Laudator Temporis Acti

James Hankins, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023), p. 3:

Patrizi's way of justifying rulership—as was only natural in an age of governments with weak claims to legitimacy—focused on achieving the ends of political power. The principal end of political power for Italian humanists was human flourishing and the goods associated with it. These included liberty, civil peace and order, security from foreign threats, material prosperity, and above all, virtue, meaning the full flourishing, physical and spiritual, of human beings.

Id., p. 4:

For Renaissance literati the greatest obstacle to full flourishing in political communities was the corruption of human nature and culture that had occurred after the fall of ancient Rome. In decayed modern times, power was too often found in the hands of persons driven by lust for wealth and status, men who abused their inherited power or diverted the shared resources of the community to benefit themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens.