 Vico’s earliest publications were in poetry rather than philosophy-the Lucretian poem “Affetti di un disperato” (“The Feelings of One in Despair”) (composed in 1692) and “Canzone in morte di Antonio Carafa” (“Ode on the Death of Antonio Carafa”) both published in 1693. After his appointment to Professor of Rhetoric in 1699, Vico began to address philosophical themes in the first of six Orazioni Inaugurali (Inaugural Orations). In 1707 Vico gave a seventh oration-intended as an augmentation of the philosophy of Bacon that he subsequently revised and published in 1709 under the title De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (On the Study Methods of Our Time). Two years later his projected but uncompleted statement on metaphysics appeared, De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda libri tres (On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language). The years that followed saw the publication of various works, including two replies to critical reviews of De antiquissima (1711 and 1712), a work of royal historiography-De rebus gestis Antonii Caraphaei libri quattuor (The Life of Antonio Caraffa) (1716)-Il diritto universale (Universal Right) (1720–22), and in 1725 and 1731 the two parts of his autobiography which together compose the Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo (Life of Giambattista Vico Written by Himself). Over the course of his professional career, Vico also composed and delivered lectures on rhetoric to students preparing to enter into the study of jurisprudence. These survive as student transcriptions or copies of the original lectures, and are collected under the title Institutiones Oratoriae (1711–1741) (translated as The Art of Rhetoric) in which Vico’s develops his views on rhetoric or eloquence, “the faculty of speaking appropriate to the purpose of persuading” through which the orator aims to “bend the spirit by his  speech.”[3]