Aulisio, Dominico

, the son of Antonio Aulisio, was born at Naples, Jan. 14, 1649 (or 1639, according to Diet. Hist.), studied Latin under Floriati and Martena, and made such rapid and successful progress in his other studies, that at the age of nineteen, he taught rhetoric and poetry with reputation. We are also told, that he understood, and could write and speak all the languages of the East and West, and that he acquired a knowledge of them without the aid of a master. He was equally well acquainted with the sciences, and yet with all this knowledge he was for a long time extremely poor, owing to the loss of his father and mother, and the charge of a younger brother and five sisters. At the age of twenty-six he taught as professorextraordinary, without any salary, but about eight years after he obtained the chair of the institutes, which was worth about one hundred ducats, and at forty he held that of the code, worth one hundred and forty. From his forty-sixth year to the end of his life, he was principal professor of civil law, with a salary of 1100 ducats. He died Jan. 29, 1717, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. As he had been a public teacher at Naples about fifty years, he acquired, according to custom, the title of Count Palestine, and was interred with the honours due to that rank. For twenty-three years, also, he had been superintendant of the school of military architecture, by order of Charles II. with a salary of twenty-five ducats per month. During all this time he lived a retired life, and had no ambition to exchange it for the bustle of ambition. In the course of his studies, he became a great admirer of Plato, and when his maternal uncle Leonardi di Capoa, wrote a work agreeable to the principles of Des Cartes, Aulisio became his antagoist but instead of argument, substituted satirical verses, which contributed little to his own fame, and excited the displeasure of his uncle’s learned friends. This dispute induced him to break off all correspondence with | them, and employ his time on several works, particularly, 1. “De Gymnasii constructione De Mausolei architectura; de Harmonia Timaica, et numeric niedicis.” These three were printed in a quarto volume, Naples, 1694. 2. “Commentarii juris civilis ad tit. Pandect.” 3 vols. 4to. 3. “Delle Scuole sacre,” 1723, 4to. 4. “Historia deortu et progressu Medicinse,” Venice, 1700. His life is prefixed to the “Scuole sacre.” ¹