[Footnote 596: Study suffered in Florence particularly from the faction troubles. The _Studio_ or college, founded in 1348, was closed between 1378 and 1386; reopened then, shut in 1404, again opened in 1412, and so on. Cp. Napier, _Florentine History_, 1846, iv, 75; Perrens, _Histoire de Florence_, Eng. tr. of vol. vii, pp. 172-77; and von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, Eng. tr. i, 428-30.] [Footnote 597: Mr. Symonds notes (_Age of the Despots_, p. 34) how Guicciardini argued this (_Op. Ined._ i, 28), as against Machiavelli's lament over the lack of Italian unity.] Chapter III THE POLITICAL COLLAPSE § 1 Given the monarchic and feudal environment, the chronic strife within and between the Italian cities can be seen to be sufficient in time to undo them;[598] and some wonder naturally arises at their failure to frame some system of federal government that should restrain their feuds. It was their supreme necessity; but though the idea was now and then broached,[599] there is no sign that the average man ever came nearer planning for it than did the Ghibelline Dante, with his simple theory that Cæsar should ride the horse,[600] or than did the clear brain of Machiavelli, with its longing for a native ruler[601] like Cesare Borgia, capable of beating down the rival princes and the adventurers, and of holding his own against the Papacy. One of the statesmen who harboured the ideal was Rienzi; but he never wrought for its realisation, and his devotion to the Papacy as well as to the headship of Rome would have made it miscarry had he set it on foot.[602] The failure of Cesare Borgia, who of all Italians of his day came nearest to combining the needed faculties for Italian unification, is the proof of the practical impossibility of that solution. But a federation of States, it has been reasoned, was relatively feasible; why then was it never attempted? As usual, the question has been answered in the simple verbalist way, by the decision that the Italians did not strike out a political philosophy or science because they were not that way given. They lacked the "faculty" for whatever they did not happen to do; whereas the ancient Greeks, on the contrary, did theorise because that faculty was theirs, though they had not the faculty to work out the theories.