Poggio zealously concurred in the wish of his friend Leonardo, to rescue from obscurity the lost works of Cicero. Nor were his endeavours to accomplish this valuable object entirely unsuccessful. In a monastery of the monks of Clugny, in the town of Langres, he found a copy of Cicero’s Oration for Cæcina, of which he made a transcript for the use of his Italian friends. In the course of various journeys, which the vicissitudes of fortune obliged him to take at different periods of his life, he had the satisfaction to discover the following orations of the same author, the loss of which had been long deplored by the learned—De lege Agrariâ contra Rullum liber primus—Ejusdem liber secundus—Contra legem Agrariam ad populum—In L. Pisonem. A copy of these orations is preserved in the Abbey of Santa Maria, at Florence, to which is affixed a memorandum, which records the fact of their having been discovered by Poggio. This memorandum indeed makes mention of seven orations as having been found by him in France and Germany; and the catalogue prefixed to the manuscript, besides the works above mentioned, enumerates the Oration pro C. Rabirio Pisone—Pro C. Rabirio perduellionis reo—and pro Roscio Comœdo—but these orations have been torn from the volume in question.[90] With the assistance of Bartolomeo di Montepulciano, Poggio also restored to light the poem of Silius Italicus—Lactantius’s treatise de irâ Dei et opificio hominis—Vegetius de re Militari—Nonius Marcellus—Ammianus Marcellinus[91]—Lucretius[92]—Columella and Tertullian.[93] Before the time of Poggio, eight only of the comedies of Plautus were known to the classical student. But by the industry or good fortune of one Nicolas of Treves, whom Poggio employed in continuing the researches in the monasteries of Germany, which he was unable to conduct in person, twelve more were brought to light. When Poggio had notice of this discovery, he was highly elated, and strenuously exhorted the cardinal Ursini to dispatch a trusty messenger to bring these valuable treasures to Rome. “I was not only solicitous, but importunate with his eminence,” says Poggio in a letter to Niccolo Niccoli, “to send somebody for the books.” The cardinal did not however second the impatience of the Italian literati, who waited nearly two years before the manuscripts in question arrived in Rome, whither they were brought by Nicolas of Treves himself.[94] Besides Plautus’s comedies, Nicolas of Treves brought to Rome a fragment of Aulus Gellius.