The great increase in the collection of old inscriptions drew attention to those valuable witnesses of old times. At the same time the disappearance of these memorials through decay and careless removal gave warning that their contents must be secured by copying. What had been once undertaken by Nicola Signorini, Giovanni Dondi, Poggio, Ciriaco, perhaps even before them by Cola di Rienzi, was now continued under the guidance of Pomponio Leto and his friends, with the sympathy of all Italy. Inscribed stones were diligently collected in Rome, Naples, and northern Italy. Bernardo Rucellai copied a number of epigraphs from the originals in Rome. One of the most valuable of these collections of transcriptions was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici by its author, the Dominican Fra Giocondo of Verona. He was one of those many-sided geniuses frequent at the time; versed in classical literature and in knowledge of antiquity. His pupil, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, called him a living library of ancient and modern learning. He was an engineer and architect, active in many ways at Rome, at Venice, and in France, and at an advanced age master-builder of the Vatican Basilica, under Leo X. The copy of the collection of inscriptions presented by Fra Giocondo to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who came in contact with him through Alessandro Cortesi, has disappeared, but other copies remain. The dedication of the work is an eloquent lamentation over the state of ancient Rome, and over the dispersion or destruction of stone and bronze tablets. It offers a warm tribute to their value, and an acknowledgment of Lorenzo’s interest in these studies. Poliziano and other friends made use of the careful work of the energetic Veronese, who was in communication both with the future Pope and his brother Giuliano, to whom he dedicated his commentary on Cæsar’s ‘Gallic War,’ and the later edition of ‘Vitruvius.’[114]