Besides, the burghers had been reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which ambition and avarice took the place of patriotism; while the corruption of morals, fostered by the Medici for the confirmation of their own authority, was so widely spread as to justify Segni, Varchi, Giannotti, Guicciardini, and Machiavelli in representing the Florentines as equally unable to maintain their liberty and to submit to control.
The historical vicissitudes of Florence were no less remarkable than the unity of Venice.

If in Venice we can trace the permanent and corporate existence of a state superior to the individuals who composed it, Florence exhibits the personal activity and conscious effort of her citizens.

Nowhere can the intricate relations of classes to the commonwealth be studied more minutely than in the annals of Florence.

In no other city have opinions had greater value in determining historical events; and nowhere was the influence of character in men of mark more notable.

In this agitated political atmosphere the wonderful Florentine intelligence, which Varchi celebrated as the special glory of the Tuscan soil, and which Vasari referred to something felicitous in Tuscan air, was sharpened to the finest edge.[1] Successive generations of practical and theoretical statesmen trained the race to reason upon government, and to regard politics as a science.