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I've been doing a paper on Hammurabi's famed code of laws, specifically the prologue, and in it, the topic of the divine rights of kings and the need to legitimize government came up several times. I know why modern day parliamentary governments are legitimate, but what about premodern ones? Before the enlightenment? Like the Italian republics, or that brief, brief stint in Athens, or the famous senates of Qart-Hadasht and Roma? Especially in the renaissance italian case, what gave them their legitimacy? Why did they have the right to rule?
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