Every republic, large and small, lives with a tension between the need for public-spirited, civic-minded leaders and the inevitable pull of private interests and affections. The larger and wealthier the republic, the greater the challenge, because the republic’s officials must live and move and work in an atmosphere of commercial wealth and foreign lucre — which creates not only direct temptation but also, more subtly, a fear that you are failing your family, your children, if you remain unbought.
The Roman republic in its waning years managed this tension by creating a zone of self-enrichment that was outside the res publica.