Shortly after, an event of even greater significance occurred in the capture and sack of Fiesole during 1125. Sanzanome, whose so-called modern history of Florence starts with this war, describes it at much length, in flights of wordy rhetoric. The gist of it is that the chief cause of the conflict was a commercial dispute. The people of Fiesole would seem to have maltreated and plundered a Florentine trader who was quietly passing through the city with his goods. This incident, added to the remembrance of past rancours and other recent depredations, seems to have stirred the Florentines to war. Instantly, "factum est Consilium per tunc dominantes Consules de processu." One of the leading citizens harangued the people, beginning his speech with these words: "Si de nobili Romanorum prosapia originem duximus ... decet nos patrum adherere vestigiis." Thereupon, "illico a Consulibus exivit edictum." A man of Fiesole, on the other hand, began his address by alluding to the legendary origin of his city: "Viri, frates, qui ab Ytalo sumpsistis originem, a quo tota Ytalia dicitur esse derivata." Although so much learned rhetoric in a writer of the early part of the thirteenth century is another proof of the strong influence of Roman tradition on ancient Florentines, both before and after the rise of their Commune, it cannot conceal the real cause of the war, as proved even by the evidence of Villani, whose chronicle begins to acquire greater historic value at this point. The latter relates that Fiesole had become a veritable nest of _Cattani_ and brigands, who infested the Florentine highways and territories.[122] As usual, the feudal barons were swooping down from their strongholds to hinder the trade and traffic of the Commune.