The Anatomy of Melancholy

If anyone looked out from Mount Taygetus over the surrounding country and saw “so many delights, so many cities scattered throughout the Peloponnese”—so many delightful, splendidly built cities, created at such cost and with such exquisite skill, so beautifully arranged across the Peloponnese—he would now find them ruined and overthrown, burnt, wasted, desolate, and levelled to the ground. “Incredible to tell,” and so on.

And, as he laments, “Who, in telling such things, could restrain his tears? Who is so hard, so made of iron”—so he continues—who can adequately mourn and pity these ruins? Where are those 4,000 cities of Egypt, those 100 cities of Crete? Have they now dwindled to two?

What do Pliny and Aelian say about ancient Italy? In former ages it had 1,166 cities. Biondo and Machiavelli both allow that it is now nowhere near as populous, or as full of good towns, as it was under Augustus—for now Leandro Alberti can find no more than 300. And if we may trust Livy, even then it was not as strong and powerful as formerly: “They mustered 70 legions in earlier times, a number the known world would now scarcely supply.”

Alexander, for his part, built 70 cities in a short time; the sultans and Turks of our day demolish twice as many and leave everything desolate. Many insist that our island of Great Britain is more populous now than ever. Yet let them read Bede, Leland, and others: they will find that it flourished most under the Saxon Heptarchy and was much more densely inhabited in the Conqueror’s time than now. Look at Domesday Book and show me those thousands of parishes now decayed, those ruined cities and depopulated villages.

The smaller the territory, generally the richer it is: “a small but well-cultivated field.” The Greek commonwealths of Athens, Sparta, Arcadia, Elis, Sicyon, Messenia, and the rest give ample proof. So do Germany’s imperial cities and free states; the cantons of the Swiss, Rhaetians, Grisons, and Walloons; the territories of Tuscany, Lucca, and Siena in former times; Piedmont, Mantua, and Venice in Italy; Ragusa, and others.

Therefore, as Botero advises, a prince who wants a wealthy country and fine cities should secure good trades, privileges, hardworking inhabitants, and skilled craftspeople. He should allow no unworked raw material—tin, iron, wool, lead, and so on—to be exported from his country. This has been seriously attempted here in part, but not carried through.

Because human industry and abundant trade do so much to adorn and enrich a kingdom, the ancient people of Massilia would admit no one into their city who had no trade. Selim I, the Turkish emperor, had a thousand skilled craftspeople brought from Tabriz to Constantinople.

The Poles made a contract with Henry, duke of Anjou, their newly elected king, requiring him to bring a hundred families of craftspeople into Poland. James I of Scotland, as Buchanan writes, sent for the best craftspeople he could find in Europe and gave them generous rewards to teach his subjects their various trades. Edward III, our most renowned king—may his memory endure for ever—first brought cloth manufacture to this island by bringing over some families of craftspeople from Ghent.

How many splendid cities I could name that thrive entirely through trade, where thousands of inhabitants make an excellent living by the work of their fingers: Florence in Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk and all kinds of fine craftsmanship; Arras in Artois by its beautiful tapestries. Many cities in Spain, France, and Germany have no other livelihood, especially those inland.