Giannotti (vol.i.p.

160, and vol.ii.p.

13), for example translates it by the word 'temperamento.' A very notable instance of this tendency to treat the State as a plastic product of political ingenuity, is afforded by the annals of Genoa.
After suffering for centuries from the vicissitudes common to all Italian free cities--discords between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, between the nobles and the people, between the enfranchised citizens and the proletariat--after submitting to the rule of foreign masters, especially of France and Milan, and after being torn in pieces by the rival houses of Adorni and Fregosi, the Genoese at last received liberty from the hands of Andrea Doria in 1528.

They then proceeded to form a new Constitution for the protection of their freedom; and in order to destroy the memory of the old parties which had caused their ruin, they obliterated all their family names with the exception of twenty, under one or other of which the whole body of citizens were bound to enroll themselves.[1] This was nothing less than an attempt to create new _gentes_ by effacing the distinctions established by nature and tradition.

To parallel a scheme so artificial in its method, we must go back to the history of Sicyon and the changes wrought in the Dorian tribes by Cleisthenes.
[1] See Varchi, _St.F._ lib.vii.cap.