1From here on I shall set out the deeds of the Roman people, now free, in peace and in war, their annual magistrates, and the authority of laws more powerful than that of men. 2That this liberty was all the more welcome had been the work of the last king's arrogance. 2For the earlier kings reigned in such a way that all of them in turn may deservedly be counted as founders at least of parts of the city, which they added themselves as new homes for the population they had increased. 3Nor is there any doubt that the same Brutus who earned so much glory by driving out the proud king would have done so to the greatest harm of the state if, through desire for a liberty that was not yet ripe, he had wrested the kingdom from any of the earlier kings.
4For what would have happened if that rabble of shepherds and immigrants, deserters from their own peoples, having gained under the protection of an inviolable sanctuary either liberty or at least impunity, had been freed from fear of a king and had begun to be stirred up by the storms of the tribunes and to sow quarrels with the senators in a city not their own, before pledges of wives and children and love of the very soil, to which one grows accustomed only over a long time, had united their hearts? 6The state, not yet grown to maturity, would have been torn apart by discord; but the calm moderation of the government cherished it, and by that nurture brought it to the point where, its strength now ripe, it could bear the good fruit of liberty.
7And you would reckon the origin of liberty to lie rather in the fact that the consuls' power was made annual than in any lessening of the royal authority. 7The first consuls kept all the rights and all the insignia; 8only this precaution was taken, that both should not have the fasces at once, lest the terror should seem doubled. 8Brutus, with his colleague's consent, had the fasces first; 8and he had been no keener as champion of liberty than he afterwards was as its guardian. 9First of all, so that the people, eager for their new liberty, could not later be swayed by the pleas or gifts of the kings, he bound them by an oath that they would allow no one to be king at Rome.
10Next, so that the full numbers of the order might also lend more strength to the senate, he made up the number of senators, which had been reduced by the king's killings, to a total of three hundred, choosing the leading men of equestrian rank; 11and from this, it is said, came the custom that those summoned to the senate were the Fathers and those who were Enrolled: those chosen, that is, the new senate, they called the Enrolled. 11It is remarkable how much this helped towards the harmony of the state and towards binding the hearts of the commons to the senators.