Historians who write about merchant republics during the Renaissance often speak of an “honor deficit,” an inability on the part of city governments to command the respect of other governments and of their own peoples. In Florence and Siena, the ignoble
popolo
had long ago defeated the old civic nobility, and to carry a noble name—the prime hallmark of honor elsewhere in European society—was often a political liability in those cities. Equality, as a political value, trumped
dignitas
or personal prestige. Lacking princely courts to recognize honor, lacking armies of their own or a knightly ethos, republican city-states were governed by nobodies—names picked randomly out of leather bags: butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Behind the scenes, oligarchs and merchant bankers like the Medici called the tune, governing the state in the interests of their own family and party. To outside observers, republican cities seemed vulgar, unstable, rent by violence, unreliable in alliances, manipulated by commercial interests, and therefore deficient in honor and piety. A Portuguese visitor to Siena was fined in 1451 for insulting the city; he had declared that it was ruled by “grocers, tanners, shoemakers and rustics,” who constituted
un reggimento di merda
, a shitty regime. That attitude to popular republics was widespread. How could you trust a city governed by a rabble of tradesmen who cycled in and out of office every two or three months? Trying to negotiate with republics, wrote one disgruntled diplomat, was like chasing hares and rabbits.