Like modern Americans, the Romans had a firm belief in liberty and a long-held hatred of tyranny. We are told they despised the word rex (king). Hatred of tyranny makes a lot of sense for a people who overthrew an oppressive authoritarian monarch. What makes less sense is that after centuries of republican government such people would tolerate the restoration of autocracy.

The Romans understood liberty (libertas) most basically to mean the opposite of servitude. If one was free, one was not enslaved. But this could also be stated another way—to be free meant not to have a master; and this definition can take on a broader metaphorical meaning when applied to the relationship between free citizens. The liberty of the Republic surely insisted on the idea that citizens were free from masters, but it also insisted that they were not free from each other. For the Romans, liberty meant being a free citizen in a community of other free citizens, such was the political system they set up when they drove out the last king. Liberty was a virtuous mean between the extremes of servility and flattery on the one hand and unrestrained dominance and license on the other. An individual could fall out of this mean in one of two ways. Oftentimes, the powerful were attracted to the strong form of freedom, which the Romans called domination (dominatio) or license (licentia), individual power which we often mistake as true freedom. License culminated in a behavior that sought to master and dominate one's fellow citizens by seeking for oneself freedom from all public constraint. Ambitious citizens looking to accrue enough political power for themselves to make themselves a master (dominus) over their fellow citizens became tyrannical, but the Republic, when healthy, found ways either to subdue this type of citizen or to create a more productive outlet for them that worked for the common good.

The other extreme for a citizen was to be drawn to the weak form of liberty, that is freely choosing servility (servitus) and flattery (adulatio) rather than liberty and its responsibilities. Such a citizen ostensibly made the free choice to enable the domineering citizen in order to receive short-term benefits. Such an exchange required the servitude of the enabling citizen. As Publilius Syrus, a Late Republican author of moral sayings, wrote, “To receive a benefit (beneficium) is to sell your freedom (libertas).”