despotism.[1] The gradual dwindling of the Venetian aristocracy, and the impoverishment of many noble families, which rendered votes in the Grand Council venal, and threw the power into the hands of a very limited oligarchy, complete the parallel.[2] One of the chief sources of decay both to Venice and to Sparta was that shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their ranks by the admission of new families.  The system again of secret justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.[3] Venice in the end became demoralized in politics and profligate in private life.  Her narrowing oligarchy watched the national degeneration with approval, knowing that it is easier to control a vitiated populace than to curb a nation habituated to the manly virtues.

[1] Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty [Greek:  isotyrannos].  Giannotti (vol-ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators.  We might bring the struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty into comparison with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to make themselves the chiefs of the republic in more than name.  Mueller, in his Dorians, observes that ’the Ephoralty was the moving element, the principle of change, in the Spartan constitution, and, in the end, the cause of its dissolution.’  Sismondi remarks that the precautions which led to the creation of the Council of Ten ’denaturaient entierement la constitution de l’etat.’

[2] See what Aristotle in the Politics says about [Greek:  oliganthropia], and the unequal distribution of property.  As to the property of the Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, Vite dei Duchi, Murat. xxii. p. 1194, who mentions the benevolences of the richer families to the poor.  They built houses for aristocratic paupers to live in free of rent.

[3] A curious passage in Plutarch’s Life of Cleomenes (Clough’s Translation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian statecraft:—­’They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do supernatural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but thinking their polity is chiefly kept up by fear ... and therefore the Lacedaemonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the Ephors, having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.’

Between Athens and Florence the parallel is not so close.  These two republics, however, resemble one another in the freedom and variety of their institutions.  In Athens, as in Florence, there was constant change and a highly developed political consciousness.  Eminent men played the same important part in both.  In both the genius of individuals was even stronger than the character of the state.  Again, as Athens displayed more of a Panhellenic feeling than any other Greek city, so Florence was invariably more alive