The bitter invectives against Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon and Egypt, put into Yahweh's mouth, are based wholly on the fact that these peoples are regarded as hostile and hurtful to Israel; Babylonia, though nowise superior to Egypt morally, is favoured and applauded because it is believed to be the instrument for securing ultimately the prosperity of Yahweh's people.
But his most famous compositions in this kind are the personal invectives which he discharged against Filelfo and Valla.
Rosa exhibits the embalmed body of that saint, a native of Viterbo, who died in her eighteenth year, after working various miracles and having distinguished herself by her invectives against Frederick II.
The success of these dramatic and unsparing invectives apparently gave Oldham hope that he might become independent of teaching.
Among contemporaries he passed for one of the most formidable polemical or gladiatorial rhetoricians; and a considerable section of his extant works are invectives.
