him, if only distantly, he boldly compares himself with Timoleon, who
slew his brother for his country's sake. Others, on the same occasion,
made use of the comparison with Brutus, and that Michelangelo himself,
even late in life, was not unfriendly to ideas of this kind, may be
inferred from his bust of Brutus in the Bargello. He left it
unfinished, like nearly all his works, but certainly not because the
murder of Caesar was repugnant to his feeling, as the couplet beneath
declares.

A popular radicalism in the form in which it is opposed to the
monarchies of later times, is not to be found in the despotic States of
the Renaissance. Each individual protested inwardly against despotism
but was disposed to make tolerable or profitable terms with it rather
than to combine with others for its destruction. Things must have been
as bad as at Camerino, Fabriano, or Rimini, before the citizens united
to destroy or expel the ruling house. They knew in most cases only too
well that this would but mean a change of masters. The star of the
Republics was certainly on the decline.

The Republics: Venice and Florence

The Italian municipalities had, in earlier days, given signal proof of
that force which transforms the city into the State. It remained only
that these cities should combine in a great confederation; and this
idea was constantly recurring to Italian statesmen, whatever
differences of form it might from time to time display. In fact, during
the struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great and
formidable leagues actually were formed by the cities; and Sismondi is
of opinion that the time of the final armaments of the Lombard
confederation against Barbarossa (from 1168 on) was the moment when a