Populonia features in Horatius, the celebrated poem by Lord Macaulay - 'From seagirt Populonia,/Whose sentinels descry/Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops/Fringing the southern sky'.
Always with his fierce cousin, he commanded the Florentine artillery in the war for Siena in 1554; the nexy year in the summer he first took by assault Porto Ercole fortress after a four-day artillery barrage, then with 700 German Landsknechts he defended Populonia against a Turkish sea-bourne assault, receiving support from the Florentine cavalry.
Populonia was besieged by Sulla, and in Strabo's time was already declining; later it suffered at the hands of Totila, of the Lombards, and in 817 of a Byzantine fleet.