VISCONTI 389 the forces of the latter into an ambuscade, and defeated them. In the following years he rav- aged the Koman territories, and successively defeated the troops sent against him ; but in 144 he was routed by Q. Fabius j3Smilianus, and again in 143 by Q. Pompeius, whom how- ever he shortly afterward signally vanquished. In 142 the consul Q. Fabius Servilianus gained great advantages over him, and took many of his cities, but Viriathus finally surrounded him in a mountain pass and captured him with his entire army. He concluded a treaty with the Romans by which the Lusitanians were guar- . anteed the peaceable possession of their own country and were recognized as allies of Eome. This treaty was broken the next year, with the connivance of the Roman senate, by the consul Q. Servilius Csepio, who invaded Lusi- tania, and bribed three envoys of Viriathus, sent to negotiate for peace, to murder him. VIRUS. See VENOM. VISCACHA. See LAGOTIS. VISCONTI, a family of rulers of Milan, whose prominence began with Ottone, who in 1262 was appointed archbishop by Pope Urban IV., and waged a sanguinary struggle with the Del- la Torre family for mastery in the city and territory. The struggle was continued by his nephew Matteo L, the Great (1250-1322), who, after obtaining supreme power, had to contend with a league formed against .him by the Tor- riani and the lords of Montferrat, Piacenza, and Pavia, and was driven from Milan, but re- established by the emperor Henry VII., who put a final end to the rule of the Torriani in 1310-'ll. Matteo extended his dominion over several places; but Pope John XXII. raised against him the Guelphs under the king of Naples, and other enemies, and he was final- ly constrained to resign a few months before his death. His son and successor Galeazzo I. (1277-1328) continued the warfare, and a papal force in 1323 burned the suburbs of Milan and most of the adjacent fortified castles. But the emperor Louis the Bavarian came to his res- cue, and the pontifical forces, after being deci- mated by an epidemic, were overwhelmed in 1324. In 1327, when the emperor was crowned at Milan as king of Lombardy, he appointed Ga- leazzo imperial vicar. He soon after incarce- rated him at Monza, with his son Azzo and his two brothers, on the pretext of their conspi- ring against him with the Roman see, but re- leased them on their paying a heavy ransom. Azzo (1302-'39) improved the condition of Milan, and his uncle and successor Lucchino an- nexed most of Lombardy and Montferrat, and promoted art and science. Lucchino's brother Giovanni (1290-1354) extended his rule over many cities of Tuscany. He left the govern- ment to his nephews Matteo II., Barnabd, and Galeazzo. The first soon died from poison ascribed to his two brothers. Barnabd waged war against the papal see till 1385, when he' was deposed and imprisoned by his nephew Giovanni Galeazzo, under whom the Visconti reached their highest glory. He expelled the Scalas from Verona and Vicenza, and the Car- raras from Padua. For 100,000 florins he re- ceived in 1395 the title of duke of Milan from the emperor Wenceslas. He died of the plague in 1402. He was a munificent patron of art, and the founder of the cathedral of Milan. His children were minors at the time of his death. The eldest, Giovanni Maria, became duke, but lost many of his possessions, and his cruelty and pusillanimity caused his assassina- tion in 1412. The reign of his brother Filippo Maria was one series of wars, chiefly against the Venetians. He died in 1447, without male heirs, and Francesco Sforza, husband of his natural daughter Bianca, secured the duchy of Milan for himself and his descendants. Col- lateral branches of the family still exist in Lombardy. VISCONTI. I. Ennio Qnirino, an Italian archae- ologist, born in Rome, Nov. 1, 1751, died in Paris, Feb. 7, 1818. His father, Giovanni Battista Antonio Visconti, was a Genoese de- scendant of the Visconti of Milan, and in 1768 succeeded Winckelmann as superintendent of antiquities at Rome. He organized the mu- seum, later known as the museo Pio-Clemen- tino, in the Vatican, and undertook excava- tions which resulted in the discovery of the grave of the Scipios and other memorable relics. He made himself the principal in- structor of his son, to show the superiority of private over public tuition, and with the same object published Experimentum Domes- ticce Institutions (2 vols., Rome, l762-'4); and Ennio was only 14 years old when he translated the Hecuba of Euripides into Latin verse (1765). In 1771 he took his degree in law, and entered the service of the pope as honorary chamberlain and as sub-librarian of the Vatican ; but on his refusing to take holy orders he was deprived of these offices. He became private librarian of Prince Ferdi- nando Chigi, and about 1785 was placed at the head of the capitol museum. Under the French provisional government he became in 1798 minister of the interior, and subsequently was for seven months one of the five consuls of the new republic, when he founded the in- stitute at Rome. After the expulsion of the French he finally took refuge in France at the close of 1799, and became administrator of the collections of the Louvre, and in 1803 a member of the institute. His works in- clude Monumenti degll Scipioni (Rome, 1780) ; Museo Pio- Clementina (7 vols., 1782-1807, the first volume published under his father's name) ; Iscrizioni greche Triopee, ora Borghesi- ane (1794) ; Descriptions des antiques du musee national du Louvre (Paris, 1801 ; new ed., 1807); Iconographie ancienne (Greek and Ro- man, 5 vols. fol., 1808-'20, published at the suggestion and mainly at the expense of Na- poleon, and completed by Mongez) ; and the posthumous Illustrazioni di monumenti scefa J3orghesiani, edited by Stef ano Palli and J. G.
