Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/364

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AVING in the foregoing chapter confined myself to the proceedings of the commons only, by the method of impeachments against particular persons, with the fatal effects they had upon the state of Athens; I shall now treat of the dissensions at Rome, between the people and the collective body of the patricians or nobles. It is a large subject, but I shall draw it into as narrow a compass as I can.

As Greece, from the most ancient accounts we have of it, was divided into several kingdoms, so was most part of Italy into several petty commonwealths. And as those kings in Greece are said to have been deposed by their people upon the score of their arbitrary proceedings, so, on the contrary, the commonwealths of Italy were all swallowed up, and concluded in the tyranny of the Roman emperors. However, the differences between those Grecian monarchies, and Italian republicks, were not very great: for, by the account Homer gives us of those Grecian princes who came to the siege of Troy, as well as by several passages in the Odyssey, it is manifest, that the power of these princes in their several states was much of a size with