The strength of this classic revival, though most effective in literature and the arts, is perhaps still more noticeable in the political career of another young man of genius who had as passionate a love of classic Rome as Petrarch himself. Cola di Rienzo (1314-54) was an imaginative, poetical dreamer, who fed his youth on Livy, Cicero, Seneca, and delighted to muse on the glories of Julius Caesar and to study the antique monuments of Rome. His public career began as envoy on one of the unsuccessful embassies which used to entreat the Popes to return to the deserted city. Cola was handsome, eloquent, ardent, a sort of Don Quixote, and roused the Roman populace to share his dreams and to believe in the possible restoration of the Senate and People of Rome to their ancient grandeur. He led the people against the nobility, forced the riotous barons to submit to his rule as tribune of the people, and established a government of law in the city; but his ambition flew far beyond the city walls. He dreamed of the confederation of all Italy under the lead of Rome. He would have smiled at limiting imitation of the great days of old to the arts or to literature; he intended to restore the Roman Republic as it had been in its high and palmy days. His wild aspirations throw a backward light over the history of the city of Rome throughout the Middle Ages, and over that republicanism which played so important a part in the struggle between Empire and Papacy, and light up the old theories under which the Roman people claimed the right to elect both Emperor and Pope; just as Boniface's bulls portray the outworn papal theories, and Dante's "De Monarchia" the dead Imperial beliefs. Cola's first step was to invite all the princes and communes of Italy to attend a general meeting in Rome; and as all Italy had responded to Petrarch's appeal in behalf of the classic past, so did she, for the moment, respond to Cola's appeal. Milan, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Siena, and the smaller cities nearer by, answered with apparent sympathy. Petrarch was mad with delight, and hailed Cola as Camillus, Brutus, Romulus. For the moment, such was the strength of classical illusion, the dream seemed to be real. Cola wrote to the Florentines (September, 1347), "We have made all citizens of the states of Holy Italy Roman citizens, and we admit them to the right of election. The affairs of Empire have naturally devolved upon the Holy Roman People. We desire to renew and strengthen the old union with all the principalities and states of Holy Italy, and to deliver Holy Italy itself from its condition of abject subjection and to restore it to its old state and to its ancient glory. We mean to exalt to the position of Emperor some Italian whom zeal for the union of his race shall stir to high efforts for Italy."[15]