Sublime

The rise of Venice to become the great emporium for the West’s trade with the East was closely connected with the Byzantine recovery; culturally, Venice was really an outpost of the great metropolis at Constantinople – as its architecture revealed.

One of the epitaphs on Colleoni, who died in 1475 after being Venetian captain general for twenty years, suggested that ‘he who serves a republic serves no one’. This was a common reference to the vacillating quality of leadership in the Italian republics, and it has been suggested that condottieri preferred to serve under princes where they knew w

It was part of the early myth of Venice that her policies were not directed by individuals but by some sort of corporate awareness of the eternal needs of the Republic. Niccolò Piccinino is said to have remarked on one occasion that he would like to serve Venice ‘because while princes are mortal, the Republic will never die’.

Pompey has a good claim to be called the first Roman emperor.

Pompey the Great