Unhappily, there was enough of scandalous material in both their lives to give some colour to their accusations. Yet the virulence with which they lied against each other defeated its own object. Raking that literary dunghill, it is now impossible to distinguish the true from the false; all proportion is lost in the mass of overcharged and indiscriminate scurrility. That such encounters should have been enjoyed and applauded by polite society is one of the strangest signs of the times; and that the duellists themselves should have imagined they were treading in the steps of Cicero and Demosthenes is even more astounding. [Footnote 208: P. 422.] [Footnote 209: _Ibid._ p. 423.] [Footnote 210: See the correspondence between Filippo Maria and Poggio, _Opp._ pp. 333-358. Letter to Cosimo, p. 339.] [Footnote 211: 'The World, the Stammering Simpleton, the Execrable Poet, and the Nobody.' See _Auree Francisci Philelphi Poete Oratorisque Celeberrimi Satyre_. Paris, 1508. Passim.] [Footnote 212: _Opp. Omn._ pp. 164-187. The first invective is the most venomous, and deserves to be read in the original. The last, entitled 'Invectiva Excusatoria et Reconciliatoria,' is amusing from its tone of sulky and sated exhaustion.] [Footnote 213: _Life of Poggio_, pp. 263-272, 354. _Vita di Filelfo._] [Footnote 214: The language of the arena was used by these literary combatants. Thus Valla, in the exordium of his _Antidote_, describes his weapon of attack in this sentence:--'Hæc est mea fusana, quandoquidem gladiator a gladiatore fieri cogor, et ea duplex et utraque tridens,' p. 9.]