Note 4 — Chapter IV

It would be very interesting to trace in detail the influence of Aristotle's Politics upon the practical and theoretical statists of the Renaissance. The whole of Giannotti's works; the discourses of de' Pazzi, Vettori, Acciaiuoli, and the two Guicciardini on the State of Florence (Arch. St. It. vol. i.); and Machiavelli's Discorso sul Reggimento di Firenze, addressed to Leo X., illustrate in general the working of Aristotelian ideas. At Florence, in 1495, Savonarola urged his Constitution on the burghers by appeals to Aristotle's doctrine and to the example of Venice [see Segni, p. 15, and compare the speeches of Pagolo Antonio Soderini and Guido Antonio Vespucci, in Guicciardini's Istoria d' Italia, vol. ii. p. 155 of Rosini's edition, on the same occasion]. Segni, p. 86, mentions a speech of Pier Filippo Pandolfini, the arguments of which, he says, were drawn from Aristotle and illustrated by Florentine history. The Italian doctrinaires seem to have imagined that, by clever manipulation of existing institutions, they could construct a state similar to that called [Greek: politeia] by Aristotle, in which all sections of the community should be fairly represented. Venice, meanwhile, was a practical instance of the possible prosperity of such a constitution with a strong oligarchical complexion.