§1
Aristotle gives a most true warning in Politics V.4:
γίγνονται μὲν οὖν αἱ στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ μικρῶν.
Seditions arise not concerning small things, but from small things; for men disagree and excite seditions concerning great things. In these cases, nevertheless, you will observe that, when a small matter has kindled a great fire, it has generally arisen from the corrupt morals of the people, or that great contempt and wickedness were displayed in a small matter.
§2
Tarquinius was expelled from Rome because of his son’s adultery. The chastity of wives is not a small matter but a great one, for which it is right that a husband fight as for a sacred thing; yet amid the lusts of gentile and barbarian kings it was not esteemed so highly that Brutus and Collatinus, if this alone had been the crime, could have stirred Rome and Collatia. But they had been embittered by the king’s crime, pride, and tyranny. For Livy says of him in book I: “Then, conscious that from himself an example of seeking the kingship wickedly could be taken against himself, he surrounded his body with armed men; for he had no right to the kingship apart from force, since he reigned neither by command of the people nor with the senators as his sponsors. Added to this, since he placed no hope in the affection of the citizens, was the necessity of securing his kingdom by fear. In order to instill it in more persons, he conducted trials of capital charges by himself alone, without counselors. For that reason he was able to kill, drive into exile, and deprive of property not only those suspected and hated, but those from whom he could expect nothing other than plunder.” And when he was constructing the Capitol, the Great Sewer, and other works by the hands of the oppressed plebs, he was the object of great hatred, which lacked only an occasion.
Aristotle relates things not dissimilar. At Syracuse a tumult arose because of the crimes of two men, one of whom was guilty of adultery and the other of a more loathsome crime. But when each attached a part of the citizens to himself, they stirred up a sedition by which the form of the state was changed. Yet the sedition indicates the corrupt morals both of the magistrates and of the people: these fighting for adultery, those for παιδεραστία (pederasty). For in a vicious people, since each of the worst men is very prone to tumult, sedition arises most easily.
§3
At Histaea a sedition arose from a dispute between two brothers over the division of an inheritance, as Aristotle attests. For when the wealthier brother injured the other and detained the paternal property, the other, poor brother called the poor citizens to his aid, while the former called the wealthy; and a battle of the poor against the rich was produced, which would never have occurred if even a shadow of justice had appeared in the courts.
It is established from the history of the Delphic sedition that there was an appearance of right on both sides. The sedition of the Mytilenaeans, moreover, had its origin in the neglect of justice. Timophanes left two wealthy daughters surviving him; Doxander sought them in marriage for his sons, suffered a refusal, and stirred the Athenians to an impious war.
§4
The matter that made the consulship common to the plebs was also small: a sister married to a plebeian was mocked by her sister, who had entered a patrician house, because she was terrified at the unfamiliar sound of the lictor striking the door. Certainly that mockery would have had no power to produce a sedition if it had fallen in peaceful times of the state. But the tribunician disputes about making the consulship common to the plebs had already preceded it—
—and an author was being sought who would renew the contests that had been broken off.
§5
Suetonius, in his Augustus, reports a ludicrous cause of great danger. For when, at a spectacle of games, Augustus had ordered through an attendant that a common soldier sitting in the fourteen rows be made to rise, and a rumor had been spread by his detractors that he had soon afterward killed the same man under torture, he came within very little of perishing through the gathering and indignation of the military crowd. It was his salvation that the man who was being sought suddenly appeared, unharmed and without injury. From what a cause, small in appearance, did Philip the Macedonian perish! It was because he did not avenge an insult done to a young man. But it arose from a great fault and error of government, because the king, intent upon wars, was neglectful of justice and honor.
§6
Trebellius Pollio relates that Regillianus was made emperor by a joke. “For when,” he says, “certain soldiers were dining with him, Valerianus, a tribune, stood beside them and said, ‘From what do we believe the name Regillianus to be derived?’ Another immediately said, ‘We believe it, because it comes from regnum, kingship.’ Then a learned man who was present began, as though grammatically, to decline and say, ‘Rex, regis, regi, Regillianus—king, of a king, to a king, Regillianus.’ The soldiers, since mankind is very prone to those things which it is thinking, said, ‘Therefore can he be king?’ Likewise another: ‘Therefore can he rule us?’ Likewise another: ‘God has imposed upon you the name of king.’ Why say more? After these words, when he came forth on the following morning, he was hailed as emperor by the officers.” Thus jesting cleverness bestowed upon this man what either boldness or judgment bestowed upon others. It was plainly a ridiculous designation of a prince; but if you consider the condition of the state, you will understand that there was plainly nothing strange in the chief power being handled so lightly. For the soldiers regarded making and killing an emperor as a matter of sport. This was the time in which, under the rule of Gallienus, thirty tyrants tore apart the Roman world. By no dissimilar levity Claudius was once dragged forth and placed upon the throne while trembling and expecting death. And before this, two common soldiers undertook to transfer the Roman Empire, and transferred it, as Tacitus attests. Proculus was made emperor at dice: for when “emperor” had come up ten times, one man cried, “Hail, Augustus,” and the rest of the crowd, with similar madness, hailed him as emperor.
§7
Zosimus reports concerning Magnentius: “Magnentius, rising from the table as though for the sake of some necessary business, when he had withdrawn from the guests for a very short time, again presented himself for them to behold, wrapped in a royal robe as though upon a stage. There, when the guests had called him king, all the inhabitants of the city of Autun—where these things were done—likewise came to the same opinion. And because the fame of the matter extended farther, the rural plebs also streamed together from outside the city.” But the state was sick at that time, and the soldiery gained profit from sedition; otherwise the entire vicinity would have mocked the masquerading king. Now, advancing with great power, he inflicted great disasters.
§8
There are innumerable such cases. In a sportive contest at the castle of Treviso under Otto IV, when the Venetian standard was torn, a vast sedition was stirred up. At Florence, when the young men Donatus and Cerchi disturbed the horses of others at dances, the city received a great calamity from the tumult. But the causes had already preceded these incidents. For the minds of the Venetians and Italians had been embittered, and the factions of the Florentines thought any cause sufficient for oppressing their enemies. These, therefore, are signs of a state constituted in the worst manner: when states fall at the slightest impulse, it is proof that they had stood in a slippery place. For those things are prone to fall which, when an impediment has been taken away or any weight added to the other side, rush down.