ing system to yield even the most primitive benefit of government, the reasonable security of person and property. Disorder, robbery, and murder were every-day occurrences. When he first visited Rome, his friends deemed a hundred horsemen a necessary escort to protect him from the Orsini on his way to the city.[1] Upon the occasion of his coronation the representative of the King of Naples, who was to accompany him, failed to reach Rome; he had been captured by bandits.[2] Petrarch himself was attacked as he left the city, and was obliged to return within its walls.[3] The danger upon the highroads kept him in a constant state of apprehension when he or his friends undertook a, journey. Even the peaceful retreat at Vaucluse was at last plundered and burned, and the poet declared that nowhere was one any longer sheltered from the ferocious robber bands which moved about with the precision of regular armies, and which the walls of fortified towns and the arms of their rulers were alike powerless to check.[4]
- ↑ Fam., ii., 13 (vol. i., p. 133).
- ↑ Ep. Poet. Lat., ii., i.
- ↑ Fam., iv., 8 (vol. i., p. 219).
- ↑ Cf. Sen., x., 2 (Opera, pp. 870–872), where Petrarch describes the sad change of times since his student days. The mercenary bands (grandes compagnies) who wandered into Italy from France were doubtless a prime cause of the poet's gloomy views.
