GRICE E BRANDALISE: IL COMUNE DI FIRENZE

 THE OLDEST CITY WALLS. 35   camlet bound round the waist with a girdle, after the ancient  fashion, and a mantle lined with minever, with a hood which  they wore over their heads. And the women of the people  were clothed in coarse green cloth of Cambrai, made after  the same fashion. A hundred lire* was an ordinary dower  for a wife. A dower of two or three hundred was in those  days considered enormous. Girls, for the most part had  completed their twentieth year before they were married.  Thus rude in dress and customs were the Florentines of  those days ; but they were loyal, and kept good faith, both  among each other and towards the Commonwealth. And  with their poverty and coarse mode of life, they did greater  things, and acted more virtuously, than we do with our  greater effeminacy and greater riches. "   Those were the manners of the good old times before the  building of the second walls around the increased city. The  position of these walls, and the amount of space thus added  to the city, are very accurately known. The line taken by  the new circuit has been minutely recorded by Malispini,f  Villani, J and Coppo Stefani.§ But it will be sufficient for  our purpose to indicate in a more general manner the  extent of the increase.   The old city, wholly confined to the northern bank of the  river, stretched along it from a point near the present Ponte  Santa Trinita, to another a little beyond the building of the  Uffizi. A line drawn northward from the foot of the Ponte  Santa Trinita, to the corner formed by the Via de' Rondi-  nelli and the Via de' Cerretani, and thence turning at a sharp  angle westward, proceeding then in a direct line to the Piazza  del Duomo, encircling the Cathedral, and then turning  southwards to rejoin the river by a line nearly correspond-   * The Tuscan lira is now equal to eightpence sterling-. To find its  equivalent value at the time in question it must be multiplied by from ten  to fifteen.   \ Chap. lxi. % Book iv. chap. viii. § Book i. rubr. xxxiv.   d 2     36 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE.   ing with the present Via del Proconsolo, the Piazza di San  Firenze, and the Via de Leoni, would very nearly mark  the position of the old wall. The new one, built in 1078,  enclosed an area much more than twice as large as the old  city. This new wall extended along the northern bank of  the river from the present Ponte alle Grazie to the Ponte  alia Carraia. A direct line drawn in north-western direction  from the foot of the latter, to the sharp corner made by the  Via delle Cantonelle, behind the Church of St. Lorenzo,  turning at that corner to follow in a south-easterly direction,  and nearly in a straight line, the course of the streets De  Gori, C alder ai, De Pucci, De' Cresci, and St. Egidio, to  the corner of the Via del Fosso, and there again turning to  the south-west, and striking towards the river in a direct  line by the streets Del Diluvio and De Benci, to the foot  of the Ponte alle Grazie, would form the new boundary of  the city on the northern bank of the river. But the  suburbs which had been gradually formed on the southern  bank, were also now for the first time brought within the  walled city. This new " Oltrarno" quarter, "beyond the  Arno," comprising less than a quarter of the space now  occupied by the city on the southern bank, was bounded  by the river from the Ponte Santa Trinitd, nearly to the  Ponte alle Grazie, and by a line of wall which, starting  from the bank at the spot where the former of these  bridges now stands, followed the entire length of the  present Via Maggio, and then turning at an acute angle  back again towards the river, crossed the Piazza de Pitti in  an oblique direction, so as to exclude the ground on which  the Pitti Palace now stands, pursued an irregular course  along the foot of the steep hill, which here leaves but a  narrow space between it and the Arno, till it rejoined that  river in the immediate neighbourhood of the Ponte alle  Grazie.   It will be seen that this notable enlargement of the city,     POPULATION OF THE CITY. 37   while more then doubling its former area, comprised a  space less than a fourth of that contained within the  present wall, which third circuit was, in most respects as  it still remains, traced in the year 1285.