Note 183 — Chapter VII · THE REPUBLICS: VENICE AND FLORENCE.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
How strangely modern half-culture affected political life is shown by the party struggles of 1535. Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, iii. p. 317. A number of small shopkeepers, excited by the study of Livy and of Macchiavelli’s Discorsi, call in all seriousness for tribunes of the people and other Roman magistrates against the misgovernment of the nobles and the official classes.