  Elliptical galaxies are the main contributors to the chemical enrichment of
the intracluster and intergalactic medium; understanding how they form and
evolve enables us to get important hints on the amounts of energy and processed
matter that they eject into the ICM/IGM. Recent pieces of observational
evidence point to a strong connection between high redshift quasars and their
host galaxies. The aim of this paper is to prove that the main aspects of the
chemical evolution of the spheroids can be reproduced in the framework of a
model where the shining of the quasar is intimately related to the formation of
the galactic nucleus. A key assumption is that the quasars shone in an inverted
order with respect to the hierarchical one (i.e., stars and black holes in
bigger dark halos formed before those in smaller ones) during an early episode
of vigorous star formation. This scenario closely resembles the so-called
`inverse wind' model invoked to explain the observed increase of the [Mg/Fe]
ratio in the nuclei of ellipticals with increasing the galactic mass, the only
difference being that now the time for the occurrence of a galactic wind is not
determined by the energy input from supernovae, but is indeed the energy
injected by the quasar which regulates the onset of the wind phase.
