 Giovanni Battista Vico was born in Naples, Italy, June 23 1668, to a bookseller and daughter of a carriage maker. He received his formal education at local grammar schools, from various Jesuit tutors, and at the University of Naples from which he graduated in 1694 as Doctor of Civil and Canon Law. As he reports in his autobiography (Vita di Giambattista Vico), however, Vico considered himself as “teacher of  himself,”[1]  a habit he developed under the direction of his father, after a fall at the age of 7 caused a three year absence from school. Vico reports that “as a result of this mischance he grew up with a melancholy and irritable temperament such as belongs to men of ingenuity and depth” (Vita, 111). Vico left Naples in 1686 for Vatolla where, with occasional returns to his home city, he remained for the next nine years as tutor to the sons of Domenico Rocca. Vico returned to Naples in 1695 and four years later married Teresa Caterina Destito with whom he had eight children. Of his surviving children (three of them died), his younger son Gennaro was a favorite and went on to an academic career; his daughter Lusia achieved success as a singer and minor poet, and Ignazio is known to have been a source of disappointment to him. Of the others (Angela Teresa and Filippo) little is known. Vico was never rich, though he made a living, and the legend of his poverty derives from Villarosa’s embellishment of the autobiography. He did, however, suffer bouts of ill-health, and failed in his life-long ambition of succeeding to the chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Naples, having to settle instead for a lower and poorly paid professorship in Rhetoric. He retained this position until 1741 at which time he was succeeded by his son Gennaro. Vico died in Naples on January 22–23, 1744, aged 75.