of the people against the patricians, it was decreed that the towers of all powerful houses should be cut down so that none should exceed the height of seventy-five feet (fifty _braccia_), and the superfluous material was used to wall in the city on the south side of the river (_oltr' Arno_).[246] This third constitution of Florence, known as the _Primo Popolo_, or First Popular Government, was in fact a politico-military constitution, dividing the Republic into two halves, the Commune and the people, and in which the aristocrats and democrats formed, as it were, two opposing camps. The army was marshalled under the banners both of the Commune and the people; all important measures required the sanction both of the Commune and the people. A similar division of authority may seem strange at this day, but it was common enough in the Middle Ages. It was customary to many Tuscan cities, and we find an example of it at Bölogna, where the nobility and people formed, as it were, two distinct republics, having different laws and statutes, and two separate palaces for their respective magistrates. At Milan we find a tripartite republic in the Credenza dei Consoli, the Motta, and the Credenza di Sant Ambrogio, consisting respectively of the greater and middle nobility and the people. This seemed a perfectly natural arrangement, seeing that social conditions are reflected in the institutions to which they give birth; the social body was divided, because it owed its origin to the struggle between the Latin and Teutonic races, between conquerors and conquered. Accordingly, the remote heirs of either race stood arrayed in two opposite camps, armed and prepared for conflict.[247] [Illustration: PALACE OF THE PODESTÀ, FLORENCE. [_To face page 192._]