Then, in the glory of his victories and his treasures, he exulted in insolent pride, and could neither regulate his own manners nor the passions of the members of his family.
When, therefore, his eldest son had offered violence to Lucretia, daughter of Tricipitinus and wife of Collatinus, and this chaste and noble lady had stabbed herself to death on account of the injury she could not survive--then a man eminent for his genius and virtue, Lucius Brutus, dashed from his fellow-citizens this unjust yoke of odious servitude; and though he was but a private man, he sustained the government of the entire Commonwealth, and was the first that taught the people in this State that no one was a private man when the preservation of our liberties was concerned.

Beneath his authority and command our city rose against tyranny, and, stirred by the recent grief of the father and relatives of Lucretia, and with the recollections of Tarquin's haughtiness, and the numberless crimes of himself and his sons, they pronounced sentence of banishment against him and his children, and the whole race of the Tarquins.
XXVI.

Do you not observe, then, how the king sometimes degenerates into the despot, and how, by the fault of one individual, a form of government originally good is abused to the worst of purposes?
Here is a specimen of that despot over the people whom the Greeks denominate a tyrant.

For, according to them, a king is he who, like a father, consults the interests of his people, and who preserves those whom he is set over in the very best condition of life.

This indeed is, as I have said, an excellent form of government, yet still liable, and, as it were, inclined, to a pernicious abuse.