In the Italian republics of the middle ages we find the age of Greece revived, though on a smaller scale and with diminished splendour. They exhibit, in the same colours the results of multiplying small independent states, where every citizen may feel that he has an individual as well as a general interest in public affairs, and every city that she is concerned in the domestic quarrels of her neighbours. The effects of such a system are manifest alike in either country: the good, in the remarkable number of distinguished men produced by them; the bad, in the prevalence of external aggression and internal discord, signalised alike by political acuteness, unblushing profligacy, and revolting cruelty. Above all, Florence and Athens are naturally associated by their kindred eminence in art and literature; they were alike distinguished for the mercurial temper and lively imagination of their citizens, and political resemblances are not wanting to complete the comparison. The early changes in the Florentine constitution, the gradual depression of the nobles, by the rise of the commons to wealth and importance, their exclusion from public offices and honours, the elevation of a plebeian aristocracy upon the ruins of the feudal nobility, and the division of the commons into an oligarchical and a democratical party, are briefly and clearly related in Perceval’s History of Italy, and may not inaptly be compared to the gradual subversion of the Athenian Eupatridæ. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, the oligarchy, headed by the family of Albizzi, succeeded in obtaining possession of the government, which it held for fifty years with a mild and undisturbed sway. But their opponents, though silent, were not crushed: as new families gained wealth by trade, they grew impatient of political inferiority and exclusion: and the Medici, one of the most distinguished houses of the popular nobles, who had long ranked in opposition to the Albizzi, were naturally regarded as the stay of the democratic cause. It was at this time that Cosmo de’ Medici appeared in public life. The characters and adventures of this distinguished man and of his immediate descendants offer a singular number of coincidences with those of Pisistratus and his family.