“The gold has now disappeared, and thorns and briers resume their reign. When I consider our present situation, I cannot but remember how Caius Marius, the pillar of the Roman republic, when he was banished from his country, landed in Africa, and seated himself amidst the ruins of Carthage, where he meditated upon the fate of that city, and could not determine whether he himself or the rival of Rome afforded a more striking spectacle of the instability of human things. But with respect to the devastation of Rome, there is nothing to which it can be compared. The calamity which has befallen the mistress of the world exceeds in magnitude every misfortune recorded in the annals of history.—It is a truly lamentable circumstance, that this city, which formerly produced so many illustrious heroes and commanders, the parent of such signal virtues, the nurse of arts, the inventress of military discipline, the pattern of sanctity, the establisher of laws, the protectress of good morals, the queen of the nations, should now, by the injustice of fortune, not only be stripped of her dignity, but should also be doomed to the most wretched servitude, and should become so deformed and abject, as to exhibit no traces of her former grandeur, except what are to be found in her ruins.”[381] These observations lead Poggio to remark, how wonderfully few are the vestiges of ancient art which remain in the extensive precincts of Rome. Of these vestiges he gives a complete and interesting catalogue, which affords a very minute account of the appearance of the ruins of Rome in the fifteenth century. At the close of this enumeration, Lusco resumes his reflections on the mutability of Fortune, on which Poggio inquires of his friend what he means by that term. In answer to this question, Lusco gives the Aristotelian definition of Fortune, describing it as an accidental cause, and says, that those circumstances happen by Fortune which happen to man contrary to his design and intention. To this definition he observes that Aquinas accedes. Poggio, remarking that we speak of the good fortune of Alexander or Cæsar, though they laid plans to accomplish what they effected, objects to the foregoing definition, in the place of which Antonio substitutes another, which attributes events that are commonly esteemed fortuitous to the over-ruling providence of God. After this preliminary conversation, Poggio proceeds briefly to recount some ancient examples of the mutability of fortune, and then describes the astonishing success of the arms of Tamerlane, and the calamities of Bajazet. He then requests Antonio to detail some of the more modern instances of a calamitous reverse of circumstances. With this request Lusco complies, and the instances which he recounts occupy the whole of the second book of the Dialogue, in which various changes which had taken place in different parts of Europe, and particularly in Italy, from the year 1377 to the period of the death of Martin V.