might fancy they were nowhere, just because they had left no part unpenetrated. The Republic, like Gulliver in Liliput, was tied down by a thousand threads, each almost imperceptible, but so varied in quality and so subtly interwoven that to escape from the network was impossible. [Footnote 132: Manetti's obligations to the commune were raised by arbitrary impositions to the enormous sum of 135,000 golden florins. He was broken in his trade and forced to live on charity in exile.] Much of the influence acquired by Cosimo, and transmitted to his descendants, was due to sympathy with the intellectual movement of the age. He had received a solid education; and though he was not a Greek scholar, his mind was open to the interests which in the fifteenth century absorbed the Florentines. He collected manuscripts, gems, coins, and inscriptions, employing the resources of his banking house and engaging his commercial agents in this work. Painters and sculptors, no less than scholars and copyists, found in him a liberal patron. At the death of his son Piero the treasures of the Casa Medici, not counting plate and costly furniture, were valued at 30,000 golden florins.[133] The sums of money spent by him in building were enormous. It was reckoned that, one year with another, he disbursed from 15,000 to 18,000 golden florins annually in edifices for the public use.[134] Of these the most important were the Convent of S. Marco, which altogether cost about 70,000 florins; S. Lorenzo, which cost another 40,000; and the Abbey of Fiesole. On his own palace he expended 60,000 florins, while the building of his villas at Careggi and Cafaggiuolo implied a further large expenditure. Not a shilling of this money was wasted; for while Cosimo avoided the reproach of personal extravagance, he gave work to multitudes of labourers, who received their wages regularly every Saturday at his office. To this free use of wealth in the employment of artisans may be ascribed the popularity of the Medici with the lower classes, which was more than once so useful to them at a perilous turn of fortune. [Footnote 133: See Von Reumont, vol. ii. p. 175.] [Footnote 134: Vespasiano, p. 257.]