as their fancy may from time to time suggest.  But inasmuch as the violence of tyranny is manifested to all eyes by these and many other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh.  It is enough to select one feature, strange in appearance but familiar in fact; for what can be more extraordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustrious lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of high descent and time-honored nobility frequenting their tables and accepting their bounties?  Yet if we consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants often turns to misery and ruin.  Who can exaggerate their wretchedness?  They know not where to place their confidence; and their courtiers are always on the lookout for the despot’s fall, gladly lending their influence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of previous servility.  This does not happen to hereditary kings, because their conduct toward their subjects, as well as their good qualities and all their circumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants.  Therefore the very causes which produce and fortify and augment tyrannies, conceal and nourish in themselves the sources of their overthrow and ruin.  This indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.’

[1] See the passage condensed from his Sermons in Villari’s Life of Savonarola (Eng.  Tr. vol. ii. p. 62).  The most thorough-going analysis of despotic criminality is contained in Savonarola’s Tractato circa el Reggimento e Governo della Citta di Firenze, Trattato ii. cap. 2. Della Malitia e pessime Conditioni del Tyranno.

It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an invective.  Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the censure of Villani.  Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction they conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly concerning the pernicious effects of their misgovernment.[1] It is to be noticed that Villani and Matarazzo agree about the special evils brought upon the populations by their tyrants.  Lust and violence take the first place.  Next comes extortion; then the protection of the lawless and the criminal against the better sort of citizens.  But the Florentine, with intellectual acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of their rule.  They retard the development of mental greatness in their states, and check the growth of men of genius.  Ariosto, in the comparative calm of the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to the protectorate of Spain, sums up the records of the past in the following memorable passage:[2] ’Happy the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless man gives law!  Wretched indeed and pitiable are those where injustice and cruelty hold sway, where burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid upon the people by tyrants like those who now abound in Italy, whose infamy will be recorded through years to come as no less black than Caligula’s or Nero’s.’  Guicciardini, with pregnant brevity, observes:[3] ’The mortar with which the states of the tyrants are cemented is the blood of the citizens.’