For thirty years Cosimo maintained at Florence, by the power of capital, prosperity and peace under the semblance of the old constitution, the richer of the ever-renewed capitalist class accepting his primacy, while the populace, being more equitably governed than of yore under the old nobility, and being steadily prosperous, saw no ground for revolt. Capital as "tyrant" had in fact done what the tyrants of early Greece and Rome are presumed to have often done--favoured the people as against the aristocracy; Cosimo's liberality giving employment and pay at the same time to the artisans and to the scholars. Under Cosimo and his political colleagues, doubtless, the subject cities were corruptly governed; but Florence seems to have been discreetly handled. Attempts to break the capitalistic domination came to nothing, save the exile or at a pinch the death of the malcontents. [Under all of the Medici, it appears, "the fiscal legislation adhered to the principle of burdening the old nobility of the city" (Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, Eng. tr. i, 33). They however built up a fresh public debt, and their finance had very crooked aspects, especially under Lorenzo, who lacked the mercantile faculty of his grandfather (_id._ pp. 31-33. Cp. Perrens, _Histoire de Florence_, trans. cited, pp. 55-60, 288, 408-13, 416-17). Lorenzo was even accused of appropriating the dowries of orphan girls; and it seems clear that he defrauded the _monte delle doti_, or dowry bank. As regards fiscal policy, it may be interesting to note that in Florence taxes had been imposed alternately on capital or income from the thirteenth century onwards, both being taken at the lowest values, and rated at from one-half to three per cent. according to the _estimo_ (Esquiron de Parieu, _Traité des impôts_, 2e édit. 1866, i, 417). These taxes in turn were probably suggested by the practice of ancient Athens, where extraordinary revenue for war purposes was obtained "partly from voluntary contributions, partly from a graduated income or property tax." In 1266 a fresh income-tax of ten per cent. on an already heavily taxed city incited the decisive rising against the rule of the Ghibelline Count Guido. The earlier historians of Florence, like most others, pay little attention to the history of taxation; but details emerge for the later period.