it was, and not any real lack of patriotism, which made them choose a
German emperor instead of an Italian king. There was no room at that
time for the idea of Italian unity, as we now understand it: the
nature of the people alone would have rendered such a thing
impossible, even if we leave out of account the fact that Italy was
the meeting-ground of the two great powers of the mediaeval world, the
Pope and the Emperor. Italy then must have had two masters, or have
been the slave of one. The same spirit of civic independence which
caused the development of Ancient Greece by preventing the universal
rule of one power, caused the Italians, under different conditions, to
pit one master against another to attain the same end. Even Liutprand,
the old historian of the tenth century, recognized this. In the first
book of his "Historia" he says: "The Italians wish always to serve two
masters, in order to restrain one by means of the terror with which
the other inspires him."[57] By means of holding in their hands the
balance of power they hoped to rule their rulers; and to attain this
object was the only reason which ever prompted the cities to unite
with any degree of harmony. Local independence was what they aimed at,
and their shrewdness showed them the only possible means in that age
of securing it.

These results could hardly have been attained if society had remained
such that the prominence of the local divisions was dependent on the
prominence of the respective heads of these divisions; but the
character of their local rulers once changed, and their powers in a
great measure absorbed by the act of a strong central power, when that
power fell to pieces it was much easier for the local divisions, as
such, to increase their independence, and to utilize the advance they
had made, by means of their more direct relation to the central power,
to gain a position which they would enjoy in spite of the efforts