One of the peculiarities of those mediaeval struggles which roused the rivalry of towns separated from each other by a few miles of fertile country, and which raged through generations till the real interests at issue were confounded in blind animosity of neighbor against neighbor--was the sense of humor and of sarcasm they encouraged.
To hurl dead donkey against your enemy's town-wall passed for a good joke, and discredited his honor more than the loss of a hundred fighting men in a pitched battle.

Frontier fortresses received insulting names, like the Perugian _Becca di questo_, or like the Bolognese _Grevalcore_.
There was much, in fact, in these Italian wars which reminds one of the hostilities between rival houses in a public school.
Such being the element of humor ready to hand in the annals of his country, Tassoni chose the episode of the Bolognese bucket for the theme of a mock-heroic epic.

He made what had been an insignificant incident the real occasion of the war, and grouped the facts of history around it by ingenious distortions of the truth.

The bucket is the Helen of his Iliad:[200] Vedrai s'al cantar mio porgi l'orecchia, Elena trasformarsi in una secchia.
[Footnote 200: Canto i.

2.] A mere trifle thus becomes a point of dispute capable of bringing gods, popes, emperors, kings, princes, cities, and whole nations into conflict.