Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/19



Florence, the noblest of Italian cities, had her beginning, as ancient history and the general opinion of the present time seem to declare, from the Romans. Increasing in size as years went on, and filled with people and famous men, she began to appear to all her neighbors not only as a city but a power. What the cause of change was from these great beginnings—whether adverse fortune, or unfavorable skies, or the deserts of her citizens—we cannot be sure. But certain it is that, not many centuries later, Attila, that most cruel King of the Vandals, and general spoiler of nearly all Italy, after he had slain or dispersed all or the greater part of the citizens that were known for their noble blood or for some other distinction, reduced the city to ashes and ruins. In this condition it is thought to have remained for more than three hundred years. At the end of that period, the Roman Empire having been transferred, and not without cause, from Greece to Gaul, Charles the Great, then the most clement King of the French, was raised to the imperial throne. At the close of many labors, moved, as I believe, by the Divine Spirit, he turned his imperial mind to the rebuilding of the desolated city. He it was who caused it to be rebuilt and inhabited by members of the same families from which the original founders were drawn, making it as far as possible like to Rome. And although he reduced the circumference of the walls, he nevertheless gathered within them the few descendants of the ancient fugitives.

Now among the new inhabitants (perhaps, as fame attests, Rh