Leviathan
affirms the politics to be no ancienter than his book "De Cive." Such
also as have got any fame in the civil government of a commonwealth, or
by the leading of its armies, have been gentlemen; for so in all other
respects were those plebeian magistrates elected by the people of Rome,
being of known descents and of equal virtues, except only that they were
excluded from the name by the usurpation of the patricians. Holland,
through this defect at home, has borrowed princes for generals, and
gentlemen of divers nations for commanders: and the Switzers, if they
have any defect in this kind, rather lend their people to the colors
of other princes, than make that noble use of them at home which should
assert the liberty of mankind. For where there is not a nobility to
hearten the people, they are slothful, regardless of the world, and of
the public interest of liberty, as even those of Rome had been without
their gentry: wherefore let the people embrace the gentry in peace, as
the light of their eyes; and in war, as the trophy of their arms; and if
Cornelia disdained to be Queen of Egypt, if a Roman consul looked down
from his tribunal upon the greatest king, let the nobility love and
cherish the people that afford them a throne so much higher in a
commonwealth, in the acknowledgment of their virtue, than the crowns of
monarchs.

But if the equality of a commonwealth consist in the equality first
of the agrarian, and next of the rotation, then the inequality of a
commonwealth must consist in the absence or inequality of the agrarian,
or of the rotation, or of both.

Israel and Lacedaemon, which commonwealths (as the people of this, in
Josephus, claims kindred of that) have great resemblance, were each of
them equal in their agrarian, and unequal in their rotation, especially
Israel, where the Sanhedrim, or Senate, first elected by the people, as
appears by the words of Moses, took upon them ever after, without any
precept of God, to substitute their successors by ordination; which
having been there of civil use, as excommunication, community of goods,
and other customs of the Essenes, who were many of them converted, came
afterward to be introduced into the Christian Church. And the election
of the judge, suffes, or dictator, was irregular, both for the occasion,
the term, and the vacation of that magistracy. As you find in the book
of Judges, where it is often repeated, that in those days there was no
king in I