United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary lust with Ibrahim's vigorous conduct of civil and military affairs, on the hypothesis that this man-tiger, as Amari, to whom I owe these details, calls him, was possessed with a specific madness. Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, lib. i. cap. 4. See Chap. iv. p. 195.
1 He was not ordained priest until 1471, after the election of Sixtus IV. 2 Don Francisco de Borja, born at Valencia in 1441. 3 Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine. What more is there to say? If we must be scandalized, let us be scandalized by the times rather than by the man.
Those which are on the upward grade will always reach a point beyond which they cannot rise further, but they will not remain permanently on this level, they will begin to decline; for human things are always in motion and therefore must go up or down. Similarly, declining states will ultimately touch bottom and then begin to ascend. Introduction; Istorie fiorentine, v. ad init.
It is thus that it presents itself to Machiavelli, not the writer of that jeu d'esprit, Il Principe, perplexing as Hamlet, and as variously interpreted, but the author of the stately periods of the Istorie and the Discorsi, the haughtiest of speculators, and in politics the profoundest of modern thinkers.
The cardinals besought the Count to surrender the castle to the Sacred College, withdraw his troops, and deliver Rome from the fear of his forces; and he, that he might win the favour of the future Pope, obeyed, and withdrew to Imola." 1 Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine.
1 In a letter to Francesco Gonzaga. 2 Istorie Florentine. Knowing so much, it is not difficult to understand that in one year or less he should have dissipated 200,000 florins, and found himself in debt to the extent of a further 60,000. In 1473, Sixtus being at the time all but at war with Florence, this Cardinal Riario visited Venice and Milan.
che non furon ribelli, Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro. The great achievement of these years was the composition of the Istorie Fiorentine. The commission for this work he received from Giulio de' Medici through the Officiali dello Studio in 1520, with an annual allowance of 100 florins.
Word Of The Day