CHAPTER VI.
THE OPPONENTS OF TYRANNY.
The later Guelphs and Ghibellines 55
The conspirators 56
Murders in church 57
Influence of ancient tyrannicide 57
Catiline as an ideal 59
Florentine view of tyrannicide 59
The people and tyrannicide 60
CHAPTER VII.
THE REPUBLICS: VENICE AND FLORENCE.
Venice in the fifteenth century 62
The inhabitants 63
Dangers from the poor nobility 64
Causes of the stability of Venice 65
The Council of Ten and political trials 66
Relations with the Condottieri 67
Optimism of Venetian foreign policy 68
Venice as the home of statistics 69
Retardation of the Renaissance 71
Mediæval devotion to reliques 72
Florence from the fourteenth century 73
Objectivity of political intelligence 74
Dante as a politician 75
Florence as the home of statistics: the two Villanis 76
Higher form of statistics 77
Florentine constitutions and the historians 82
Fundamental vice of the State 82
Political theorists 83
Macchiavelli and his views 84
Siena and Genoa 86