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The Polish Nobility’s “Golden Freedom”: On the
Ancient Roots of a Political Idea
JAKUB FILONIK
5
ABSTRACT This essay traces the Greek and Roman roots of Polish sixteenth- to eighteenth-century
political thought by discussing the Polish nobility’s concept of the “Golden Freedom” (L. aurea libertas).
By focusing on the Roman and the Greek concepts of liberty and the mixed constitution, it argues that the
Golden Freedom, a notion central to the Polish-Lithuanian nobility’s self-identification, was based on
10Roman political ideals and practices that were incompatible with the political reality of the
Commonwealth.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is usually associated with the practice of
liberum veto (in Polish Nie pozwalam!) and the “Sarmatian” dispute rather than with the
15
rich range of its political thought. Established by the Union of Lublin in 1569, the
Commonwealth enjoyed a Golden Age in the early seventeenth century and was then
virtually annihilated by the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. Yet the Common-
wealth survived as a political entity for over two centuries despite the political and
social changes that beset it.
1
Within this period, there emerged a set of political values
20
of the enfranchised nobility that has bequeathed to us a considerable number of
sources, including political and moral writings, which are not studied or discussed as
often as the political practice of this period. The aim of this essay is first to analyze
how the pivotal ideal of the Golden Freedom invoked its Roman republican roots and
then to clarify how this ideal differed from both the Roman and the Greek concepts
25
of freedom, a point that is only cursorily treated in the history of ideas.
The Polish culture of the Commonwealth, often referred to as “Sarmatism” (or
“Sarmatianism”), the word used by the nobility to describe themselves as the descen-
dants of the ancient Sarmatians, is probably best known from Jan Chryzostom Pasek’s
diaries (c. 1636–1701) and Wacław Potocki’s poetry (c. 1621–96). The nobility’s
30
socio-political identity thus developed from the peculiar myth of origins referring to
the belligerent tribe that throughout antiquity inhabited southwestern Asia and parts of
the Balkans (ancient Scythia). Situated on the dividing line of East and West, this
Department of Classical Studies, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmies
´cie 1, 00-047 Warsaw, Poland. Email:
jakub.filonik@uw.edu.pl
©2015 International Society for the Study of European Ideas
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ancestry gave them a sense of a conservative yet new identity as opposed to Western
civilization and the idea of modernity.
2
5In their political writings and public debates the nobility often referred to the
republican origins of their moral and political ideals and values, although the so-called
“Nobles’ Commonwealth” differed significantly from the Roman res publica. While
the former constituted a mixture of a monarchic and aristocratic constitution with
some oligarchic elements, including the occasional ennoblement of the wealthy, the
10 latter was an oligarchy with some democratic features,
3
even if the regal aspect of the
consuls had already been recognized in antiquity.
4
Thus a select number of political
values of the Roman Republic, with its civitas,libertas, and political obligations, were
gradually adopted and domesticated by early modern political thinkers since the
growth of Florentine and Venetian Republics, but more so during the Renaissance
15 with the publication of Machiavelli’s works.
5
Behind the practice of restricting the
power of the king within an elective, constitutional monarchy (based on King Henry’s
Articles of 1573), and the right to oppose any new law by a deputy to one of the
houses of parliament before it was even passed (liberum veto), there stood the tradition
of the Polish nobility’s Golden Liberty (L. aurea libertas, Pol. Złota Wolnos
´
c
´
).
20 The Commonwealth’s political ideals of liberty and equality differ from the
democratic ideals of the present day, as generally elitist, or “oligarchic”. The enfran-
chised szlachta constituted only about eight percent of the Commonwealth’s popula-
tion, which was nevertheless much higher than in other contemporary European
states.
6
Thus the freedom of the citizens was praised as something unique and not to
25 be found anywhere else (except for Venice). It was believed to have been achieved
militarily by the “virtuous ancestors” and to have been defended by the “courageous
King.” Stanisław Konarski (1700–73), for example, referred to Aristotle in stating that
“if freedom is innate in animals, even more so it is true for humans,” although he
believed it had been granted to humans by “the Creator.”
7
30 The classical education of the Polish nobility was based on the works of Cicero,
Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch, who were particularly popular in the court of King
Sigismund II Augustus. From the eighteenth century onwards it became fashionable to
refer to Montesquieu, the leading Enlightenment political philosopher, in relation to
the decline of the Roman Republic, and to the “last republicans,” Cato the Younger,
35 Cassius, and Brutus, as the “defenders of freedom.” Yet within these trends, there
were several contradictory aspects in the political thought of the period. Stanisław
Orzechowski (1513–66), for instance, praised aurea libertas while simultaneously wor-
shipping the Polish king and his absolute authority over his subjects as coming from
God.
8
Still, not all the nobles accepted wholeheartedly the supremacy of the king, and
40 their fear of the king’s power becoming too great, so common in the republican tradi-
tion, shaped at least partly the political thought of the time. Konarski, despite his fer-
vent criticism of the liberum veto and the radical forms of Sarmatism, summed this up
by saying that in Poland there is a constant tension inter maiestatem et libertatem,
“between royal sovereignty and freedom.”
9
45 Some, however, were more critical of the gentry’s entrenched belief in the lib-
erum veto tradition, having noticed its disastrous repercussions. Early in the history of
the Commonwealth, Stanisław Sokołowski (1536–93) considered “the true Catholic
freedom” the highest good and the fundament of justice, in principle closely linked to
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equality; he insisted on its connections with the laws of God and the laws of the state,
5
while turning against the anarchic freedom of the gentry.
10
According to Szymon
Starowolski (1588–1653), the main fault in the Polish tradition of free speech was that
it allowed criticism of the clergy and religion.
11
This evaluation of the freedom of the
gentry did not always meet with applause. Stanisław Papczyn
´ski’s (1631–1701) cri-
tique, for example, turned against his own freedom of expression when, following the
10
public outcry it had caused, he was forced to remove the introduction to the first edi-
tion of his treatise.
12
Apart from liberty, the nobility commended lawfulness, religious tolerance, and
class and state autonomy.
13
One of its highest values was the Roman notion of virtus
itself (“manliness,” “excellence,” or “virtue” in general). In legal terms, religious free-
15
dom was established by the Warsaw Confederation of 1573. The enfranchised class
enjoyed various privileges, including, among others, personal inviolability (neminem
captivabimus nisi iure victum, the 1433 variant of habeas corpus), a say on the bills passed
by the Sejm (nihil novi nisi commune consensu, 1505), and the inviolability of property
without a juridical sentence (the Privilege of Czerwin
´sk of 1422), all of which were
20
part of the pacta conventa (1573–1764). The nobility praised this particular form of
political equilibrium, summed up in Jan Zamoyski’s statement: “the king reigns, but
does not govern” (rex regnat et non gubernat). Though Latin, as the sources testify, was
widely used as the second language of the privileged class, with the Latin words often
being used to refer to the most important political concepts, in practice it was known
25
to varying degrees. But there was more at stake in the discourse on libertas than knowl-
edge of ancient sources, for in the minds of the better educated nobles the concept of
freedom was necessarily connected to the roots of the term—the Roman Republic
and its political ideals. Thus from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the notion
of aurea libertas constantly developed from the “old Polish” to the “Enlightenment”
30
ideal, though as a political concept it retained the same meaning.
However, the political reality of the Roman Republic, from the late sixth to the
mid-first century BCE, was of course quite different from that of the Polish Common-
wealth. The various changes in the separation of powers between the patricians and
plebeians throughout the period gave rise to a highly hierarchical society in which
35
groups of citizens and institutions enjoyed different levels of political power with a
somewhat fragile balance between them. While the Senate, consisting of the elite
members of Roman society, could pass motions (senatus consulta), the popular assem-
blies passed laws (leges). The Senate itself was hierarchal, and the structure of the
assemblies did not allow for any free discussion to precede or follow the vote,
14
so that
40
in fact no political body in the Republic enjoyed true freedom of speech. The
cooperation between the magistrates (elected from the ruling elite), the Senate, and
the popular assemblies (comitia and concilia plebis) thus formed the Roman version of a
“mixed constitution,” with the poorest citizens in the assemblies voting last and their
vote lacking any political significance if a majority had already been achieved.
15
Even
45
Polybius, who praised the Roman constitution, believed that as early as the Second
Punic War in the late third century BCE, it was already dominated by the Senate as
the aristocratic or partially oligarchic element. Access to administrative positions such
as high magistracies was limited to the propertied class or to the descendants of the
propertied equestrian order, which though growing in numbers was probably still less
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5than ten percent of the total adult male citizen population before the second century
BCE.
16
What can be inferred from this is the extent to which in both Republican
Rome and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth politics as a profession was open to
the free wealthy men of high social standing.
Despite these political constraints, those who did not belong to the elite managed
10 to secure certain shared rights—as was the case in many ancient states—by the appeal
to what was called provocation, such as the protection against (1) conviction without a
proper trial; (2) flogging; and (3) other forms of unjust prosecution (nulla poena sine
iudicio). Thus the freedom of the lower classes of citizens depended on safeguarding
their individual rights by a set of checks imposed on the ruling elite, which also
15 accounts for the creation of the tribunate as a special magistracy to represent the poor.
Both the appeal to provocatio and the auxilium (the support of the tribune against abuse
by people’s social superiors) were referred to as duae arces libertatis tuendae, “the two
strongholds protecting liberty,”
17
and thus formed the Roman concept of the “free-
dom of the people” (libertas populi), as advocated by the “popular” politicians (popu-
20 lares). On the other hand, slaves had very few rights, if any, and were considered the
property of their master.
18
Still, many slaves were manumitted in this period, and the
Aristotelian notion of natural slavery was alien to Roman republican thought, which
had been much influenced by Stoic philosophy.
19
In the Roman Republic, however, libertas was not an innate right, but was early
25 identified with the rights and duties of civitas, or citizenship.
20
Citizenship was univer-
sally passed on to new subjects, unlike in the Greek poleis with their large number of
alien residents who were generally deprived of citizen rights. Thus, by the end of the
Roman Republic in the first century CE, all non-slave adult males became “free citi-
zens” de iure. Still, in Rome the notion of libertas remained in the shadow of dignitas,
30 “social standing” and auctoritas, “influence,” which members of the elite could acquire
by offering advice in the Senate or assembly or by gaining political and military suc-
cess.
21
This created certain social tensions within Roman society, which was so differ-
ently structured from many Greek poleis, Athens included, where all citizens enjoyed
equal rights of political participation (though not necessarily equal opportunities).
35 The ideal of libertas depended on the republican form of the Roman state and
was regularly juxtaposed with the power of a monarch as one who ruled his subjects
like a master over slaves. A markedly similar antithesis was found in the anti-tyrannical
ethos of the Greek aristocracy at least from the sixth century BCE.
22
Yet freedom
understood primarily as the absence of domination should be regarded as a modern lib-
40 eral concept. For the Greek democrats (pace anti-democratic Greek polemics), and
even more so for the Roman republicans, freedom meant obeying the laws of the
state, beyond which it merely denoted licentia, or “disorderliness.”
23
Thus there
emerged two coinciding meanings and ideals of liberty, the plebeian freedom from
domination of one’s superiors and the elite freedom of equal participation in the strug-
45 gle for power. For both groups libertas meant, however, the “protection against (exces-
sive) power, force, ambition, and arbitrariness” by law and justice, lex et ius.By
contrast, in Greece—in Kurt Raaflaub’s words—”freedom gained political importance
in connection… with… the community’s collective freedom from outside oppres-
sion.”
24
After some time, libertas became so much part of Roman identity that Caesar,
50 while fighting the Pompeians, portrayed himself as the defender of civic libertas, as did
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his slayers.
25
It was even worshipped as a goddess, with temples dedicated to Libertas
on the Aventine Hill and Palatine Hill in Rome.
Although religious syncretism was one of the emerging characteristics of the
Republic, from the second century BCE onwards religious freedom suffered several
5
blows starting with the new law against “conspiracies” passed in 186, the Senatus con-
sultum de Bacchanalibus,
26
which prohibited the “Dionysiac” festivals celebrated outside
the city by restricting the number of people allowed to gather at these rites to two
men or to three women. In practice, this meant penalizing all unofficial cults and
assemblies, which led to the deaths of hundreds of people who had violated the new
10
law.
27
But although Roman state religion was controlled by the priest-magistrates and
citizens were expected to worship in officially sanctioned rites, and although in theory
there was no concept of “religious freedom,” in practice—and depending on the cir-
cumstances—numerous foreign cults found acceptance in Rome, notwithstanding
some infamous counterexamples.
15
Apart from the ancient roots of aurea libertas, one cannot overlook the modern
roots of the European ideal of liberty that grew out of the political thought of the
Italian medieval maritime republics,
28
the Renaissance, and the French and American
Revolutions.
29
These influences were all closely linked to the Roman republican
tradition with its often idealized practice, while being at the same time opposed to the
20
Athenian way of doing politics.
30
Various aspects of this long tradition were acknowl-
edged in modern Europe in general and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in
particular, along with the Christian concept of man’s free will, especially as defined in
Augustine’s liberum arbitrium voluntatis, which was variously interpreted by different
schools of thought.
25
It is important to stress that the Polish nobility did not choose the Roman
Republic as its model of political organization and thought merely on account of
superficial cultural sentiments. The role of the Roman republican model in the politi-
cal tradition of the educated (anti-royalist, moderately oligarchic) European elites,
which were often critical of the Athenian democratic model, has been widely recog-
30
nized since the Renaissance. Thus because it was closer to an oligarchic system than a
democratic one, Rome was a more fitting point of reference for Italian “republicans”
and the Polish nobility than Athens.
31
Out of the Greek poleis, it was oligarchic Sparta,
not Athens, that was most highly spoken of in the Commonwealth, as were the pro-
oligarchic and pro-Spartan Greek authors, in particular Plato. In its core, it was proba-
35
bly Aristotle’s thought that most influenced later European political thinkers, who
referred to it indirectly in their debates on the mixed constitution by an intermediary
which they found in Cicero (both authors regarded democratic rule as corrupt).
Plutarch’s historical exempla and those of later anti-democratic biographers further
extended and reinforced this position according to which Athenian democracy,
40
because it was driven by an irrational mob that was incapable of obeying the law, was
rejected as a political model for contemporary or future states. Incidentally, this dis-
obedience to the law was contrary to the political ideals of the Greek democrats them-
selves, who regarded freedom, democracy, and the rule of law as interconnected, a fact
which escaped the attention of most readers of Plato and Aristotle.
32
45
The Athenian democratic ideal of freedom (eleutheria), based on equal citizen par-
ticipation, was rejected by elitist thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, for whom it was
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simply a form of intemperance (akolasia) and anarchy.
33
In the Roman Republic,
individual liberty likewise was not called freedom, but disorderliness, and was therefore
perceived as the opposite of freedom (licentia, similar to the Greek akolasia
34
). The
5importance of the moral values associated with social order, discipline, decent conduct
and obedience was so great that the highest public official in the state—the censor—
was entrusted with the authority to oversee them.
35
Yet the Polish elite’s perception of antiquity was overall simplistic. Thus, for
example, seventeenth-century Polish political thinkers emphasized the evolutionary
10 process that had led to the establishment of the Commonwealth, while in Sparta and
Athens—they asserted—freedom was given by the first lawgivers, an obvious historical
fiction.
36
It was the authors of the Roman era, particularly Plutarch,
37
who were partly
to be blamed for spreading this fiction by recounting and repeating the stories about
earlier Greeks and their “myths of origins.”
38
Stanisław Karwicki-Dunin and, later,
15 Jo
´zef Wybicki saw this evolutionary model as one of the main weaknesses of the Pol-
ish “Republic”, since, in their view, it lacked the authority of the single lawgiver and
thus the posited stability and uniformity of ancient constitutions.
39
Furthermore, the
nature of the Greek polis was constantly confused with that of the Roman state, which
only encouraged oversimplifying comparisons and misguided conclusions.
20 It is generally assumed that the republican model of liberty, both in Roman and
our current political thought, is based not only on the principle of non-domination
but also on certain civil values, or what is now called “virtue politics.”
40
This concep-
tion of liberty is customarily opposed to more individualistic schools of thought, par-
ticularly liberalism, and to certain individual rights that are central to democratic
25 political thought. One could note, however, that such issues were already debated by
the Romans and were much influenced by Cicero’s views of the Greek polis.
41
Liberty
was thus—and continues to be—a much disputed concept, not least reflected in the
discussions centered around Isaiah Berlin’s division between the negative and positive
freedom.
42
30 As Cicero put it, liberty rests on laws, to which “we have to be slaves”
43
in order
to be free.
44
This has been commonly associated with republicanism yet it constituted
a vital part of both ancient democratic ethos and modern liberal thought. Note John
Locke’s famous saying:
So that however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but
35 to preserve and enlarge freedom. … For liberty is to be free from restraint and vio-
lence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we are
told, “a liberty for every man to do what he lists.”
45
This ideal of “liberty by law” was adopted by Polish political thinkers already in the
sixteenth century. What the republican model meant for the Polish nobility was not
40 simply that one could do everything that the laws did not forbid, but rather that one
should take an active role as a citizen, acting in accordance with a set of political and
ethical values that often conflicted with the goals of the individual, on the assumption
that the interest of the state was superior to individual desire.
46
Having adopted this anti-monarchist notion of liberty, the Polish nobility could
45 only envisage it as part of a “republican” state, and so tended to believe that they were
actually living in one, despite the fact that they accepted the wide powers of the king
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over his subjects. They emphasized the idea of the monarchia mixta—consisting of the
king, Senate, and Sejm (the nobles’ assembly)—and connected it mainly with
Aristotle’s theory of the mixed constitution and its afterlife in Polybius and Cicero.
5
For example, in his treatise dedicated to King Sigismund II Augustus, Wawrzyniec
Gos
´licki (c. 1530–1607) praised this kind of mixed constitution, calling the gentry
populus and ordo popularis, and thus excluding most of the population from the order of
the state: for, he stated, “the peasants, artisans, and all this sort of people” should not
be enfranchised at all, being unworthy of political freedom.
47
This was based on the
10
traditionally elitist view, which had been eagerly adopted by European republican
thought and was evidently based on the Greek tradition, primarily on Aristotle, yet
present in Greek thinking long before him. According to this view, the banausoi (“the
craftsmen”) along with the demos (the “plebs”) were by definition unworthy of partici-
pating in political life. In upholding such sentiments, the various Polish writers during
15
the Commonwealth were thus simply repeating what they had learned at the universi-
ties of Ko
¨nigsberg, Wittenberg, Bologna, Padua, and more rarely at Paris.
Several decades after Gos
´licki, Aaron Alexander Olizarovius (1618–59) offered a
more progressive view in his treatise on the political writings of Jean Bodin, in which
he conceded that in the ideal republic the peasants should indeed be considered free
20
men rather than slaves (whereas, his contemporary, Łukasz Opalin
´ski took the opposite
view). Olizarovius, however, also argued that political power had moral, rather than
merely accidental or military, historical foundations, which was why subjects should
obey their king so long as their personal freedom was respected.
48
Not much later,
Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro (c. 1620–79) defended the liberum veto and the weighted
25
vote, saying that it is wiser to follow the opinion of few “eminent” individuals since
the principle of equality only leads to discord.
49
It is no less interesting to observe how
the Latinized Greek terms were rendered by early seventeenth-century Polish political
thinkers. The anonymous author of the short treatise Libera respublica quae sit?, while
speaking of the three major elements in the Polish constitution, explicitly connected
30
libertas with his social class and translated monarchia as “the King,” aristocratia as “the
Senate,” and, curiously enough, democratia as “the knightly order,” that is, the privi-
leged few constituting the gentry.
50
With respect to the idea of the mixed constitution, it is Aristotle who is consid-
ered the father of its more developed ancient version in that he was the first to explic-
35
itly connect the pivotal elements of various types of constitutions into a new political
entity (timocracy, viz. “the rule of the esteemed,” or politeia), the worst of his “best
constitutions”, but the best of what he deemed realistically possible. Many of
Aristotle’s ideas derived not only from Plato, but also from earlier Greek discussions
on government. It is highly improbable, however, that the Polish nobility read
40
Aristotle’s works in Greek; more probably, they knew his works in their far-from-
accurate Latin translations and citations in various authors who “quoted”, or rather
paraphrased them in Latin. His deliberations in the Politics are perhaps not to be under-
stood as always consistent, for they are most likely merely notes for his pupils in the
Lyceum which were left unedited and included numerous arguments for and against
45
particular political systems, rather than clear-cut examples of “correct” or “deviant”
constitutions.
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Thus Aristotle’s ideas on the mixed constitution as presented in the Politics and
Nicomachean Ethics were universally debated throughout ancient, medieval, and modern
times (with some gaps in between).
51
His concept of politeia referred to a mixture of
5democratic and oligarchic elements, the “rule of the hoplite class,” which we may take
as the “middle class” (hoi mesoi, viz. “those in the middle”), and thus positioned in
between the wealthy and the poor.
52
However, the Greeks themselves, both Aristotle’s
companions from the Athenian elite and the Greek democrats, would probably have
considered such a state as an oligarchy. We, on the other hand, would probably call it a
10 republic, given that it was not based on property qualification, but at the same time
rested upon the elections (an anti-democratic notion for the Greeks, who connected
democracy with allocation by lot). Furthermore, Aristotle emphasized that the ethical
and political aim of the state, that is true happiness (eudaimonia), was closely linked to
the welfare and flourishing of its individual citizens.
53
15 The Greek historian Polybius wrote among other things about the rise of the
Roman Republic as the dominant power in the Mediterranean in the second century
BCE. He praised the features that ensured its stability as a form of government, and
found them in the Roman concept of the mixed constitution with the “middle men”
as its basis.
54
Some of his ideas were further developed by Cicero, whose works
20 became the main source on the mixed constitution for both medieval and modern
European politicians and political thinkers, including those of the Polish Common-
wealth.
55
Though influenced by Greek literature and philosophy, Stoicism and Middle
Platonism in particular, Cicero did not lay much emphasis on the inclusion of philo-
sophical ideals in Roman politics, but rather praised and idealized—just like most
25 Roman political thinkers—traditional republican morality, and referred to “virtue” as
the only true good.
56
Neither the Stoics nor the Platonists put much stress on political
freedom, and thus we should understand Cicero’s ideal of liberty as rooted in Roman
political practice and republican principles of civic life, rather than in the theoretical
foundations of political philosophy.
30 Cicero exhibited great interest in the concept of mixed constitution,
57
following
the Peripatetic school and Aristotle’s concept of “excellence” (or “virtue,” Gr. arete,L.
virtus) in political life, the purpose of which Aristotle defined as the “good life.”
58
Cicero developed his political ideas mainly in The Republic and On Obligations,in
which he followed Roman republican thought.
59
Thus in the Republic, Cicero praised,
35 through the character of Scipio the Younger, the mixed constitution and its perfect
fulfillment in the history of the Roman Republic.
60
He wrote this work in the late
50s, after the First Triumvirate, when the delicate equilibrium of power and liberty
placed republicanism under immediate danger, and contrasted this form of government
with the rule of a monarch or the aristocracy, both of which do not follow the letter
40 of the law and exclude the common people from public affairs.
61
While Aristotle regarded the “middle class” as the foundation of a well-ordered
state of equal citizens, Cicero dealt only with the politically active Roman elite. He
was not particularly concerned with the equestrian “middle class” but mainly with
how to balance the conflicting interests of all social orders. It appears that, like
45 Aristotle, Cicero believed that every order seeks a different principle in political life
and this principle is libertas mainly for the non-elite.
62
The new concept of freedom
that emerges from his work, which had been praised by earlier thinkers and thus
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informed both the Greek and the Roman concept, was aequa libertas, the interconnec-
tion of freedom and equality, which could only be guaranteed and promoted by
5
republican laws that applied equally to all citizens.
63
This is exactly why monarchy was
regarded by many political thinkers as a corrupt political order,
64
even though Cicero
himself believed that complete political equality should be ruled out since it could not
preserve dignitas, the person’s social standing crucial to the Roman republican model.
Cicero’s works, particularly the Philippics and Catilinarian Orations, were, of course, an
10
essential part of the classical curriculum in Latin-speaking Europe. Based on his
speeches—the most probable source to his career and thought available to the Polish
nobility—he appeared to be the last defender of the Old Republic, with its ideals of
liberty, integrity, and order.
Another Roman whose historiosophical work influenced early modern political
15
thinkers was Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–35 BCE), a follower of Julius Caesar of non-
elite background, particularly his ideas on the moral principle of “ancestral customs”
(mores maiorum), which, he argued, the Republic had failed to live up to. Sallust
believed that the decline of the Republic was a natural consequence of deviating from
the moral way of life cherished by the ancestors.
65
This view was typical of the
20
Roman elite, which “interpreted political success and failure in uncompromisingly
moral terms,”
66
while often referring to the elusive mos maiorum. The tendency to look
up to the “great past” and “great ancestors” appears on the one had to be a common
topos, an almost universal human sentiment, yet on the other, to be a specifically aristo-
cratic and conservative notion. The latter lays particular emphasis on how the sense of
25
identity of a society depends on its perception of and attitude to its past, as illustrated
by the elite groups in a variety of societies and cultures referring to posited family
bloodlines and ‘ancestral laws’. The same principle of the crucial importance of tradi-
tion appears to have inspired the self-identification of the Polish “Sarmatians” and
Lithuanian “Scythians,” seeing that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
30
turies, there was a prevailing belief that the Poles had abandoned their mores maiorum,
which had in turn provoked the crisis of the Res Publica.
67
The political views of Titus Livius (59 BCE–17 CE), a friend of Augustus writing
mostly under the Principate, are more complex and thus more often disputed than the
earlier views discussed. In short, while he retained the anti-royalist emphasis in his
35
view of libertas as a principle lying between domination and servitude, he at the same
time significantly downplayed its republican character.
68
In fifteenth-century Poland,
his History of Rome (Ab urbe condita) was so popular that by the following century many
started drawing parallels between the Roman Republic and the Polish Common-
wealth. Another writer whose works were a constant source on “human nature” and
40
the dangers of absolute power was Cornelius Tacitus (56–117 CE), who—though not
a fervent republican—was an attentive observer of the political life of the early Roman
Empire. From a single remark by him it can be inferred to what degree the Romans
believed libertas to be an anti-monarchist value, even though by his time it was merely
a relic of the past with little political weight in the imperial Rome.
69
He states, in the
45
opening pages of his Annales: “The city of Rome from the beginning was reigned by
the kings. Lucius Brutus instituted freedom and consulship” (libertatem et consulatum L.
Brutus instituit).
70
For Tacitus, while libertas retains its earlier meaning of non-slavery
and absence of monarchic rule, it must be restrained by moderatio.
71
Moreover, not
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only did he not actively oppose imperial rule but he argued that such opposition was
5no more than a “foolish parade of freedom” (inanis iactatio libertatis).
72
He thought
Emperor Vespasian and Emperor Titus were good rulers since they had not limited
the already purely symbolic authority of the Senate, and he accepted the earlier
sentiment that regarded “extensive freedom” as mere licentia.
73
Apart from Cicero, probably all three Roman historians, Sallust, Livius, and
10 Tacitus, whether directly or indirectly, were the main sources of information for the
Polish nobility on republican political ideas and the Roman notion of freedom, just as
Plutarch would soon become the main source on Greek history in Europe.
74
The
paradox of this legacy is that in some respects the Polish political order with its king,
Sejm, and Senate was less similar to the Roman Republic than to the Roman Empire,
15 which arose following the abolition of popular elections in Rome and the narrowing
of the ideal of libertas down to the slogan of libertas senatus, “the liberty of the
Senate.”
75
The Polish nobility appears therefore to have based their ideal of libertas on the
Roman and on contemporary republican models, like their Western European coun-
20 terparts, but did so in the very different political reality of an elective monarchy. By
doing so, they overlooked the fundamental principle of republican freedom which in
the case of Rome had for several centuries prevented the re-establishment of a monar-
chy. And yet it was the attempts of the Commonwealth’s nobility to domesticate the
res publica that nevertheless paved the way for reforming the Polish monarchy and for
25 ensuring its elective character. In this sense, it may be deemed partly successful as an
innovative exercise in the history of ideas. What I have tried to show overall, how-
ever, is the extent to which the concept of aurea libertas grew out of a longstanding
tradition of political thought but at the same time how incongruous it became through
the cumulative effect of its misguided borrowings. With little chance of it becoming
30 the actual core of the Commonwealth’s political reality, and despite being an impor-
tant element in the self-identification of the nobility, the Golden Freedom remained,
in the end, a more or less consistently upheld, paradoxical ideal, an ornament in lieu
of a foundation.
NOTES
35 1. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. I: The Origins to 1795, rev. ed. (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 246–83.
2. Andrzej Was
´ko, “Sarmatism or the Enlightenment: The Dilemma of Polish Culture,” The
Sarmatian Review 17 (1997): 2, at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/497/wasko.html; Andrzej
Borowski, “Sarmaci w Europie—Europa w Sarmacji,” Alma Mater 35 (2001): 20–25, at http://
40 www3.uj.edu.pl/alma/alma/35/01/08.html.
3. See, for example, Michael Crawford, The Roman Republic (London: Fontana Press, 1992), 2;
and, in contrast, Andrew Lintott, “Political History, 146–95 B.C.,” in The Cambridge Ancient
History, vol. 9: The Last Age of the Roman Republic 146–43 B.C., ed. J. A. Crook, Andrew Lin-
tott, and Elizabeth Rawson, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 40–103.
45 4. See Chaim Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Princi-
pate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 21–22.
5. See James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000); Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998), 4, 10; Visions of Politics, Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Science
10 JAKUB FILONIK
CELE 1071124 QA: RM
13 July 2015 Initial
5
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 209–37; and Hobbes and Republican Liberty
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); cf. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume II:
Renaissance Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10–38, 118–212. On the
parallels between ancient and modern (city-)states, see Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis and City-
State: An Ancient Concept and its Modern Equivalent, Symposium, 9 January 1998 (Copenhagen:
10
Munksgaard, 1998), and A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures: An Investigation Con-
ducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre (Copenhagen: Reitzels, 2000).
6. Davies, God’s Playground, 156–96; Anna Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, “Anti-monarchism in Polish
Republicanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Republicanism: A Shared Euro-
pean Heritage, Volume I: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, ed. M. van
15
Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 43–59, 43; and
Anna Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas. Wolnos
´c
´w polskiej mys
´li politycznej XVIII wieku
(Gdan
´sk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2006), 23.
7. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 76, cf. 121.
8. Stanisław Orzechowski, Policyja Kro
´lestwa Polskiego na kształt Arystotelesowych Polityk wypisana i na
20
s
´wiat dla dobra pospolitego trzema knitami wydana, ed. Jerzy Starnawski (Przemys
´l: Krajowa Agencja
Wydawnicza w Rzeszowie, 1984).
9. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, “Anti-monarchism,” and “Konarski – Polityk,” in Stanisław Konarski –
pedagog, polityk, filozof, ed. Jadwiga Zie˛tarska (Warszawa: Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu
Warszawskiego, 2004), 71–84, 75–76.
25
10. Stanisław Sokołowski, “Pro vera Catholica libertate,” in Opera, t. I (Krako
´w 1591), 519–33; cf.
Eugeniusz Jarra, Historia polskiej filozofii politycznej 966–1795 (London: Orbis, 1968), 70.
11. Szymon Starowolski, “O wolnos
´ci bez swej woli,” in Reformacja obyczajo
´w polskich (1655?), 24–
29.
12. Cf. Jarra, Historia polskiej filozofii politycznej, 207–8.
30
13. Cf., for example, Jerzy Lukowski, “Political Ideas among the Polish Nobility in the Eighteenth
Century (to 1788),” The Slavonic and East European Review 82.1 (2004): 1–26.
14. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 13, 18, 20–21.
15. Janet Coleman, A History of Political Thought: From Ancient Greece to Early Christianity (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2000), 234–38.
35
16. Lintott, “Political History,” 41–43, 46.
17. Livy, Books III and IV, trans. B. O. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967),
148–49 (3.45.8). Unless noted otherwise, all translations from the Greek, Latin, and Polish are
either those in common usage in the case of short phrases, or my translations. Cf. Wirszubski,
Libertas as a Political Idea, 26, 16–17; cf. Kurt Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece
40
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 266.
18. J. A. Crook, “The Development of Roman Private Law,” in The Cambridge Ancient History,
Volumr 9: The Last Age of the Roman Republic 146–43 B.C., ed. J. A. Crook, Andrew Lintott,
and Elizabeth Rawson, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 531–63.
19. Cf. Coleman, History of Political Thought, 267.
45
20. Crawford, The Roman Republic, 1–2; Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 7, Raaflaub, Discovery
of Freedom in Ancient Greece, 265–66, Coleman, History of Political Thought, 238.
21. Crawford, The Roman Republic, 1–2; cf. E. M. Atkins, “Cicero,” in The Cambridge History of
Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 477–516.
50
22. See, for example, Raaflaub, Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece; Ryan K. Balot, Greek Political
Thought (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006); Rowe and Schofield, Cambridge History of Greek and
Roman Political Thought; Stephen Salkever, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Politi-
cal Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Wirszubski, Libertas as a Politi-
cal Idea,5.
55
23. Jakub Filonik, “‘Living as one wishes’ in Athens: The (Anti-)democratic Polemics” ( forthcom-
ing, 2016); cf. Coleman, History of Political Thought, 239.
24. See, for example, Raaflaub, Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, 266ff.
25. Crawford, The Roman Republic, 182, 187.
26. CIL (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum)I
2
2, 581.
60
27. Livy, Books XXXVIII–XXXIX, trans. Evan T. Sage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1936), 268–73 (39.18).
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28. Christopher Nadon, “Republicanism: Ancient, Medieval, and Beyond,” in A Companion to
Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Ryan K. Balot (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
2009), 529–41.
529. Cf. Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, eds., A Companion to Contemporary
Political Philosophy, 2d ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), esp. 729–35.
30. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Anti-democratic Tradition in Western Thought
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 22.
31. See, for example, Crawford, The Roman Republic, 2, 85, 154ff.
10 32. See, for example, Demosthenes, Against Meidias,Androtion,Aristocrates,Timocrates,Aristogeiton,
trans. J. H. Vince (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 422–23 (24.75–76);
Thucycides, History of the Peloponnesian War: Books I and II, trans. Charles Forster Smith (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 322–25 (2.37). See also Richard Mulgan, “Liberty
in Ancient Greece,” in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed. Zbigniew Pelczynski and
15 John Gray (London: The Athlone Press, 1984), 7–26. See also Filonik, “Living as one wishes.”
33. See, for example, Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1959), 504–7 (1319b.1–32, VI, 9–12); Plato, The Republic: Books VI-X, trans. Paul Shorey
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 298–99 (560d–e). See also Filonik, “Living
as one wishes.”
20 34. See Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 8, 13; cf. Roberts, Athens on Trial, 97ff.
35. Robert W. Wallace, “Personal Freedom in Greek Democracies, Republican Rome, and Mod-
ern Liberal States,” in Balot, Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, 164–77.
36. See, for example, Raaflaub, Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece.
37. Roberts, Athens on Trial, 97–118, 158–61.
25 38. See Jonas Grethlein, The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century
BCE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
39. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 55.
40. Cf. Goodin, Pettit, and Pogge, Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 729–35, 842–51,
passim; Salkever, Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought, 271–300. For an over-
30 view of modern studies of the history of republicanism, see William J. Connell, “The Republi-
can Idea,” in Hankins, Renaissance Civic Humanism, 14–29, Knud Haakonssen,
“Republicanism,” in Goodin, Pettit, and Pogge, Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy,
729–35, Nadon, “Republicanism.”
41. See, for example, “The Dream of Scipio,” in Cicero, On the Republic, On the Laws, trans. Clin-
35 ton W. Keyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 260–83 (Rep. 6.9-29). Cf.
Coleman, History of Political Thought, 276–80.
42. For a brief overview of these debates, see Chandran Kukathas, “Liberty,” in Goodin, Pettit, and
Pogge, Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 685–98, 694–96. For the debate on Isaiah
Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive freedom, see Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong
40 with Negative Liberty,” in The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Alan Ryan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 175–93; John Gray, “On Negative and Positive Lib-
erty,” in Pelczynski and Gray, Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, 321–48 (originally
published in 1980 in Political Studies 28); and Gerald C. MacCallum Jr., “Negative and Positive
Freedom,” in Liberty, ed. David Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 100–122.
45 43. Cicero, Pro Quinctio,Pro Roscio Amerino,Pro Roscio Comoedo,On the Agrarian Law, trans. J. H.
Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 480–81 (2.102: libertas in legibus [con-
sistit]).
44. Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia,Pro Caecina,Pro Cluentio,Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo, trans. H. Grose
Hodge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), 378–79 (Clu. 146: legum… omnes
50 servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus).
45. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690), ed. Richard H. Cox (Wheeling, IL: Harlan
Davidson 1982), 34 (6.57).
46. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 85ff., 101–2.
47. Wawrzyniec Gos
´licki, De optimo senatore libri duo (Venice 1568), 10–12.
55 48. Aaron Alexander Olizarovius, De politica hominum societate libri tres (Gdan
´sk 1651), 152–59, 144–
46, 198–99.
49. Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, “Responsum in gratiam cujusdam sermonis privati, bonone fiat
Reipublicae Polonae, ubi non pluralitas vocum, verum consensus ponderatur,” in Scriptorum seu
togae et belli notationum (Gdan
´sk 1660), 181–91.
12 JAKUB FILONIK
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5
50. See Pisma polityczne z czaso
´w rokoszu zebrzydowskiego 1606–1608, t. II: Proza, ed. J. Czubek
(Krako
´w 1918), 403–9.
51. Aristotle, Politics, 320ff., 108ff., 204ff. (1294b.13ff., 1266a.26ff., 1279a.21ff.) et al.; cf. Christo-
pher Rowe, “Aristotelian Constitutions,” in Rowe and Schofield, Cambridge History of Greek
and Roman Political Thought, 366–89. See, for example, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H.
10
Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 488ff. (1160a31ff.).
52. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 488ff. (1160a31ff.); Aristotle, Politics, 326–35 (1295b–96a).
53. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 4–7 (1094a26ff.); Politics, 96f. (1264b17ff.); cf. Jennifer Tolbert
Roberts, “Justice and the Polis,” in Rowe and Schofield, Cambridge History of Greek and Roman
Political Thought, 344–65.
15
54. Cf. Wallace, “Personal Freedom in Greek Democracies, Republican Rome, and Modern Lib-
eral States,” 191ff. See Polybius, The Histories: Volume I, trans. W. R. Paton (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1922), 2–5 (1.1.5), Volume II, 2–3 (3.1.4), Volume III (1923), 268–69,
292–93 (6.2.3, 6.10.11).
55. Coleman, History of Political Thought, 232. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 27–28.
20
56. See “The Dream of Scipio,” in Cicero’s Republic (see n. 41 above); cf. Coleman, History of
Political Thought, 276–80.
57. Cf. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 79–87.
58. See Aristotle, Politics, 8–9 (1252b.29–53a.1); cf. Nicomachean Ethics,passim; cf. Rowe, “Aris-
totelian Constitutions,” 372.
25
59. See, for example, On the Republic, 70–71, 102–5 (1.45, 1.69). Cf. e.g. On the Republic, 104–7,
166–69 (1.70, 2.56); cf. On the Laws, 398–99 (2.23).
60. On the Republic, 78–81 (1.52); cf. Atkins, “Cicero,” 490; see also n. 59 above.
61. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 80–83; cf. Coleman, History of Political Thought, 285–86.
62. Cf. Coleman, History of Political Thought, 279, 286.
30
63. Gr. eleutheria and isonomia, cf. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 9–12; see Cicero, On the
Republic, 70–73 (1.47), cf. Livy, Books III and IV, 104–5, 30–35 (3.31.7, 3.9).
64. Cf. Cicero, On the Republic, 66–69 (1.43), Livy, Books III and IV, 188–89 (3.56.10); an idea
which was already prevalent in Greek thinking.
65. See Sallust, The War with Catiline,The War with Jugurtha, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA:
35
Harvard University Press, 2013), 30ff. (Cat. 7ff.).
66. Atkins, “Cicero,” 481.
67. Cf. Grzes
´kowiak-Krwawicz, Regina libertas, 32, 256.
68. See Livy, Books I and II, trans. B. O. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967),
60–61, 208–19 (1.17.3, 1.60.3–2.1.2). See Stanisław S
´niez
˙ewski, “Libertas w dziele Liwiusza.
40
Płaszczyzna prawno-socjalna i polityczna,” Prace Komisji Filologii Klasycznej PAU 27 (1998): 55–
88 (with extensive notes).
69. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 160.
70. Tacitus, Histories: Books 4–5, Annals: Books 1–3, trans. Clifford H. Moore, John Jackson (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 242–45 (Ann. 1.1.1–2); cf. Histories: Books 1-3,
45
trans. Clifford H. Moore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 30–33 (1.16).
71. Jakub Pigon
´,W kre˛gu poje˛c
´politycznych Tacyta: libertas – moderatio (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uni-
wersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1994), 30ff., 80ff.
72. Tacitus, Agricola,Germania,Dialogue on Oratory, trans. M. Hutton, W. Peterson, rev. R. M.
Ogilvie, E. H. Warmington, Michael Winterbottom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
50
Press, 1914), 104–7 (Agr. 42).
73. Cf. Tacitus, Dialogue on Oratory, 340–45 (40).
74. Cf. Roberts, Athens on Trial, 158.
75. Cf. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea, 136–37, 163.
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