Moreover, in the Roman town there are reminiscences of the Capitol in fragments of the amphitheatre which have been dug up at different times, and have been used in edifices of later date. Evidences of the same are said to have existed in the church of Santa Maria di Campidoglio, once standing in the old market-place. The circuit of the walls of the Roman town, which was connected with the opposite shore by the bridge above mentioned, may be roughly traced by following the direction of the narrow streets of the crowded quarter between the river and the cathedral square, and the Piazza of Santa Trinità and Santa Firenze. When the declining Roman Empire could no longer resist the pressure of the northern nations Florence was besieged by the wild hordes of Radagaïs. They were, however, utterly destroyed by the general Honorius Flavius Stilicho, when the city was relieved. The storm of Gothic and Lombard war subsequently swept over the country, until at length Charlemagne, who in legends is called the Restorer of Florence, established peace, and set up a form of government, founded on Lombard institutions, which, with various changes, was maintained until the uprising of the free Communes. Towards the latter end of the eleventh century the portion of the city on the right bank of the river had been considerably enlarged, so that it extended eastward as far as the piazza of Santa Croce, northward to that of San Lorenzo, and westward to where subsequently the Carraia bridge was built. The city enclosed also within its walls, which not long afterwards withstood an assault of the Emperor Henry IV., that portion of the left bank of the river which extends as far as the Piazza de’ Pitti. This was the city that was seen in his youth by the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ who was born in 1265, a year before the Guelfs obtained supreme authority. But Dante beheld it already changed in its internal aspect, and in the character of its population, hurried along as they were on the path of conquest, with which this change in character was closely connected. He has described the manners and customs of the ancient citizens, ‘when they were still purely reflected in the lowest artisan,’ that is, before peasants and men of the lower classes had immigrated from the subjugated villages of the neighbourhood, attracted both by the protection they enjoyed in a powerful city and the promise of gain from the daily increasing value of their industry. This was, to use the poet’s words, before citizens of Roman descent had to endure the stench of peasants from Aguglione and Signa, whom avarice alone had allured to Florence.[14] Dante Alighieri lived to see likewise the commencement of the great architectural transformation. Numerous churches had long adorned the city, which reverenced in Zanobi a saintly bishop, and had numbered among its illustrious citizens St. John Gualbert, the founder of the Order of Vallombrosa. Beside the church of St. John, the supposed