among the Venetians
until the date of Trifone Gabrielli and Paruta. Their records are all
positive and detailed. The generalizations and comparisons of the
Florentines are absent; nor was it till a late date of the Renaissance
that the Venetian history came to be written as a whole. It would seem
as though the constitutional stability which formed the secret of the
strength of Venice was also the source of comparative intellectual
inertness. This contrast between the two republics displayed itself even
in their art. Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the
liberator of his country, adorned the squares and loggie of Florence.
The painters of Venice represented their commonwealth as a beautiful
queen receiving the homage of her subjects and the world. Florence had
no mythus similar to that which made Venice the Bride of the Sea, and
which justified the Doge in hailing Caterina Cornaro as daughter of S.
Mark's (1471). It was in the personal courage and intelligence of
individual heroes that the Florentines discovered the counterpart of
their own spirit; whereas the Venetians personified their city as a
whole, and paid their homage to the Genius of the State.

[1] Varchi, ix. 49; Vasari, xii. p. 158; Burckhardt, p. 270.

It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the city of self-conscious
political activity, variable, cultivated, and ill-adapted by its very
freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based
upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and solid at the
cost of some rigidity, with Venice. As in Greece the philosophers of
Athens, especially Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the immobility of
Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the theorists of Florence,
Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, look with envy at the state
machinery which secured repose and liberty for Venice. The parallel
between Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable when we inquire
into the causes of their decay. Just as the Ephors, introduced at first
as a safeguard to the constitution, by degrees extinguished the
influence of the royal families, superseded the senate, and exercised a
tyrannous control over every department of the state; so the Council of
Ten, dangerous because of its vaguely defined dictatorial functions,
reduced Venice to a despotism.[1] The gradual dwindling of the Venetian
aristocracy, and the impoverishment of many noble families, which
rendered votes in the