ruin, they obliterated all their family names with the exception of twenty, under one or other of which the whole body of citizens were bound to enroll themselves.[1] This was nothing less than an attempt to create new gentes by effacing the distinctions established by nature and tradition.  To parallel a scheme so artificial in its method, we must go back to the history of Sicyon and the changes wrought in the Dorian tribes by Cleisthenes.

    [1] See Varchi, St. F. lib. vii. cap. 3.

Short of such violent expedients as these, the whole history of towns like Florence reveals a succession of similar attempts.  When, for example, the Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines found themselves without a working constitution, and proceeded to frame one.  The matter was at first referred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio Vespucci and Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and against the establishment of a Grand Council on the Venetian model, before the Signory in the Palazzo.  At this juncture Savonarola in his sermon for the third Sunday in Advent[1] suggested that each of the sixteen Companies should form a plan, that these should be submitted to the Gonfaloniers, who should choose the four best, and that from these four the Signory should select the most perfect.  At the same time he pronounced himself in favor of an imitation of the Venetian Consiglio Grande.  His scheme, as is well known, was adopted.[2] Running through the whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and historians, we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary alterations of the state.  Machiavelli pronounces his opinion that, in spite of the corruption of Florence, a wise legislator might effect her salvation.[3] Skill alone was needed.  There lay the wax; the scientific artist had only to set to his hand and model it.

    [1] December 12, 1494.

[2] Segni (pp. 15, 16) says that Savonarola deserved to be honored for this Constitution by the Florentines no less than Numa by the Romans.  Varchi (vol. i. p. 169) judges the Consiglio Grande to have been the only good institution ever adopted by the Florentines.  We may compare Giannotti (Sopra la Repubblica di Siena p. 346) for a similar opinion.  Guicciardini, both in the Storia d’ Italia and the Storia di Firenze, gives to Savonarola the whole credit of having passed this Constitution.  Nardi and Pitti might be cited to the same effect.  None of these critics doubt for a moment that what was theoretically best ought to have been found practically feasible.

    [3] St. Fior. lib. iii. 1.  ’Firenze a quel grado e pervenuta che
    facilmente da uno savio dator di leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque
    forma di governo riordinata.’