PICCOLOMINI, Francis, of the same family with the preceding, was born in the year 1520, and taught philosophy with success for the space of twenty-two years, in the most celebrated universities of Italy, and afterwards retired to Siena, where he died in 1604, at the age of eighty-four. This city went into mourning on the occasion of his death. His works are, 1. Some Commentaries upon Aristotle, printed at Mayence, 1608, in 4to; and, 2. Universa Philosophia de Moribus, printed at Venice, 1583, in folio. He laboured to revive the doctrine of Plato, and endeavoured also to imitate the manners of that philosopher. He had as his principal rival the famous James Zabarella, whom he excelled in facility of expression and neatness of discourse, but to whom he was much inferior in point of argument, because he did not examine matters to the bottom as the other did, passing too rapidly from one proposition to another.