Notwithstanding our knowledge of this _preside_ and _presidio_ and of these Florentine tribunals, very little is known as to the government and administration of the social body already beginning to prosper and to have varied interests of its own. Matilda's sway in Florence must have been of a shadowy kind, when the city was able to start wars on its own account and to its own profit, albeit still undertaken in her name. As its commercial prosperity increased and Matilda became more absorbed in her struggle with the Empire, the city must have been left more to itself. Consequently this is the time when the associations serving to classify and organise the citizens were formed, which we presently find flourishing and strongly established. Thus, being almost without a central government, a local one could assert its existence, and the strength of the Commune be developed long before its independence was proclaimed. The same fact explains why the Commune, its individuality once declared, should have made such rapid progress and leapt to the headship of Tuscany. At any rate, by the second half of the twelfth century we find on the one side the _grandi_, or nobles--if we prefer to give them that name--formed in Societies of Towers (_Società delle torri_), with statutes soon to be made known to us; while, on the other we find trade guilds or associations not only in existence, but sometimes with sufficient political importance to entitle them to the honour of representing the Republic. Can we possibly suppose that such results could be achieved without a long, preliminary course of preparation? Did not the _scholae_, progenitors of the guilds, survive during the Lower Empire and throughout the Middle Ages? do we not find them dividing all society, including both the soldiery and foreigners in Rome and in Ravenna? How could they be destroyed by barbarians ignorant of crafts which were nevertheless indispensable to their own needs?