For recollect what I said in commencing our discourse, that if there exists not in the State a just distribution and subordination of rights, offices, and prerogatives, so as to give sufficient domination to the chiefs, sufficient authority to the counsel of the senators, and sufficient liberty to the people, this form of the government cannot be durable.
For when the excessive debts of the citizens had thrown the State into disorder, the people first retired to Mount Sacer, and next occupied Mount Aventine.

And even the rigid discipline of Lycurgus could not maintain those restraints in the case of the Greeks.

For in Sparta itself, under the reign of Theopompus, the five magistrates whom they term Ephori, and in Crete ten whom they entitle Cosmi, were established in opposition to the royal power, just as tribunes were added among us to counterbalance the consular authority.
XXXIV.

There might have been a method, indeed, by which our ancestors could have been relieved from the pressure of debt, a method with which Solon the Athenian, who lived at no very distant period before, was acquainted, and which our senate did not neglect when, in the indignation which the odious avarice of one individual excited, all the bonds of the citizens were cancelled, and the right of arrest for a while suspended.

In the same way, when the plebeians were oppressed by the weight of the expenses occasioned by public misfortunes, a cure and remedy were sought for the sake of public security.