About a century after the revival of letters, when mankind had at length despaired of any farther discovery of the philosophic writings of Cicero, the learned men of the age employed themselves in collecting the scattered fragments of his lost works, and arranging them according to the order of the books from which they had been extracted. Sigonius had thus united the detached fragments of the work _De Republicâ_, and he made a similar attempt to repair another lost treatise of Cicero, entitled _De Consolatione_. But in this instance he not merely collected the fragments, but connected them by sentences of his own composition. The work _De Consolatione_ was written by Cicero in the year 708, on occasion of the death of his much-loved Tullia, with the design of relieving his own mind, and consecrating to all posterity the virtues and memory of his daughter(470). In this treatise, he set out with the paradoxical propositions, that human life is a punishment, and that men are brought into the world only to pay the forfeit of their sins(471). Cicero chiefly followed Crantor the Academic(472), who had left a celebrated piece on the same topic; but he inserted whatever pleased him in any other author who had written on the subject. He illustrated his precepts, as he proceeded, by examples from Roman history, of eminent characters who had borne a similar loss with that which he had himself sustained, or other severe misfortunes, with remarkable constancy(473),—dwelling particularly on the domestic calamities of Q. Maximus, who buried a consular son; of Æmilius Paullus, who lost two sons in two days; and of M. Cato, who had been deprived of a son, who was Prætor-Elect(474). Sigonius pretended, that the patched-up treatise _De Consolatione_, which he gave to the public, was the lost work of Cicero, of which he had discovered a MS. The imposture succeeded for a considerable time, but was at length detected and pointed out by Riccoboni(475). Cicero also wrote a treatise in two books, addressed to Atticus, on the subject of Glory, which was the predominant and most conspicuous passion of his soul. It was composed in the year 710, while sailing along the delightful coast of the Campagna, on his voyage to Greece:— “On as he moved along the level shore, These temples, in their splendour eminent Mid arcs, and obelisks, and domes, and towers, Reflecting back the radiance of the west, Well might he dream of GLORY(476)!”