There seems to have been another cause of strife besides literary rivalry—Scala’s beautiful and accomplished daughter Alessandra. Like many other women of her day, she devoted herself in her youth to the study of Greek, and her teachers were Demetrius Chalcondylas and Johannes Lascaris. That Poliziano was inspired with a violent passion for her is shown by his Greek epigrams.[64] ‘Now at last have I found the object I long have been seeking, Object of loving desire, present in all my dreams.’ But Alessandra, though she exchanged Greek verses with her admirer, and sent him flowers and received small presents, seems to have been very far from returning his affection. She tells him plainly that he has not found what he sought; paying him at the same time compliments on his learning and fame, which do not seem to have consoled him much. When the disdainful beauty gave her hand to Michael Marullus Tarcagnota, a Greek established in Italy early in life, jealousy made Poliziano pour forth a torrent of abuse, which provoked corresponding replies. Time had been when verses addressed by Poliziano to Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici, the patron of Marullus, overflowed with praises of the Greek, who was pronounced superior to Catullus.[65] Now just as immoderate in the opposite sense, Angelo’s invectives were most extravagant against the man who had become his happy rival. Under the name of Mabilius, he satirised his person and writings, heaping upon him all the abuse that could be raked out of the poems of antiquity.[66] Personalities of every kind, moral and physical, are flung backwards and forwards _usque ad nauseam_. Poliziano’s hooked nose and crooked neck, and the supposed infidelity of both combatants are mutually held up to contempt. Well-turned though the epigrams may be, they were better absent from the works of a great poet. Alessandra, the innocent cause of strife, having become a widow, withdrew to the convent of San Pier Maggiore, and died there in 1506.