"In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous"
About this Quote
Tacitus lands the blow with the cool efficiency of someone who has watched empires rot from the inside. “In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous” isn’t a call for tougher policing; it’s an autopsy of a political culture that has lost the ability to govern through shared norms. When trust collapses, rule-making metastasizes. The law stops being a common language and becomes a defensive weapon, a paper barricade against behavior the state can no longer deter through legitimacy.
The line works because it flips a comforting assumption: that more laws equal more order. Tacitus suggests the opposite. Proliferating statutes are not evidence of moral seriousness but of institutional panic. A corrupt system can’t enforce consistently, so it compensates with volume, giving officials endless pretexts to punish enemies, reward friends, and launder vendettas as procedure. Complexity becomes camouflage; if everything is technically illegal, enforcement becomes a selective art.
As a Roman historian writing under the shadow of the early Empire, Tacitus understood how regimes stabilize themselves not only with armies but with paperwork. The principate could maintain the appearance of legality while hollowing out republican virtue. His subtext is savage: the problem isn’t merely bad actors breaking rules, it’s a state so compromised that it needs constant rule-production to simulate control. The “numerous” laws aren’t restraints on power; they’re symptoms of power unmoored.
The line works because it flips a comforting assumption: that more laws equal more order. Tacitus suggests the opposite. Proliferating statutes are not evidence of moral seriousness but of institutional panic. A corrupt system can’t enforce consistently, so it compensates with volume, giving officials endless pretexts to punish enemies, reward friends, and launder vendettas as procedure. Complexity becomes camouflage; if everything is technically illegal, enforcement becomes a selective art.
As a Roman historian writing under the shadow of the early Empire, Tacitus understood how regimes stabilize themselves not only with armies but with paperwork. The principate could maintain the appearance of legality while hollowing out republican virtue. His subtext is savage: the problem isn’t merely bad actors breaking rules, it’s a state so compromised that it needs constant rule-production to simulate control. The “numerous” laws aren’t restraints on power; they’re symptoms of power unmoored.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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