For as soon as a king assumes an unjust and despotic power, he instantly becomes a tyrant, than which nothing baser or fouler, than which no imaginable animal can be more detestable to gods or men; for though in form a man, he surpasses the most savage monsters in ferocious cruelty.

For who can justly call him a human being, who admits not between himself and his fellow-countrymen, between himself and the whole human race, any communication of justice, any association of kindness?
But we shall find some fitter occasion of speaking of the evils of tyranny when the subject itself prompts us to declare against them who, even in a state already liberated, have affected these despotic insolencies.
XXVII.

Such is the first origin and rise of a tyrant.

For this was the name by which the Greeks choose to designate an unjust king; and by the title king our Romans universally understand every man who exercises over the people a perpetual and undivided domination.

Thus Spurius Cassius, and Marcus Manlius, and Spurius Maelius, are said to have wished to seize upon the kingly power, and lately [Tiberius Gracchus incurred the same accusation].[324] * * * XXVIII.