The Evolution of Rome's State Apparatus

In book 6 of the histories, Polybius goes into detail about Rome's state apparatus. He had a fascinating and deeply cynical perspective on how states form and evolve in general. To Polybius, a fundamentally disorganized state would eventually find that a single leader was an acceptable alternative to having no state structure at all. A civilization's government, then, was a wheel, turning inevitably, and often violently from era to era due to the greed and amnesia of each new generation.