La Grotta Ferrata, a convent of Basilian friars, is now, according to Eustace, built on the site of Cicero’s Tusculan villa. Nardini, who wrote about the year 1650, says, that there had been recently found, among the ruins of Grotta Ferrata, a piece of sculpture, which Cicero himself mentions in one of his Familiar Epistles. In the middle of last century, there yet remained vast subterranean apartments, as well as a great circumference and extent of ruins(428). But these, it would appear, have been still farther dilapidated since that period. “Scarce a trace,” says Eustace, “of the ruins of Tusculum is now discoverable: Great part remained at the end of the 10th century, when a Greek monk from Calabria demolished it, and erected on the site, the monastery of Grotta Ferrata. At each end of the portico is fixed in the wall a fragment of basso relievo. One represents a philosopher sitting with a scroll in his hand, in a thinking posture—in the other, are four figures supporting the feet of a fifth of colossal size, supposed to represent Ajax. These, with the beautiful pillars which support the church, are the only remnants of the decorations and furniture of the ancient villa. ‘_Conjiciant_,’ says an inscription near the spot, ‘_quæ et quanta fuerunt_.’(429)” When Cæsar had attained the supremacy at Rome, and Cicero no longer gave law to the Senate, he became the head of a sort of literary or philosophical society. Filelfo, who delivered public lectures at Rome, on the Tusculan Disputations, attempted to prove that he had stated meetings of learned men at his house, and opened a regular Academy at Tusculum(430). This notion was chiefly founded on a letter of Cicero to Pætus, where he says that he had followed the example of the younger Dionysius, who, being expelled from Syracuse, taught a school at Athens. At all events, it was his custom, in the opportunities of his leisure, to carry some friends with him from Rome to the country, where the entertainments they enjoyed were chiefly speculative. In this manner, Cicero, on one occasion, spent five days at his Tusculan villa; and after employing the morning in declamation and rhetorical exercises, retired in the afternoon with his friends to the gallery, called the Academy, which he had constructed for the purpose of philosophical conference. Here Cicero daily offered to maintain a thesis on any topic proposed to him by his guests; and the five dialogues thus introduced, were, as we are informed by the author, afterwards committed to writing, nearly in the words which had actually passed(431). They were completed early in 709, and, like so many of his other works, are dedicated to Brutus—each conference being at the same time furnished with an introduction expatiating on the excellence of philosophy, and the advantage of naturalizing the wisdom of the Greeks, by transfusing it into the Latin language. In the first dialogue, entitled _De Contemnenda Morte_, one of