The actual details of Milanese history, the innumerable tragedies of Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the ascendency of despotic families, are far more terrible than any fiction; nor would it be easy for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage barbarism with modern refinement.

Savonarola's denunciations[1] and Villani's descriptions of a despot read like passages from Plato's Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny.
The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap.

i.): 'The crimes of despots always hinder and often neutralize the virtues of good men.
Their pleasures are at variance with morality.

By them the riches of their subjects are swallowed up.

They are foes to men who grow in wisdom and in greatness of soul in their dominions.