When Handel arrived, the greatest of the Italian musicians, Alessandro Scarlatti, was about to produce at St. John Chrysostom's Theatre his chief work, _Mitridate Eupatore_, one of the rare Italian operas of which the dramatic beauty is on a par with the musical value. Was Alessandro Scarlatti still in Venice when Handel met him? We do not know, but in any case he encountered him at Rome some months later, and it appears that at that time Handel was tied by bonds of friendship to the son of Alessandro,--Domenico.[101] He also made many other encounters in Venice, which were destined to change his life. The Prince of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, and the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador Extraordinary at Venice, were both passionate music-lovers, and interested themselves in Handel. The first invitations which Handel received to go to Hanover, and to London, dated doubtless from that time. But if the visit to Venice was not fruitless to the future of Handel, it brought him very little at the time. Handel could produce nothing at any of the seven opera houses.[102] He was much happier at Rome, where he returned at the beginning of March, 1708.[103] The renown of his _Roderigo_ had preceded him. All the Italian merchants strove to receive him with honour. He was the guest of the Marquis Ruspoli, whose gardens on the Esquilino formed the bond of reunion for the Academy of the Arcadians.[104] Handel found himself agreeably placed amongst the most illustrious men which Italy boasted in literature, the arts, and in the aristocracy. Arcadia, which united the nobility and the artists,[105] in a spiritual brotherhood, counted amongst its members, Alessandro Scarlatti, Archangelo Corelli, Bernardo Pasquini, and Benedetto Marcello.[106] A similar _élite_ society was found at the _soirées_ of the Cardinal Ottoboni.[107] Every Monday, in the palace of Ottoboni, as at the meetings of the Arcadia, concerts and poetical recitations were given. The Cardinal Prince, Superintendent of the Pontifical chapel, had in his service the finest orchestra in Italy,[108] and the singers of the Sistine Chapel. At the Arcadia there was also to be heard a numerous orchestra, under the direction of Corelli, of Pasquini, or of Scarlatti. Musical and poetical improvisation was also given there. It was that which provoked the artistic jousts between poets and musicians.[109] It was for the concerts at the palace of Ottoboni that Handel wrote his two Roman oratorios, _The Resurrection_ and _The Triumph of Time and Truth_,[110] which were really but disguised operas. One finds traces of the Arcadia _coterie_ in the compositions which are perhaps the most characteristic of this period in the life of Handel: the Italian cantatas,[111] of which the reputation spread itself very wide, for J. S. Bach made a copy of one of them before 1715.[112] Handel passed three or four months at Rome. He was friendly with Corelli, and with the two