The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Introduction
• A.: Editions
• B.: Dates of Composition and Publication
• I.: The First Edition
• II.: The Second Edition
• C.: Historical Setting
• I.: ‘anarchy and Confusion’
• II.: ‘aierie Modells’
• D.: Milton’s Ideal Republic
• E.: Two Formative Influences
• I.: Mediæval Republican Thought
• II.: The Rota Club
• F.: Sources
• I.: Scriptural Authority and Illustration
• II.: Classical Precedent
• 1.: Greek Commonwealth-theory
• 2.: The Roman Republic and Its Expounders
• III.: Modern Political Theorists
• 1.: Machiavelli
• 2.: Bodin
• 3.: Miscellaneous Contributors
• G.: Style
• H.: Significance
• The Text a Reproduction of the First Edition With Variants From the Second Edition
• Editor’s Note
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
• Glossary
• Appendices
• A.: the Process of Revision
• B.: Contemporary Criticism

2.

The Roman Republic and Its Expounders

Hardly less profoundly was Milton influenced by the history of the illustrious republic of Rome. The influence, however, was largely one of national character and political institutions, for in the province of original political philosophy the Roman contribution had been small. It was the history of that liberty-loving people, who, deposing their kings, flourished for five hundred years as a republic; the matchless spirit of the Romans, who were ‘in a manner all fit to be kings’; their august, perpetual senate, their check-device of the tribunes: it was these elements of Roman greatness that appealed most strongly to Milton at this time, as exemplifying the feasibility and superiority of an aristocratic republic.

But the Roman republic, although it imported its politics from Greece, was not quite without expounders. There were Cicero, with his Republic and Laws, and Polybius, and Justinian; from each of whom Milton seems to have gleaned ideas that were to reappear later in modified form in his own republic. Like Milton, Cicero had striven ‘at all hazard’ to uphold the tottering and already doomed structure of a republic, having voluntarily resigned the ‘diversified sweetness’ of his studies to oppose himself ‘almost alone to the tempests and torrents of sedition, for the sake of preserving the state’¹ —an utterance that seems to have colored Milton’s own declaration of motives. Like Milton again, Cicero professed to be a practical statesman; but he openly modeled his treatises upon Plato’s Republic and Laws. Naturally, therefore, most of his ideas are of no importance as sources. Yet there is a certain remainder, peculiarly his own, which did exercise a direct influence upon the shaping of The Ready and Easy Way. For example, Milton expressly acknowledges the power of Cicero’s beautiful and eloquent statement of the law of nature (see note on 10. 40).

It is probable that Milton’s idea of ‘balance’ was derived from, or confirmed by, the exposition of the Roman system of checks and balances, as found in Polybius. The Commonplace Book shows that he took notes from Justinian on natural and civil law. We know that Milton derived from Augustine the opinion that magistrates are really servants. The De Civitate Dei left other traces upon The Ready and Easy Way. It is certain that this was one source of the idea that kings should not presume to rule over men (see note on 19. 14).

III.

Modern Political Theorists

[1 ]De Republica, tr. Barham, 1. 148.