Polybius Was Right
This is dedicated to my friend James, whose substack I recommend. He introduced me to Polybius, and I thought I was educated.
Summary: Polybius mapped the rot of governments—monarchy to tyranny, aristocracy to oligarchy, democracy to mob rule, back again. The Founders tried to break the cycle with a republic of mutual chokeholds. We tore out the safeguards. Now it’s ochlocracy, strongmen circling, and every branch serving the jersey, not the Constitution. The wheel’s turning. We’re next.
Two thousand years ago, a Greek named Polybius sat in Rome and watched governments die. Kings rotted into tyrants. Aristocrats into parasites. Democracies into mobs. None of it was new then. It's not new now.
Polybius had watched monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy all rot into tyranny. He knew none of them worked alone. His answer wasn't to choose—it was to splice them together like some political Frankenstein. Each piece strong enough to choke the others when they got ideas. Rome had a consul to command, a Senate to protect the rich, and popular assemblies to remind them both who actually bled for the state. The whole thing survived on mutual hatred, not trust.
The Founders lifted Polybius's blueprint wholesale. Swapped the names around: president for consul, Congress for the Senate and assemblies, courts to keep both from going completely feral. Three forces built to trip each other. One runs too far ahead, the others yank the leash.
But Polybius left us something else: anacyclosis—the wheel of political decay. Governments don't just fall. They follow the same dreary rotation:
Monarchy → Tyranny → Aristocracy → Oligarchy → Democracy → Ochlocracy (mob rule) → back to Monarchy.
Each stage starts clean, corrupts, collapses into the next. The wheel grinds forward until there's nothing left but ash.
We were never a democracy—the Founders made sure of that. They built a republic with every possible filter between the mob and power: electoral college meant to pick the best men not the popular choice, senators appointed by state legislatures not voters, and states setting property requirements that kept the poor from voting at all. They knew exactly where democracy led.
But piece by piece, we dismantled their filters. The 17th Amendment let people elect senators directly—there went that check. States dropped property requirements, expanded suffrage. The electoral college became a rubber stamp for state popular votes instead of a deliberative body of wise men. And power itself shifted—states that once ran their own affairs now beg Washington for permission to fix their own roads. The federal government the Founders tried to cage now controls everything from your healthcare to your lightbulbs.
They tried to engineer their way out of anacyclosis with a republic wrapped in so many layers of insulation it couldn't catch fire. Instead, we spent two centuries stripping the insulation off, wire by wire. Now we've got ochlocracy—January 6th, Twitter swarms, cancel mobs from every direction—and strongmen auditioning for the monarchy that comes next. You can hear the gears grinding. Each constitutional crisis. Each norm torched. Each branch genuflecting to party over principle.
Congress? Please. If the president wears their jersey, they'll hand him the keys—pardons, war powers, blank checks. Wrong jersey? They'll burn the government down before letting him tie his shoes. Laws aren't written to fix anything. They're written to make the other team look stupid on cable news.
The courts were supposed to be referees. Now they're ideological trophy cases. Lifetime appointments used to mean independence. Now it means forty years of payback with a gavel.
The presidency is already an elected monarchy. Obama drone-struck his way through countries Congress never declared war on. Biden extended the eviction moratorium even after admitting it was probably unconstitutional—daring the courts to stop him. Trump pardoned his own foot soldiers while collecting dictators like trading cards—Xi, Putin, Kim, Orbán—calling them 'brilliant' and 'savvy.' Polybius would've laughed. That's not democracy dying. That's the next king auditioning for the part.
When Sulla marched on Rome in 88 BC, the Senate discovered their precious checks meant nothing against a general with loyal troops. By 49 BC, Caesar didn't even bother asking permission. Just crossed the Rubicon and dared them to stop him.
Both parties weaponize judicial appointments. Democrats nuke the filibuster when convenient. Republicans do the same dance when it's their turn. Everyone screams about norms when they're losing, then shreds them the second they're winning.
We still carve "separation of powers" into marble. Still make kids memorize it for tests. But it's theater—dragged out only when the other team's in charge, kicked aside the moment we get the ball back.
Polybius warned us: when one element crushes the rest, the cycle restarts. Decay, corruption, collapse. It's not theory. It's mechanics.
Polybius watched Rome grind through the cycle until Augustus stood alone atop the wreckage, calling himself "first citizen" while wielding absolute power. We're not special enough to stop the wheel—we're just arrogant enough to think we are.