130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again
their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three
years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged
it--by such tenure as it might still possess--through the city, and
threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to
the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed
it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a
man, that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly
have spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of
enmity which can so be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers,
as of princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
[Greek: "_oide plitai anton emisoun anton_."
131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was
beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable
side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of
Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the
Podesta of Florence, the Florentines determined to destroy the castle
and walls of Poggibonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the
Poggibonzi people came with "coregge in collo," leathern straps round
their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared.
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