to the interests of Italy at large than any other state of the peninsula.  Florence, like Athens, was the center of culture for the nation.  Like Athens, she give laws to her sister towns in language, in literature, in fine arts, poetry, philosophy, and history.  Without Florence it is not probable that Italy would have taken the place of proud pre-eminence she held so long in Europe.  Florence never attained to the material greatness of Athens, because her power, relatively to the rest of Italy, was slight, her factions were incessant, and her connection with the Papacy was a perpetual source of weakness.  But many of the causes which ruined Athens were in full operation at Florence.  First and foremost was the petulant and variable temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed by Machiavelli.  The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source of political debility.  Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine exiles under the guidance of Filippo Strozzi (1533-37) became the laughing-stock of Italy through their irresolution.  The Venetian ambassadors agree in representing the burghers of Florence as timid from excess of intellectual mobility.  And Dante, whose insight into national characteristics was of the keenest, has described in ever-memorable lines the temperament of his fickle city (Purg. vi. 135-51).

Much of this instability was due to the fact that Florentine, like Athenian, intelligence was overdeveloped.  It passed into mere cleverness, and overreached itself.  Next we may note the tyranny which both republics exercised over cities that had once been free.  Athens created a despotic empire instead of forming an Ionian Confederation.  Florence reduced Pisa to the most miserable servitude, rendered herself odious to Arezzo and Volterra, and never rested from attempts upon the liberties of Lucca and Siena.  All these states, which as a Tuscan federation should have been her strength in the hour of need, took the first opportunity of throwing off her yoke and helping her enemies.  What Florence spent in recapturing Pisa, after the passage of Charles VIII. in 1494, is incalculable.  And no sooner was she in difficulties during the siege of 1329, than both Arezzo and Pisa declared for her foes.

It will not do to push historical parallels too far, interesting as it may be to note a repetition of the same phenomena at distant periods and under varying conditions of society.  At the same time, to observe fundamental points of divergence is no less profitable.  Many of the peculiarities of Greek history are attributable to the fact that a Greek commonwealth consisted of citizens living in idleness, supported by their slaves, and bound to the state by military service and by the performance of civic duties.  The distinctive mark of both Venice and Florence, on the other hand, was