The most important antithesis of Sparta since the eighteenth century has of course been Athens. The comparison of Athens and Sparta is also a constant and important feature of ancient Greek and Roman sources. But during the period between 1500-1700 the most important comparison for the understanding of Sparta was that with Rome. The comparison between Athens and Sparta has tended to oppose them in almost all issues examined. But the comparison between Sparta and Rome is much more complicated. For, as we shall see, there are cases in which Rome and Sparta will appear to be very different from each other and to suggest very different alternatives on offer; at the same time, we shall see cases in which Rome and Sparta appear very similar.

The chapters of Rousseau’s *Social Contract* devoted to republican Rome prescribe institutions that obstruct popular efforts at diminishing the excessive power and influence of wealthy citizens and political magistrates. I argue that Rousseau reconstructs ancient Rome’s constitution in direct opposition to the more democratic and anti-elitist model of the Roman Republic championed by Machiavelli in the *Discourses*: Rousseau eschews the establishment of magistracies, like the tribunes, reserved for common citizens exclusively, and endorses assemblies where the wealthy are empowered to outvote the poor in lawmaking and elections. On the basis of sociologically anonymous principles like generality and popular sovereignty, and by confining elite accountability to general elections, Rousseau’s neo-Roman institutional proposals aim to pacify the contestation of class hierarchies and inflate elite prerogative within republics—under the cover of more formal, seemingly more genuine, equality.

This influential article explains what the Constitution means by "republican Form of Government" in the Guarantee Clause. Although some have argued that the Guarantee Clause restricts state use of direct democracy, this article finds that that claim was a merely a product of a 19th century political battle, and that it has no substantial founding-era basis.

I argue for the originality and interest of Cicero’s views on the stability of political communities. After a survey of ancient ideas on the mixed constitution (the framework for thinking about the stability of political communities in the ancient world), I show how Cicero adapted these ideas to analyze the Roman situation of his time. Cicero’s version of the theory of the mixed constitution is notable for two innovations: an argument that stability is possible even under conditions of high inequality, and an account of constitutional mixture that emphasizes the role of the “monarchic” element in promoting concord and stability and meeting unexpected challenges. I show, however, that this account unfortunately made it clear that the Roman crisis of Cicero’s time was more or less insoluble in ways that would preserve the republic.

In Thucydides' History, Pericles gives the funeral oration for the first of the Athenian war dead, and he calls the living to arms by praising their way of life. In Athens, he says,''In the same men there is concern both for their own affairs and at the same time for those of their fellow citizens, and those who are busy with their work know enough about public affairs, for we alone think that the man who takes no part in public affairs is not unbusied [apragmon] but useless [achreios]''(Thuc. 2.40. 2).

I argue that an ambiguity exists between Philip Pettit's largely normative and Quentin Skinner's largely historical accounts of republican liberty. Historical republican liberty, as seen in Livy's narrative of the period following the expulsion of the Roman kings to the passage of the Licinian-Sextian laws, was largely defensive, in the form of the tribunate. Though republican liberty protected the plebeians from wanton patrician abuse, removing them from a formal dependence analogous to that of slave or child in Roman law, it left them under the tutelage and guidance of a paternalistic order. Thus, while historical republican liberty was anti-patriarchal, it was normatively compatible with paternalism. Yet paternalism is probably undesirable for both normatively- and historically-minded advocates of republicanism