He had made Girolamo Riario a great prince in Romagna, and later Alexander VI planned a similar career for his son Caesar.
Lucretia was indeed born at a terrible period in the world's history; the papacy was stripped of all holiness, religion was altogether material, and immorality was boundless.

The bitterest family feuds raged in the city, in the Ponte, Parione, and Regola quarters, where kinsmen incited by murder daily met in deadly combat.

In this very year, 1480, there was a new uprising of the old factions of Guelph and Ghibbeline in Rome; there the Savelli and Colonna were against the Pope, and here the Orsini for him; while the Valle, Margana, and Santa Croce families, inflamed by a desire for revenge for blood which had been shed, allied themselves with one or the other faction.
FOOTNOTES: [5] Gianandrea Boccaccio to the duke, Rome, February 25 and March 11, 1493.

State archives of Modena.
[6] Sanuto, Diar.v.i, 258..