Every noble, every warrior who reached ascendency, or was born to it, made his own laws and governed as he liked.

Every little city had its own fashions and its own aims; and was continually fighting, driven by jealousy, envy, hatred, or emulation, with its neighbours.

War was the incessant business of life, and was carried on not only against neighbouring cities, but by each city in its own streets, from its own towers, where noble fought against noble, citizen with citizen, and servant with servant.

Literature was only trying to begin, to find its form, to find its own Italian tongue, to understand what it desired.

It took more than a century after Sordello's youth to shape itself into the poetry of Dante and Petrarch, into their prose and the prose of Boccaccio.