At the same time, Cicero also echoed Aristotle by noting that the individual household is “the seed-bed of the State.” By Cicero’s reckoning, government must respect our personal sphere of responsibilities and connections, including our property, in order to win our respect and loyalty. Indeed, Cicero straightforwardly states that the reason men create states and cities is to protect private property—a momentous step beyond Aristotle’s own views and toward those of John Locke fifteen centuries later.
