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      1See C. Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 64. 
      2 “The 18th-century French philosopher Montesquieu is popularly credited with originating the doctrine, but its roots reach back to ancient times,” George W. Carey, “Government,” in Encyclopedia Americana (1989), 130; see also D. Hutchison, The Foundations of the Constitution (Secaucus, New Jersey: University Books, 1975), 20-21. 
      3 “‘The Fathers’ had for their oracle of political philosophy the treatise of Montesquieu on the ‘Spirit of Laws’,” James Bryce, American Commonwealth, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1911), 29.  “The oracles usually consulted were Blackstone and Montesquieu.  The ‘Spirit of Laws’ was studied by Washington as part of his preparation for the work of the convention,” Hannis Taylor, The Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889), 60.  “Montesquieu is accepted as the oracle of political theory for that time,” R. A. Ames and H. C. Montgomery, “The Influence of Rome on the American Constitution,” CJ 30 (1935): 27. 
      4 Translations of all ancient texts will be taken from the Loeb Classical Library.  
      5 For more on mixed constitutions, see Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity (New York: Arno Press, 1975); see also Correa Moylan Walsh, The Political Science of John Adams: a Study in the Theory of Mixed Government and the Bicameral System (New York: Putnam, 1915), 32, n. 1; and Neal Wood, “Essentials of the Mixed Constitution,” chap. in Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 159-175. 
      6 Herodotus is the first to list these three forms of constitution (Persian Wars 3.80-82).  Thucydides (8.97) then describes a constitutional fusion of two elements: the few and the many.  Also before Polybius, both Plato (Laws 710e, 712c; Menex. 238c-d) and Aristotle (Pol. 1279a) categorize constitutions into three groups, according to the number of the sovereign body (i.e., the one, the few, and the many).  For other early works on mixed constitutions, see F. W. Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 135-137; and his A Historical Commentary on Polybius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 640, 643-47. 
      7 Polybius credits the six categories (i.e., the original three forms of simple constitution and their respective perversions or parekba/seij) to “Plato and certain other philosophers” (6.5.1: Pla/twni kai/ tisin e(te/roij tw=n filoso/fwn).  Plato (Laws 712c), however, allows for only five of the six forms of constitution because he does not distinguish nominally between democracy and mob-rule.  Aristotle (Pol. 1279b), on the other hand, mentions the full six, claiming that each of the original three (sovereignty of the one, the few, and the many) splits into two sub-categories, based on whether the ruling authority’s motives are selfish or unselfish:
Deviations from the constitutions mentioned are tyranny corresponding to kingship, oligarchy to aristocracy, and democracy to constitutional government [or polity]; for tyranny is monarchy ruling in the interest of the monarch, oligarchy government in the interest of the rich, democracy government in the interest of the poor, and none of these forms governs with regard to the profit of the community.

parekba/seij de\ tw=n ei)rhme/nwn turanni\j me\n basilei/aj o)ligarxi/a de\ a)ristokrati/aj dhmokrati/a de\ politei/aj: h( me\n ga\r turanni/j e)sti monarxi/a pro\j to\ sumfe/ron to\ tou= monarxou=ntoj, h( d )o)ligarxi/a pro\j to\ tw=n eu)po/rwn, h( de\ dhmokrati/a pro\j to\ sumfe/ron to\ tw=n a)po/rwn, pro\j de\ to\ t%= koin%= lusitelou=n ou)demi/a au)twn.

      8 See below, Thornton Anderson’s comment in note 53. 
      9 For more on a)naku/klwsij, see Stephan Podes, “Polybius and His Theory of Anacyclosis: Problems of Not Just Ancient Political Theory,” History of Political Thought 12 (1991): 577-87; see also George Boas, “Cycles,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York: Scribner’s, 1968); Stow Persons, “The Cyclical Theory of History in Eighteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly 6 (Summer 1954): 147-63; Walbank, “Polybius and the Roman State,” GRBS 5 (1964): 246; H. Ryfell, Metabolh\ politeiw=n: der Wandel der Staatsverfassungen (New York: Arno Press, 1973); and Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 19-20.  
      10 Polyb. 6.11.11-13; cf. Cic. Rep. 1.42, 45, 69-70. 
      11 “The Greek historian Polybius admired the mutual automatic balances which created an equilibrium between its legislative, executive and judicial institutions,” Michael Grant, The Founders of the Western World (New York: 1991), 153.  
      12 For Plato’s references to a mixed constitution, see Laws 681d, 693b-e, 712d-e; Rep. 557d; Menex. 238c-d; and Statesman 291a-92a, 301a-3b. For Aristotle’s discussion, see Politics 1266a, 1267b, 1269a-73b, 1278b-80a, 1289a, 1293a-96b, 1298a-b, 1302a, 1318b-19a, 1320b.  His pupil, Dicaearchus of Messana, even wrote a treatise on mixed constitution called Tripolitiko/n (Cic. Att. 13.32.2; Phot. Bibl. 37.69c; cf. Walbank, Commentary, 640).  Diogenes Laertius lists the theory as a doctrine of the early Stoics: “the best form of government they hold to be a mixture of democracy, kingship, and aristocracy” (7.1.131: politei/an d' a)ri/sthn th\n mikth\n eÃk te dhmokrati/aj kai\ basilei/aj kai\ a)ristokrati/aj.  Dionysius of Halicarnassus also praises the theory in his reporting of a speech given by Manius Valerius (2.7.7).  For Cato the Elder’s opinion that the constitution of Carthage was mixed, see Serv. Aen. 4.682; cf. Polyb. 6.51.  In addition to the previous authors, Carl J. Richard (The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome and the American Enlightenment, (Cambridge: 1994), 126) adds,
Although Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus never formally endorsed mixed government, their sympathy toward the lost republic and criticism of absolute monarchy, combined with their disquisitions on the volatile nature of untutored mobs, suggest a strong sympathy for it.
      13 Aristotle (Pol. 1297b-98a) attributes the success of a constitution to the organization of the three factors of government when he states:
All forms of constitution then have three factors in reference to which the good lawgiver has to consider what is expedient for each constitution; and if these factors are well-ordered the constitution must of necessity be well-ordered, and the superiority of one constitution over another necessarily consists in the superiority of each of these factors.  Of these three factors one is, what is to be the body that deliberates about common interests, second the one connected with the magistracies, that is, what they are to be and what matters they are to control, and what is to be the method of their election, and a third is, what is to be the judiciary.

eãsti dh\ tri/a mo/ria tw=n politeiw=n pasw=n peri\ wâân dei= qewrei=n to\n spoudai=on nomoqe/thn e(ka/st$ to\ sumfe/ron: wâân e)xo/ntwn kalw=j a)na/gkh th\n politei/an eãxein kalw=j, kai\ ta\j politei/aj a)llh/lwn diafe/rein e)n t%= diafe/rein eàkaston tou/twn. Eãsti de\ tw=n triw=n eán me\n ti/ to\ bouleuo/menon peri\ tw=n koinw=n, deu/teron de\ to\ peri\ ta\j a)rxa/j, tou=to d ) e)sti\ ti/naj dei= kai\ ti/nwn eiånai kupi/aj, kai\ poi/an tina\ dei= gi/gnesqai th\n aiàresin au)tw=n, tri/ton de\ ti/ to\ dika/zon.

      14 Cicero is known to have regarded Polybius as a dependable source (Att. 13.30; Rep. 2.27), though he was probably just as greatly influenced by Dicaearchus on the subject of mixed constitution (Att. 2.2.1, 13.31.2, 13.32.2; Tusc. 1.77).  See above, note 12.  Richard (126) claims, “Cicero (Rep. 2.23-30) seized upon Polybius’ theory to thwart the increasing efforts of ambitious Romans to consolidate their own power at the republic’s expense.” 
      15 Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 602.  For more on Polybian analysis of the Roman Constitution, see Thomas Taylor, A Constitutional and Political History of Rome (London: Methuen and Company, 1899), 212. 
      16 See above, note 13. Literally the deliberative, the one concerning magistracies, and the one dealing with justice.  Note that these are the very branches often mistakenly ascribed as the modern innovation of Montesquieu over the so-called “antiquated” branches (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy)--e.g., P. C. Bartholomey, “Checks and Balances,” art. in Encyclopedia Americana 6 (1989), 353. 
      17 “The Heritage of the Classics in Colonial North America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 99 (April 1955): 75; See also Gummere, “John Dickenson, the Classical Penman of the Revolution,” CJ 52 (Nov. 1956): 81, 86; and see below, Gummere’s comments on Aristotle page 27, and notes 71 and 73. 
      18 See Ames and Montgomery, 19-27.  For America’s identification with Rome in general, see Charles F. Mullet, “Classical Influences on the American Revolution,” CJ (1939): 92. 
      19 For other similarities between the American Constitution and the Roman Constitution, see Gilbert Chinard, “Polybius and the American Constitution,” in The American Enlightenment, ed. F. Shuffelton (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 1993), 217-237; R. M. Gummere, “The Classical Ancestry of the Constitution,” chap. in The American Colonial Mind and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 173-90; and also Ames and Montgomery, 19-27. 
      20 For Solon’s Athenian constitution as mixed, see Walbank, Polybius, 135; for Lycurgus’ Spartan constitution as same, see C. O. Brink and Walbank, “The Construction of the Sixth Book of Polybius,” CQ n.s. 3 (1954): 112-13; and Walbank, “Polybius and the Roman State,” GRBS 5 (1964): 250-51. 
      21 The Virgina state motto is, after all, “Thus Always to Tyrants” (Sic Semper Tyrannis). 
      22 See Marcus Cunliffe, The American Heritage History of the Presidency (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 26.  Here he comments on the Executive but his words are just as appropriate for the Founder’s inclusion of separation of powers in the constitution:
The men who invented the Presidency in Philadelphia in 1787 were not bound by a long national tradition.  Even so, they were deeply affected by the past.  Early in the year, John Adams had written in London that the creators of the American state governments had “adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for . . . his sovereign.” Such an architect, said Adams, would read the best writers, examine the most famous buildings to see how well they had survived the passing years, and then choose the ideas that seemed most useful to his own structure.  Similarly, in devising the national Executive, the writers of the Constitution called not only on their own sentiments and experience, but also on those of lawmakers and philosophers throughout history.
      23 World of the Founding Fathers (New York: Barnes & Co., 1960), 30; see also Edwin A. Miles, “The Young American Nation and the Classical World,” in The American Enlightenment, 337-52; F. McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985); C. J. Richard, “The Classical Conditioning of the Founders,” chap. in The Founders and the Classics, 12-38; Meyer Reinhold, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984); S. F. Wiltshire, ed., The Usefulness of Classical Learning in the Eighteenth Century, (Washington, D.C.: American Philological Association, 1975); T. L. Simmons, “Greek Ruins,” National Review, 14 Sept. 1998, 42-43; J. W. Eadie, ed., Classical Traditions in Early America (Ann Arbor: Center for the Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, 1976); and Charles F. Mullet, “Classical Influences on the American Revolution,” CJ 35 (Nov. 1939): 92-104.  Jefferson, for example, “had commissioned Ticknor to send him from Europe the best and most recent editions of Greek and Latin Classics” Gilbert Chinard, “Thomas Jefferson as a Classical Scholar,” American Scholar 1 (April, 1932): 143. 
      24 The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1972), 23.  For the academic credentials of the members of the Convention, see Ames and Montgomery, 20.  See also Gummere, “The Heritage of the Classics in Colonial North America,” 75.  Rossiter (35) adds,
The overall performance of the college graduates in the Convention of 1787 speaks forcefully for the proposition that Latin, rhetoric, philosophy, and mathematics can be a healthy fare for political heroes.
      25 “John Adams Togatus,” Philological Quarterly 13 (April, 1934): 203. 
      26 Mullet (92) found references to Polybius during an “exhaustive examination of American Revolutionary Literature.” Some of the pamphleteers of the period also derived their knowledge of Rome from Polybius (ibid., 96; cf. 97).  Richard (53) adds, “the founders encountered their Roman heroes in the works of Polybius, Livy, Sallust, Plutarch, and Tacitus.” Cf. C. Collier and J. L. Collier, Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 53-54:
Late-eithteenth-century Americans were deeply in love with the classical societies and their statesmen, generals, historians. College students did not read English literature. They read instead Caesar's Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero, the Politics of Aristotle; and they constantly referred to what Polybius or Plato thought on a given subject.
      27 M. N. S. Sellers, American Republicanism: Roman Ideology in the U.S. Constitution (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 46. 
      28See Richard, 131; for Jefferson’s estimation that the separation of powers is “the leading principle of our Constitution” see James J. Kilpatrick’s response to the speech of William F. Buckley, given at Kent State University, 1 April 1998, “U.S. v. Clinton,” National Review, 28 Sep. 1998, 46. 
      29 E. Millicent Sowersby, compiler, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 5 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1953), 383.  For Polybius in pre-Revolutionary collections, see Richard Beal Davis, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South 1585-1763 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), 532, 540.  For classical studies among the colonists, see Gummere’s articles, “Some Classical Side Lights on Colonial Education,” CJ 55 (Feb. 1960): 223-232; and “Church, State, and Classics,” CJ 54 (Jan. 1959): 175-83. 
      30 “From Paris Jefferson shipped copies of Polybius and sets of ancient authors to Madison, a former graduate student . . . and to George Wythe, a finished Greek and Latin scholar” Gummere, “The Classical Ancestry of the Constitution,” 174. 
      31 Charles T. Cullen, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 159.  Note this is a month after the European release of John Adams’ summary of Polybius (see above, note 27; see below, note 43). 
      32 For more on Jefferson’s involvement with the classics, see David M. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994); Louis B. Wright, “Thomas Jefferson and the Classics,” Proceedings of the American Philological Society 87 (1944): 223-33; Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 43 (Jan. 1986): 4; and David W. Carrithers, “Montesquieu, Jefferson and the Fundamentals of 18th-Century Republican Theory,” FAR 6 (Fall 1982): 160-88. 
      33 Cf. Padover’s statement (31): “in James Madison one finds mentions of the outstanding classical writers, such as Plato, Plutarch, Polybius.” See also Gummere, “The Classical Ancestry of the Constitution,” 181; and his comment on Madison, page 12 above. 
      34 W. T. Hutchinson and W. M. E. Rachal, ed., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), vol. 1, 103. 
       35 The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Philadelphia: 1861), 210. 
      36 B. B. Oberg, ed., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 570. For the actual text of the fragment, see J. Sparks, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Hiliard Gray and Company, 1839), 543-546. 
      37 For another possible example of Franklin’s use of Polybius, see Gilbert Chinard “Polybius and the American Constitution,” 223. 
      38 James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston: 1764), 14; Mullet, 97; cf. C. F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston: Little and Brown, 1851), vol. 4, 440. 
      39Nonetheless, given Mullet’s earlier admission that Polybius was a common source among the pamphleteers (see above, note 26), his statement “the very few colonists who knew him” is still at least puzzling, if not overstated.  Perhaps Mullet means that they did not know Polybius’ text directly—just as one could say today that more know “of” Plato than have actually read his texts. 
      40 See Rossiter, 34. 
      41 Chinard, “Polybius and the American Constitution,” 222. 
      42 Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail, 25.  Abigail quotes Polybius in a letter to her husband. 
      43 “Polybius and the American Constitution,” 221.; cf. 236: “Montesquieu was only one of their authorities . . . they did not neglect the original texts available either in full or in the convenient compilation of John Adams.“ 
      44 It is perhaps significant that Jefferson did not begin his flurry of letters from Paris regarding Polybius until the month following the European release of Adams’ book.  See above, page 17. 
      45 See C. M. Walsh, 23.  Richard (132) calls Adams “the most visible and most persistent proponent of mixed government in America.” See also R. M. Gummere, “The Classical Politics of John Adams,” Boston Public Library Quarterly 9 (Oct. 1957): 172. 
      46 For more on John Adams, see Dorothy M. Robathan, “John Adams and the Classics,” The New England Quarterly 19 (1946): 91-98; R. M. Gummere, “John Adams Togatus,” 203-10; Gilbert Chinard, Honest John Adams (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964); M. N. S. Sellers (46); and especially C. M. Walsh. 
      47 Richard (132) notes that Adams was reciting Polybius even in 1763, when he writes,
Adams was devoted to mixed government theory throughout his life.  As early as 1763 he claimed, in “An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power:” “No simple Form of Government can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power, Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence on Oligarchy, and Democracy will soon degenerate into Anarchy.
      48 Cf. J. Bryce, 1.29. See below, note 70. 
      49 Adams summarizes a)naku/klwsij (Works, 4.440-41):
Polybius thinks it manifest, both from reason and experience, that the best form of government is not simple, but compounded, because of the tendency of each of the simple forms to degenerate.

Adams hopes the state constitutions will prove themselves even superior to that of Rome, stating (ibid. 440):

As we advance, we may see cause to differ widely from the judgment of Polybius, ‘that it is impossible to invent a more perfect system of government.’
      50 Adams had defended the principle of separation of powers as early as 1776, when he wrote a pamphlet, “Thoughts on Government” (Works, 4.193; cf. Benjamin F. Wright, “The Origins of the Separation of Powers in America,” Economica 13 (May 1933): 178). 
      51 Cf. Gummere’s comment (“The Classical Ancestry of the Constitution,“178): “Polybius was of special interest to the framers of the Constitution.  They studied him intently as the leading authority on the Greek city-states.“ 
      52 For a brief digest of references to Rome made during the Convention, see Ames and Montgomery, 21-23.  For John Dickenson’s quoting Polybius, see E. H. Scott, ed., The Federalist and Other Constitutional Papers (Chicago: 1894), vol. 2, 806.  See also Gummere, “John Dickenson, the Classical Penman of the Revolution,” 81-87. 
      53“It looks as if Hamilton must have read Adams’s first volume and have borrowed from it” (C. M. Walsh, 307; cf. Chinard, “Polybius,” 230).  Hamilton cites Polybius directly (The Federalist and Other Constitutional Papers, vol. 1,352; cf. Ames and Montgomery, 23).  Cf. Richard’s comment (135) that “democracy, [John] Adams concluded in Polybian fashion, was a mere way station on the road to tyranny.” Thornton Anderson, Creating the Constitution: The Convention of 1787 and the First Congress, (University Park, Pennsylvania: 1993), 24 also notes,
Many of the delegates, students of classical history, no doubt remembered that the plebeians of Rome had supported Caesar, not Brutus.  There were enough examples in the Greek city states of popular demagogues becoming tyrants to enable Polybius (6.1-9) to construct a cycle of types of government in which democracy deteriorated into mob rule and then into despotism.
      54 See Thomas P. Govan, “Alexander and Julius Caesar: a Note on the Use of Historical Evidence,” William and Mary Quarterly 32 (1975): 475-80; Padover, 32; and Douglas Adair, “A Note on Certain of Hamilton’s Pseudonyms,” William and Mary Quarterly 12 (1955): 282-97. 
      55 “Polybius and the American Constitution,” 227; cf. 225: “There were few occasions when the ancient writers were not called upon to provide precedents and illustration for the different speakers.“ 
      56 Montesquieu: a Critical Biography (Oxford University Press, 1961), 153; cf. 158, 233-34. 
      57 Montesquieu and the Old Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 2; cf. Friedrich’s encyclopedia articles “Constitutions and Constitutionalism,” International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 321; and “Separation of Powers,” Brittanica 20 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), 227. 
      58 “Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, and the Separation of Powers,” French Studies 3 (1949): 25. 
      59 “Polybius and the Constitution,” 223. 
      60 “Presidential Address,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (1897) 1.  Montesquieu is more of a “conduit” than a source (Ames and Montgomery, 23; cf. 26). 
      61 English translations of Montesquieu throughout are taken from Thomas Nugent, trans., The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1949; reprint 1959). 
      62 See above, note 16.  See below, note 71. 
      63 For more on Montesquieu, see P. M. Spurlin, Montesquieu in America: 1760-1801 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969); and A. M. Cohler, Montesquieu, Comparative Politics, and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1988). 
      64 Rossiter (74) echoes this sentiment, when he states:
Whatever government the Framers might propose to the people, it would certainly have to be . . . divided, checked, and balanced—not because Montesquieu . . . had taught them to celebrate the beauties of such government but because this was the pattern toward which America had been moving from the beginning.

Sellers (222) agrees, “the United States Constitution continued the development towards Rome’s Polybian model that had been evident in the English and earlier state constitutions.“ 
      65 Cf. Gummere, “The Heritage of the Classics in Colonial North America,” 75. See also J. G. Pocock, ed., The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 
      66 B. Bailyn (Origins, 20) notes, “the value of such a balance was commonly endorsed by sixteenth-century writers, and in the early seventeenth century it came to characterize the working of the English constitution.” John Adams, in his A Defense of the Constitutions, also dedicates a chapter to Harrington (Works, 4.427-34).  For the history of mixed constitution in England, see Corinne C. Weston, English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords, 1556-1832 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). 
      67 Charles I, quoted in Melvin Richter, The Political theory of Montesquieu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 87; cf. McDonald, 48; B. Bailyn, Origins, 20.  For the evolution of the three estates in England, see Michael Mendle, Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the Answer to the XIX Propositions (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1985). 
      68 On May Day 1660, the English Parliament decreed, “according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is, and ought to be by King, Lords, and Commons,” William Cobbett, ed., Parliamentary History of England, vol. 2 (London: 1806) cols. 24-25. 
      69 Faces of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 76. 
      70 J. Bryce (1.29) concurs:

No general principle of politics laid such hold on the constitution-makers and statesmen of America as the dogma that the separation of these three functions [executive, legislative, and judicial] is essential to freedom.  It had already been made the groundwork of several State constitutions.
      71 Bailyn (Faces of the Revolution, 76) notes that the American Colonists “presumed that the three main socio-constitutional contestants for power--the monarchy, the nobility, and the people--had an equal right to share in the struggle for power.” See Gummere’s comment above, page 27. 
      72 The eight references to Montesquieu during the Convention are: Records 1.71, 308, 391, 485, 497, 580; 2.34, 530. 
      73 McDonald, 81; cf. Miles, 338: “Framers of the American Constitution, like the earlier republicans, often referred to Polybius’ theory of mixed government.“ 
      74 Polybius was one of the Greek authors whom Pope Nicholas V had translated into Latin (c. 1450); see Arnaldo Momigliano’s “Polybius’s Reappearance in Western Europe,” in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Wesleyan University Press, 1977), 79-98; cf. Boas, 626.  Polybius’ balance of powers also influenced Niccolò Machiavelli (Discourses 1.1).  Richard (127) first states, “Machiavelli practically copied Polybius’ discussion of the degeneration of the simple forms of government into his Discourses on Livy” and later concludes (128), “like Polybius and Cicero, Machiavelli ascribed Roman greatness to the gradual development of mixed government there.“