After the battle of Monte Aperto a diet of the Ghibellines was held at Empoli, in which the deputies from Siena and Pisa, prompted no doubt by provincial hatred, urged the demolition of Florence. Farinata vehemently opposed the project in a speech, thus given in Napier, Florentine History , I 257:⁠—

“ ‘It would have been better,’ he exclaimed, ‘to have died on the Arbia, than survive only to hear such a proposition as that which they were then discussing. There is no happiness in victory itself,

that