262 A HILL- TOP STRONGHOLD. 



to the hill-tops. Sulla, who humbled Faesulse, did far 

 worse than that : he planted a Eoman colony in the 

 valley at its foot the colony of Florentia at the point 

 where the road crossed the Arno the colony that was 

 afterwards to become the most famous commercial and 

 artistic town of the mediaeval world as Florence. 



The position of the new town marks the change that 

 had come over the conditions of life in Upper Italy. 

 Florence was a Fiesole descended to the plain. And it 

 descended for just the selfsame reason that made Bishop 

 Poore thirteen centuries later bring down Sarum from its 

 lofty hill-top to the new white minster by the ford of 

 Avon. Eoads, communications, internal trade were 

 henceforth to exist and to count for much ; what was 

 needed now was a post and trading town on the river to 

 guard the passage from north to south against possible 

 aggression. Fiesole had been but a mountain stronghold ; 

 Florence was marked from the very beginning by its 

 mere position as a great commercial and manufacturing 

 town. 



Nevertheless, just as in mediaeval England the upper 

 town on the hill, the castled town of the barons, often 

 existed for many years side by side with the lower town 

 on the river, the high-road town of the merchant guilds 

 just as Old Sarum, for example, continued to exist side 

 by side with Salisbury so Faesulae continued to exist 

 side by side with Florentia. As a military post, 

 commanding the plain, it was needful to retain it ; and 

 so, though Sulla destroyed in part its population, he 

 reinstated it before long as one of his own Eoman colonies. 

 And for a long time, during the ages of doubtful peace 



