CHAPTER XVII

A SKETCH OF VERONA 270

Personality of Italian Towns—Verona—Its History—Early Years—Ezzelino da Romano, Unique in Cruelty—Wholesale Execution and Imprisonment—Pope Alexander IV Assails the Monster—Ezzelino Wounded and Captured—Suicide—New Line of Despots—Cangrande della Scala—Dante and Petrarch—Further Lords of Verona—Later History—The Drei Kaiser Bund.