ozzo
appear to mention their own death. The probability is that their
annals, as we have them, have been freely dealt with by transcribers
or continuators adopting the historic 'I' after the decease of the
titular authors.

Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occasion of the
Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the streets of the Eternal City,
he was moved in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of
the discrowned mistress of the world.[1] 'When I saw the great and
ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories and the great deeds of
the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and by
Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other masters of history, who
related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the
Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was
not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the
steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of
the monks at prayer, he felt the _genius loci_ stir him with a mixture
of astonishment and pathos. Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence,
the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great
achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I thought it seemly to relate
in this new Chronicle all the doings and the origins of the town of
Florence, as far as I could collect and discover them, and to continue
the acts of the Florentines and the other notable things of the world in
brief onwards so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in whom by
His grace I have done the work rather than by my poor knowledge; and
therefore in the year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to
compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint John and the praise
of this our city Florence.' The key-note is struck in these passages.
Admiration for the past mingles with prescience of the future. The
artist and the patriot awake together in Villani at the sight of Rome
and the thought of Florence.

[1] Lib. viii. cap. 36.

The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the Chronicle which
Giovanni Villani carried in twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348
he died of the plague, and his work was continued on the same plan by
his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left
the Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 1365.
Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, both