutionalist explanation for why Rome was able to subdue Carthage from Polybius 6.51.
43
The text was published by Giuseppe Praga, Indagini e studi sull'umanesimo in Dalmatia: Ciriaco de
Pizzicolli e Marino de Resti. Archivio storico per la Dalmazia 13 (1932-33): 262-280. A new edition
with translation will appear in the third volume of the I Tatti Renaissance Librarys series on Cyriac of
Ancona: Travels, 1435-1444.
44
See above, at notes 18 and 19.
45
For Salutatis underappreciated contribution to this narrative, see Coluccio Salutati: Political
Writings, ed. Stefano Ugo Baldassarri and Rolf Bagemihl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2014), especially text 5: Reply to a Slanderous Detractor of Florence.
46
Cyriac of Ancona, Six Constitutions, in Life and Early Writings, Appendix 4: Sed praeclarius hodie
Alphonsus inclytus ille Ausoniae rex Tarraconensem Hispaniam, Balearum Sicanorumque insulas
Ausoniamque sua praeclarissima regna insigniter propagata gubernat, Eugenio optimo maximoque
annuente pontifice, qui sanctius divini iuris ordine Christicolis toto orbe imperat universis.
47
Edited in Life and Early Writings, Letter 4. The work was previously edited with
commentary by Mariarosa Cortesi, La Caesarea laus di Ciriaco dAncona, in Gli
umanesimi medievali: Atti del II Congresso dellInternationales Mittellateinerkomitee,
Firenze, Certosa di Galluzzo, 11-15 settembre 1993, ed. Claudio Leonardi (Florence:
SISMEL, 1998), 37-65; and independently by James Hankins, Addenda to Book X of
Luisos Studi su lEpistolario di Leonardo Bruni, in Lucia Gualdo Rosa, ed.,
Censimento dei codici dell Epistolario di Leonardo Bruni, 2 vols. (Rome: Istituto
Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1993-2004), 2: 352-422, at 396-406. Another edition,
synthesizing readings in the editions of Cortesi, Hankins and E. W. Bodnar
(unpublished), will appear in the I Tatti edition of Life and Early Writings. On the
Caesarea Laus see also the study of Hester Schadee, Caesarea Laus: Ciriaco dAncona
praising Caesar to Leonardo Bruni, Renaissance Studies 22.4 (2008): 435-449, who
emphasizes the debts to Dante.
48
Six Constitutions: Monarchia: princeps unus in orbe bonus, ut Caesar vel Augustus, qui ex lege et
Senatus Consulto plebisue scito et tribunicia potestate, magistratibus bonis provincias regnaque per
orbem moderare curabant.
49
It is far from clear what Cyriac means by municipes. It is possible that Cyriac is thinking of Roman
imperial citizenship and thus wishes to distinguish Roman citizens who lived in Rome itself from free
citizens of other towns in the Empire who enjoyed Roman citizen rights; see Aulus Gellius essay on
the word in Attic Nights 16.13. Another possibility is that Cyriac is using municeps in its medieval

meaning of castellan and thinking of something like the early popular commune of the thirteenth
century, where the popolo, the middle classes, shared power with magnati, nobles whose power was
often symbolized by the possession of urban towers.
50
Six Constitutions: Democratia: populi municipumque mixtum in civitate principatum, ut
Athenienses servasse comperimus, quamquam saepenumero perinde ac aristocraticum opportune
optimum Areopagitarum consilium habuissent. Hodie vero ex Italis Florentia in Thuscia, in Piceno
autem Ancon, et Ricinatum Colonia servare videntur, et hae quidem alma sub pontificia Dei vicaria
potestate protectae et moderatae sunt. Recanati was a colony of the Roman city of Helvia Recina,
founded after that city was devastated by the Goths under Radagaisus in AD 406.
51
See James M. Blythe, The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca)
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2009).
52
Caesarea Laus, cap. 18: Et sic dum ipse divum pater et hominum homines inter humanatus versaret,
sub divi Augusti filio et Caesareo tertio loco principe Tiberio, caesareum hunc ita placuit principatum
probare, ut hac et si cum eo caeli terraeque orbis imperium divisum haberet, sanctissimo ore annuit
reddendum fore Caesari quae sunt Caesaris et quae Dei sunt Deo, ut haec et vos inter, divis et e
praeconibus homo leo bosque sacratissimis testantur litteris.
53
Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People, ed. and tr. James Hankins, 3 vols. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001-2007), 1: 49-55 (caps. 37-40).
54
A view he shared with Bruni; see Patricia Osmond de Martino, The Idea of Constantinople: A
Prolegomenon to Further Study, Historical Reflections / Rflexions Historiques 15. 2 (1988): 323-336.
55
Ibid., cap. 22.
56
Ibid., cap. 23.
57
Ibid., caps. 24-27.