Peter, an eminent Italian philosopher, was born at Mantua in 1462. He was of so small a stature that he was little better than a dwarf; yet he possessed an exalted genius, and was considered as one of the greatest philosophers of the age in which he lived. He taught philosophy with the highest reputation, first at Padua, and afterwards at Bologna. He had frequent disputations with the celebrated Achillini, whose puzzling objections would have confounded him, had it not been for his skill in parrying them by some joke. His book De Immortalitate Animae, published in 1516, made a great noise. He maintained, that the immortality of the soul could not be proved by philosophical reasons; but solemnly declared his belief of it as an article of faith. This scruple precaution did not, however, save him. Many adversaries rose up against him, who did not scruple to treat him as an atheist; and the monks caused his book, although he wrote several apologies for it, to be burned at Venice. His work upon Incantations was also thought very dangerous. In it he shows that he believed nothing of magic and sorcery; and Pomponatus lays a prodigious stress on occult virtues in certain men, by which they produced miraculous effects. Of this he gives a great many examples, but his adversaries do not admit them to be true, or free from magic. Paul Jovius says, that he died in 1525, in his grand climacteric. He was three times married, and had but one daughter, to whom he left a large sum of money. He used to apply himself so very intensely to the solution of difficulties, that he frequently forgot to eat, drink, sleep, and perform the ordinary functions of nature.