passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could not pay for
their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the Venetians who were
for ever increasing their colonies in the AEgean Sea, in Asia Minor and
in Egypt.

By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had grown to two
hundred thousand, which made Venice the biggest city of the Middle Ages.
The people were without influence upon the government which was the
private affair of a small number of rich merchant families. They elected
a senate and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were
the members of the famous Council of Ten,--who maintained themselves
with the help of a highly organised system of secret service men and
professional murderers, who kept watch upon all citizens and quietly
removed those who might be dangerous to the safety of their high-handed
and unscrupulous Committee of Public Safety.

The other extreme of government, a democracy of very turbulent habits,
was to be found in Florence. This city controlled the main road from
northern Europe to Rome and used the money which it had derived from
this fortunate economic position to engage in manufacturing. The
Florentines tried to follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and
members of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs.
This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being divided
into political parties and these parties fought each other with intense
bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated their possessions
as soon as they had gained a victory in the council. After several
centuries of this rule by organised mobs, the inevitable happened. A
powerful family made itself master of the city and governed the town and
the surrounding country after the fashion of the old Greek "tyrants."
They were called the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians
(medicus is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had
turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be found in all
the more important centres of trade. Even today our American pawn-shops
display the three golden balls which were part of the coat of arms
of the mighty house of the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and
married their daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves
worthy of a Roman Caesar.

Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where the merchants
specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and the grain de